Memorable Meals: Portobello Vegan Trattoria

There aren't many vegan restaurants in Portland that are worthy of celebrations, and due to that fact we have eaten at Portobello Vegan Trattoria numerous times. However this time was different, we were celebrating a wedding!

After the short and sweet morning ceremony, we enjoyed a 4-course tasting menu that had us thinking vegan makes for a great wedding menu. Who can resist beautifully cooked and arranged vegetables? The tasting menu portions were perfect and the flavors were absolutely terrific. Honestly, it had us looking at Portobello in a new light and we look forward to our next visit - who's birthday's next?

The stuffed figs appetizers were amazing.

Starters of Beet and Asparagus Salad & Squash and Carrot Soup.

The pasta and grain course was particularly good and was difficult to decide which dish to have. The Tomato Gnocchi, Artichoke Risotto, Mushroom Cavatelli, or Roast Corn Ravioli? They were all delicious.

We wiped our main course plates clean. Trumpet Mushrooms and Pesto & a Portobello Steak.

The dessert course included many of Portobello's vegan ice creams, including in root beer float form, but we stuck to more adult desserts with the best Strawberry Basil "ice cream" we've ever had, a Berry Tart and a Peach Panna Cotta. All three desserts were terrific.

We don't think it simply was because we were celebrating such a joyous occasion that Portobello, a restaurant we've eaten at many times, was so delicious this time; but it was by far the most memorable meal we've had there so far.Cheers!

Mission Figs

Our new favorite fall fruit is mission figs! These little suckers are addictive. Get out and get some before they skyrocket in price! We drizzled ours with blackberry & ginger vinegar, agave, and olive oil; roasted them for 15 minutes and placed them on top of the yummiest ciabatta baguette and the creamiest stilton cheese. Seriously delicious.

Memorable Meals: National City's Filipino Food

We recently heard an economist's opinion to never eat in busy business centers of a city, due to high rents, competition and trendiness. These establishments have a tendency to be watered down. He stated restaurants that are hard to find, even for locals will be much better. We actually didn't hear about his opinions until after our return from San Diego, but while visiting we did find ourselves on the hunt for a little out-of-the-way Filipino food just two neighborhoods from the Mexican border in National City. Due to a big percentage of Filipinos being Catholic we called ahead to find out if restaurants would be open and what time the first lechon pig would be ready.

After a lovely day touring Balboa Park we decided some suckling pig was exactly what we needed and headed to National City. National City looked more like the Southern California we envisioned with wide boulevards littered with strip mall after strip mall surrounded by brown hills. We arrived at Porky's Lechon and Barbeque at 5:09pm to find the tiny restaurant closed. We even called that morning, but forgot to ask what time they closed. Not to worry National City had Filipino restaurants everywhere and on the way we had noticed what looked like an old Village Inn Restaurant building with a large sign saying "Villa Manilla - famous fried chicken". The strip mall parking lot was full, but the restaurant was fairly empty. We were unsure if we were making a good decision, but the waiter was so nice and we were already there so we sat down and decided we would make the best of the situation. The menu was foreign to us, which made it even more exciting. There was no suckling pig however, so we opted for their famous fried chicken and some sauteed pork belly.

The pork was palatable, dry and smokey, but nothing spectacular. The fried chicken on the other hand was delicious. Villa Manilla boasted their chicken was not battered and came with banana ketchup. The lack of batter actually made the skin the highlight, crispy, crunchy and flavorful. We quickly declared this fried chicken to be one of the best we've ever had. We may not have been successful getting some Filipino suckling lechon, but the fried chicken made us feel as if the evening wasn't a total bust.

We took the quick bus ride back to the hotel and enjoyed a late night chocolate cake and old fashion cocktails, so all in all a nice end to a lovely Easter Sunday.

Happy Year of the Dragon

A quick pic of Mom's Banh Tet for this year's New Year celebrations! Happy New Year Everyone!

