Tete de Moine

Of the many outstanding Swiss cheeses, there is a special place in my heart for the Tete de Moine. Typically, mountain cheeses are made in large wheels of twelve pounds or more. The Tete de Moine is a small wheel, less than two pounds, made of raw cow's milk, and typically aged two to three months. It's name means "monk's head," and refers to the cheese's resemblance to the shorn heads of the abbey brethren after the first slice has been removed. Today, it is produced by cooperatives surrounding the town of Bellelay, and is sometimes called by that name.

The Swiss have a penchant for gadgetry, which is probably why I am so fond of their customs and traditions. A devise called a girolle is used specifically to cut this cheese into beautiful, thin ruffles. The cheese has a sharp and intense flavor, quite nutty and salty, with sweet fruity notes, so these light curls of cheese are an appropriate means of approaching it without being overwhelmed. I thought this unique appearance would be the perfect way to start serving a composed cheese plate.

Taking advantage of the early spring shoots and wild herbs, I thought it would be fun to imitate the mountain pastures where this cheese originated. The base of the dish is made of crumbled honey walnut cake, which is then covered with an assortment of foraged greens, wood sorrel, lemon balm, watercress, wood violets, miner's lettuces, and dressed with a sherry walnut vinaigrette. A few florets of cow's milk cheese and some fried strips of salsify for crunch, and a pastoral pleasure is ready to serve.

Vegetables for Dessert

For several years now, it has been my mission to make the desserts at Park Kitchen a natural extension of a vegetable focused menu. At first, this meant that instead of using tropical fruits in my desserts, as many restaurants do, I would utilize the natural sugars of the vegetable kingdom instead. You won't find pineapple and banana on my menu, but you might find beets, fennel, carrots, parsnips, or even sweet peas. As this repertoire developed, and I established a relationship with this new flavor spectrum, I gradually began decreasing the amount of sugar in my dessert recipes, and began adding salt!

I've never had much of a sweet tooth. I don't regard sugar as a flavor of it's own, and I think too much sugar tends to hide the natural flavor of other ingredients. I found that adding salt enhances not only the natural flavors, but also the perception of sweetness, without actually adding more sugar. Most people have experienced an extreme of this in salted caramels, something that has an awful lot of sugar in it, but the salt brings out the richness of caramelization. A salted caramel seems more satisfying because it's not just sweetness we taste anymore.
Now, I can focus on bringing these elements together in pleasing varieties of texture and temperature. This chocolate cake is served with a frozen parsnip custard, which is covered with a warm roasted white chocolate ganache, and sliced parsnips that have been poached in milk and honey. Roasted white chocolate tastes like dulce de leche, with all the caramelization and only half the sugar. It makes a nice bridge for the creamy parsnips and the rich dark chocolate. The alternating layers of warm and cold are refreshing and surprising.

Curds and Whey

It is always exciting to use culinary classics as the source of inspiration for a dish. For several years, I wanted to use the traditional Italian maiale al latte as a starting point for a spring pork entree. Pork is braised in milk, which provides the dual effect of tenderizing the pork by means of its lactic acid, and rendering the curds from the whey, with the addition of rich, caramelized meatiness. Delicious to be sure, but a sore sight of dark brown curds loose and floating in whey.

For the Park Kitchen version, we strain the curds and form them into gnudi, or dumplings bound with flour and eggs, and softened with some fresh cheese. The whey, which is so rich with umami, is lightened with a puree of leeks and scallions, giving it an emerald green hue. Leek is the primary accompaniment, tender slices of the white portion, the green being pureed, but also used as a garnish. Drawing further inspiration from European traditions, the leeks are charred on the grill, reminiscent of the calcotada festivals of spring, and the ash is then used as a sort of vinaigrette, while the inner portion is made into chips, which I call onion glass. The pork is exceedingly tender, although in cuts like the loin and leg, it is still moist and pink, which for some tragic reason, most Americans are not prepared to enjoy. I highly recommend venturing out. Although it is marketed as "the other white meat," it is classified as livestock, which is always red meat, and indeed, good pork is never white.