I Think I'm Turning Japonessa

Japonessa Sushi Cocina in Seattle, Washington is one of the cool kids. A hip urban Japanese fusion restaurant in the heart of downtown that looks like it was outfitted by the Z Gallerie and has one of the best late night happy hours in town. Directly after arriving on the Cascade Starlight Train from Portland we bolted for the late night hot spot and it not only started off our food-tastic tour of Seattle, but was one of the most memorable meals we had in our too short visit to the Emerald City!

We started off with yummy takoyaki. The bonito flakes didn't "dance" like we've seen on other takoyaki we've had, but the light, not-doughy-at-all octopus balls were a hit and good start.

We ordered 2 sushi rolls and ikura with a quail egg. Being a sushi cocina the Barcelona Sunset Roll (top roll pictured below) was the standout of the sushi rolls - spicy yellowtail, avocado, cucumber, topped with yellowtail, tobiko and habanero allioli.

We also ordered the caliente ginger chicken and the garlic short ribs. We like to keep all our meal proteins well balanced. We were hoping the caliente ginger chicken would be like karage, but was a spicy sauce slathered chicken served with taro chips, but the short ribs were exactly what we were hoping - tangy little rib bites.

The highlight of the night was the Ankimo - monkfish liver! Pate of the sea! Deliciously creamy, individual bites of the sea! Delicious!

This was just the beginning of our epic Seattle Food Tour and it was off to a stellar start!

Harvesting and Preserving Our 2011 Garden

One of the quincessential Pacific Northwest things to do is have a small garden and spend the summer months growing your own food. This year with our mid-summer wedding we decided we'll still have a vegetable garden, but select vegetables we could harvest at once in the later part of summer. For example we decided to plant an Heirloom Goliath Tomato verses a prolific constant ripening cherry tomato. This beauty grew large over the months of July but only started to bare large green tomatoes in mid-August into late September.

As the green fruits grew and grew and grew, but didn't turn red we started to think we'd have 100lbs of green tomatoes to deal with, but with a couple hot September weekends our tomatoes started to turn red and our plan to can and preserve for use in the winter was back on track.

Our decision to attempt canning our tomatoes was solidified with this bad boy. A pressure cooker/canner purchased with some wedding money.

Sure we could have easily purchased a simplier water bath canning pot, but this 23-Quart Pot is also a pressure cooker. We could easily make a pot of beans for a huge group of people in less than an hour or cook a whole chicken in under 40 minutes! We also heard it's the safest way to can tomatoes which was our main objective. We started by sorting our fantastic harvest of tomatoes by size and whether they had an blemishes.

We were really surprised by how beautifully round and picture perfect the Goliath variety was. The largest firmest tomatoes were saved, later sliced and dehydrated into little round disc that we reconstitute in broth or water for our spanish rice, soup and flavoring bases for just about anything.

All other tomatoes were then prepped to be skinned and prepared for stewing or tomato sauce.

We quickly dunked the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water. After 40 seconds most the skins would visibly split and we would scoop them out and immediately dunk them in a bowl of cold iced water. 5 seconds later the skins easily peel off. Half the tomatoes were cut into quarters for stewing and the other half were roughly chopped for tomato sauce.

We cooked the tomato sauce down for two hours and immediately poured the sauce into the canning jars.

The pressure canner had weights and gauges and initially seemed very scientific and dangerous, with the boiling pressurized air/water situation, so we didn't document watching the pressure build and maintaining the heat so the pressure remains within a certain zone for safe canning.

We can tell you the tomato sauce was alot sweeter than we imagined, the stewed tomatoes had a smokey kick due to some roasted jalapenos we added and we were able to capture a little bit of summer with ingredients grown in our own backyard or within biking distance. We think even our cat Cleo approved.

Summer Staycation, Part I

Spring started late and when summer started to show we were deep in wedding planning. With Portland's short summers, we were afraid we wouldn't get to enjoy much of it this year. We were completely wrong.

We like to stick close to home during the summer months, opting for vacations when the weather isn't so perfect. So on a random mid-weekday we decided to go be tourists in our own city, hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.

We had a couple things in mind, including a possible mid-afternoon cocktail at the top of this building, but we let the day unfold and ended up elsewhere.

Something we did plan on was to hit up two food carts we've been wanting to try. First was The Whole Bowl.

So healthy, so yummy. Wish we worked closer to one of their carts, it's exactly what a healthy lunch should be - filling and cheap. Everything was well executed from the texture to the beans and rice to the ripeness of the avocado. Only disappointment was the canned black olives. Another bonus was The Whole Bowl's cart concept - 1 item done well, an easy to decipher menu board and only 1 item served in only 2 sizes! Kudos to you Whole Bowl.

However, if we had known how filling it was, we might have taken it to go and gone a much unhealthier route and had a Hawaiin Loco Moco a couple of the other carts were selling. Hey, we're on a staycation, nothing healthy should be consumed!

One cart we did hit up that we wished was not only close to where we worked, but parked out front of our house was My Daddy's Sausage. Unlike the helpful, happy and well cared for Whole Bowl cart, this cart's menu was confusing, poorly displayed, had no prices listed and the girl was irritated we interrupted her game of Angry Birds to go fix us one of her Daddy's Laotian sausages. The minute she handed off the sausage we bolted for the riverfront and happily dug into this fantastic sausage.

The pork mixed with lemongrass, green onions and Laotian spices sausage was stellar. Topped with tangy green papaya, spicy mayo and a green chili salsa, it was delicious. We were now ready for a cooling cocktail and started walking back to where we locked our bikes when we spotted this beauty - Ono Shave Ice. Hawaiin Shaved Ice - Yes! Please!

We were looking for something refreshing and sweet and when we saw a father stop off for a simple snowconed shaped sweet for his daughter and when said daughter was handed a plastic flower boutique shaped cup with a mound of shaved ice covered in red syrup as big as her head, we were sold!

We ordered 1 Shaved Ice - Hawaiin Style with 3 flavors (Blue Hawaiin, Mango, and Guava). Hawaiin style includes topping the humungous pile of syruped shaved ice with adzuki beans, mochi bits, sweetened condensed milk and a scoop of ice cream. We opted for no ice cream, but everything else.

This thing was hard to share to say the least. We tried to alter 1 person holding and eating for 1 block and then the other person holding and eating for the next, but we soon just pulled off to the side and dug in.

Ono's shaved ice was so good we decided to forgo a trendy cocktail and instead met friends for happy hour at one of our favorite summer time patios at Bernie's Southern Bistro.

We enjoyed the summer sun and garden setting while sipping on Lynchburg Lemonades and Mojitos, snacking on cornmeal fried okra, deep fried pickles, buttermilk fried chicken salads and sweet potato fries. Ahhhh summertime.

Not yet in a food coma we decided to bike off our fried feast with a beer up the road at Prost, a German beer hall.

We contemplated getting something to eat at either the Mississippi Marketplace food cart pod connected to Prost or just order some German food from the bar, but we decided we wanted to continue snacking, so we hopped back on our bikes and headed for a late night of chips & salsa and some ping pong before heading home, not feeling full at all from a day of staycationing.

Little Big Burger

The name says it all. The menu board and pricing also says it all.

You can pretty much get a burger anywhere in Portland, but for $3.75 and it not be fast food?! We were skeptical so we thought we'd split one, but soon realized Little Big Burger's burgers are slider-sized burgers, so we opted for two cheese burgers (blue cheese and cheddar).

The quality of the ingredients from the meat to the bun to the cheese really made these little suckers fantastic! Winner!

Another winner were the fries. Yes even though they were fancy truffle fries (the only kind listed on the menu) they were starchy, salty and crispy potato goodness. For $10.25 we were able to grab a low-key snack on an otherwise spendy dining options part of town!

http://littlebigburger.com/