As for the Milk Itself

I've recently started buying Holstein cow's milk from Noris Dairy, which does not homogenize their milk, a procedure long known to cause digestive problems. It is distributed by a cooperative company called Eat Oregon First, which supply everything from local meats and seafood, to grains, dairy and produce. Their emergence into the Portland market is helping to bring small producers to a wider audience.

Discovering the Virtues of White Chocolate

White chocolate is a relatively new confection, first produced in the early twentieth century. I have never felt like it had much of a repertoire. Lacking cocoa mass or cocoa liquor, it has also seemed lacking in character to me. It also lacks the rich aroma of dark chocolate, usually being deodorized because its natural scent is considered too strong and undesirable. Having been stripped of so many of its best qualities, it has taken years for me to take interest in white chocolate.

White chocolate must contain a minimum of 20 percent cocoa butter, but I usually require about 30 percent to achieve the results I prefer. It must contain no more than 55 percent sugar, or other sweeteners. There are many cheap white chocolates on the market, which have tarnished its reputation, but the key to using white chocolate effectively is by controlling the ratio of cocoa butter and sugar to bring out qualities you like.

One of my favorite ways to bring depth of flavor to white chocolate is by roasting it at 250 degrees for about 10 minutes. The cocoa butter caramelizes, and the resulting flavor is like dulce de leche, but less sweet. At that point, it can become a ganache, an ice cream, a powder, a frosting, or grated over other components.

Another useful characteristic of white chocolate and cocoa butter is its high melting point. For example, you could use olive oil as a solid at room temperature by melting it with a small percentage of cocoa butter, and then watch it thicken as it cools. This allows you to create textures that wouldn't be possible at certain temperatures.

I will soon be able to get white chocolate through Classic Foods that has not been deodorized. By also using high fat white chocolate, I have found some ways to make white chocolate interesting by extending it's normal boundaries of fat and aroma. More to come...

The Future of Fresh Fish

Several weeks ago, Scott and I met with Rick Goche, a local fisherman with a family business centered in Coquille, Oregon, near Coos Bay. He has fished albacore and salmon for over twenty years. Since the salmon fishing has become increasingly restricted in Oregon and California in recent years, he is very concerned about maintaining quality with the albacore catch. We were very pleased last year when Provvista Specialty Foods started carrying Rick's albacore loins quick-frozen in vacuum bags. Why would we be excited about frozen fish, you might wonder? Let me explain.

Ever since I moved to Portland in 2002, I have been confounded by the seafood supply here. I was dazzled by our abundance of remarkable farm produce, orchards, vineyards and ranchers raising everything from rabbits and lamb, to beef cattle and buffalo. Yet here, a mere eighty miles from the Pacific Ocean, there was a bleak supply of fresh seafood. Year round, we all see the same limited supply of salmon, halibut and Yellowfin tuna. Yet these are not fished year round, and rarely from local waters, unless Alaska and Hawaii are to be included in our locale. Most people, especially sushi lovers, don't realize that they have been purchasing previously frozen fish for years.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In the world's largest fish market, where a single Yellowfin tuna can average over $30,000 (a new record set in January was $396,000 for an enormous Bluefin tuna), the frozen-at-sea trade is by far the largest and most consistent was to maintain quality. When a single fish can fetch that much money, you'd better believe they are going to protect their investment. Despite our romatic notions of a fish that has just been pulled from the ocean waters, pristine red gills and deep clear eyes, what more often happens is that it takes a day or two before that "fresh fish" even makes it to the market in Portland. But why? It's not just the ninety minute drive from the coast!

In today's world, seafood can only be considered in the global market. Unfortunately, what this means is that if the currency exchange is better in Asia, they will likely buy most of our Dungeness Crab, or if the demand for salmon and king crab is greater in Japan than it is in America, they will buy most of Alaska'a catch, as they have for decades. Portland is not a big city, and it is not a coastal city. It is much easier to deliver large quantities of seafood to San Francisco or Seattle or Vancouver, and that is often what happens.

This problem is compounded by the ignorance of the consumer. If you go to the fish counter of Whole Foods or New Seasons, you will find far more seafood from the Atlantic than the Pacific Ocean, if they even bother to label its source. For all of these reasons, the question you should ask when buying "fresh fish" should be how well has it been handled in its fresh and highly perishable, highly vulnerable state. Is it better than that of seafood that has been frozen at the peak of its freshness, and delivered with no further handling damage to its final destination?

Back to our meeting with Rick. Rick is working with Provvista to be proactive about seafood. They are gathering quotes from restaurants to determine how much albacore they might buy this summer. Most of Rick's albacore is canned by his company, Sacred Sea. This is a high quality product, but we'd like to get more fish in the raw. Whether we can get it fresh or frozen, we are trying to find a way to keep the quality high, even when the supply is low. I have a feeling that the marketing stigma of frozen fish is going to change in the next few years, and where seafood is concerned, the handling of the product from the ocean to the kitchen will have to be better understood by the consumers.

The Jerusalem Artichoke, a Troubling Misnomer

From Thanksgiving to Easter, these delicious tubers are waiting to be discovered by many hungry Americans. Delicious as it is, Helianthus tuberosus suffers from an image problem that has lingered for four hundred years, a bad name. If there is a reason more people aren't cooking them, it can only be the ridiculous name Jerusalem artichoke. Being neither from Jerusalem, or in the family of artichokes, or having a "choke" of any kind, this is the name most often used. Centuries ago, when this plant first arrived in Europe from its native soils of North America, it spread in popularity, especially in Italy and France. The Italians called it girasole, meaning sunflower. After all, helianthus is a wild sunflower with edible tubers produced in its root stalks. Sometimes, the plant was called girasole articiocco, an archaic word for artichoke, whose taste it resembled.

When the Jerusalem artichoke was introduced to England, the British felt the need to "correct" the name from girasole (gee-rah-so-lay) to "Jerusalem." That name spread throughout the English speaking world, and back to its native land, where it has been called Jerusalem artichoke for centuries. The French made the same mistake, naming the tubers topinambour, after the Brazilian Indians, the Topinambas, who had never even seen the plant. Gratefully, after all these years, the name is changing. I call them sunchokes, and this is a name that chefs are using more and more often. Perhaps the better name would be sunroot, if only people knew what you were talking about!

Whatever you call them, grow them, cook with them, eat them. They are a very productive plant, needing little care, producing a pretty summer flower and a delicious winter food. Like potatoes, there are many varieties that all cook slightly differently. There are red skins and brown skins. The globular, protuberant Stampede is an early harvest variety, while the more tubular Fuseau varieties are somewhat easier to use. They are starchy with a nutty, even mushroomy flavor to me, and a touch of sweetness. Also like potatoes, they make marvelous fried chips, they can be baked or roasted or poached. Sunchokes are delicious with simple accompaniments like nut dressings or salsas. On the menu at Park Kitchen right now, we have one of our simplest soups. We roast them with their skins on, and puree them with vegetable stock and olive oil, then pass the puree through a fine sieve. The soup is rich and creamy, complimented with honey poached pears and hazelnut crumble.

Incredible Ice

Ice cubes don't normally catch my attention. A few years ago, I was in a shochu bar in Japan with my boss, and we were served some mugi shochu on the rocks. I guess I should say, on the rock!! Glistening in our highballs was a single, perfect cube of ice, chilling the shochu and only slowly melting into it. We were very impressed. At the end of our meal, we ordered a whisky, which this time was served with a perfect sphere of ice. This is exactly the kind of thing we like to take away from our culinary trips and bring back to our own restaurant.


We found the clever plastic molds they use to make these show-stoppers. Since then, Portland bartenders have continued to impress me with their innovative ice. This time, it is by incorporating flavors into the ice that become released into the drink as they melt. Laurelhurst Market's bartender, Evan Zimmerman, has a cocktail with smoked ice cubes melting into Tennessee whisky and sherry. Beaker and Flask owner, Kevin Ludwig had a clever coconut milk ice cube melting into tropical splendor. Next time you're making cocktails at home, don't overlook the ice.