Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson!

The 23rd annual International Pinot Noir Celebration ended today with a whirlwind tasting panel at Park Kitchen. Jancis Robinson, the renowned author, educator and Master of Wine, was this year's IPNC host. She finished her weekend with the Oregon Wine Board tasting over fifty wines in less than three hours, judging their character and ageability.

Of course, pinot noir is Oregon's most celebrated wine, but the panel examined Chardonnay and Reisling as well. It was among the aged whites that I was most impressed. We tasted some surprising dry reislings from Amity 1988 and 89, and enjoyed Chehalem's 96 Reisling and 97 Chardonnay. With vintages spanning from 1979 to 2006, I have to say that after tasting little more than a dozen wines, I could only judge the quality of my intoxication! Indeed, it does take a professional to evaluate, or even be able to taste so many wines in one sitting.

Nocino, Midsummer's Day

It was five years ago that I tasted nocino for the first time, the Italian liqueur made from green walnuts. I was the sous-chef of an Italian restaurant in Portland, and we were buying salt and olive oil from Jim Dixon. He also makes his own nocino at home. It was rich and bittersweet, nutty, of course, but something dreamy, something full of mystery.

You'll find nocino throughout northern Italy, but it is still relatively unknown here in the States. I wanted to learn as much as I could about it, and make my own. As good fortune would have it, my neighbor across the street has a grand old walnut tree. I climbed into the branches with a basket, and after a few twists and scratches, had plenty of nuts to flavor some spirits.

The green walnuts are traditionally picked on the eve of the Festa di San Giovanni. This is Midsummer's Day, the 24th of June, and the time of year when the walnuts are starting to reach their full size, but have not yet started to harden. The shell and the nut inside the husk are still soft and white. I quartered the nuts, mixed them with sugar, some cloves, cinnamon sticks and lemon peel, then covered them with alcohol. According to the tradition, the mixture should be stored with exposure to sunlight for forty days, then filtered and drank deeply to honor the dead on All Soul's Day, November the 2nd (and throughout the winter months).

While I was researching different recipes, I noticed a trend. Many of the American recipes are pretty straightforward, simply covering the nuts, sugar and spices with vodka. The Italian recipes use grappa or grain alcohol. This facilitates a stronger flavor infusion, because of the higher alcohol content. Toward the end of the process, they add a simple syrup to dilute the proof of the liqueur and adjust the sweetness. I have certainly experienced the effectiveness of this method of infusion in the making of limoncello. Just to be sure, I made both recipes on the same day (St. John's Day, of course) to find out once and for all which renders the finer result.

For now, we wait. There will be a toast at my house on All Soul's Day. Come on over.

Let Them Eat Grass

A Home on the Range

This Sunday, the Park Kitchen team took a field trip just south of Scio, Oregon to meet our friend Joe Schueller at his ranch. Joe started Rainshadow el Rancho in 2001, and we have been buying pigs and rabbits from him since 2006. Joe has been working hard on a poultry processing plant for the last few years, and it is finally operational. We all wanted to take a closer look at his work on the ranch.

Joe keeps a diverse population on his ranch. He has a small herd of buffalo, a warren of rabbits, a few sheep, cornish hens, chickens and ducks (both layers and meat birds) and turkeys. During the construction of the processing plant, Joe's hogs have been raised on his neighbor, Claude's land. When they come back to Rainshadow, they will rotate on the pasture with the other animals. He has over 140 acres of pasture, and this is the primary diet of his animals. During our tour, Joe mentioned the writings of Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms, author of "Pastured Poultry Profits," as an inspiration to his own model of pasture raised farming.

There are a number of hatchling coops near the house. They stay under the lamps for the first three weeks before they go into the pasture. Then the chickens and ducks live in portable huts that are moved every day, so the animals have fresh grazing, and the manure is evenly dispursed. The animals are rotated in the pasture as well. The chickens will eat the bugs out of the manure of the larger animals and help to break it down, layering the nutrients in the soil. Once the soil is healthy, the environment is favorable for the growth of nutritious legumes like clover and lupine, dandelions and bluegrasses. This is the lifeline of the pasture. Once this harmonic balance is achieved, just letting the animals graze naturally perpetuates the pasture, which minimizes the cost of nutrient grain feeds, antibiotics to combat illness and malnutrition, and drugs to accelerate growth and weight gain.

The laying hens and turkeys have a more permanent residence, grazing under Joe's orchards of apple, cherry, plum and asian pear. The birds seem very happy there. Their eggs are delicious, and a bargain at $5 per dozen. This year will be the first for his Black Star chicken layers and Ancona duck layers. I'm looking forward to his first year of duck eggs and meat birds.

If you build it, they will come.

Joe began building the poultry processing plant on his ranch after twenty years in construction contracting. Joe said this was one of the most difficult projects of his life, in large part due to the difficulties of securing skilled workers for a small, rural project. After $600,000 worth of headaches and more than three years of work, Joe can process his own chickens, ducks, turkeys, game birds, and rabbits. Small growers and distant neighbors can bring their animals for custom processing as well. Today, small processing plants (less than five hundred head per day) are increasingly rare, but a great asset to everyone in the area.

This is Joe's wife, Karen in the doorway of their processing plant. The first room contains the funnels seen here for bleeding, as well as the scalder and plucker machines for poultry. When we were here, Joe had not yet acquired the wax tank for duck processing.

The poultry enters the cleaning room through a chute from the centrifugal plucker. The hangers hold the poultry by the head and feet, and the belt turns around the processing table. Then they enter the chill room, followed by bagging, weighing and freezing (unless they will be shipped fresh). With the plant running at 40% capacity, Joe said the electricity bill is about $450 per month. The economics of the small processing plant are challenging, but they cover the real cost of processing meats. Unlike their large scale competitor, the CAFO infrastructure is usually funded with tax dollars, and so is the waste treatment. Guys like Joe aren't using your tax money to sweep costs under the rug.

An Exceptional Breed

Joe has been raising rabbits, and they have always been outstanding. After a suggestion from a friend at OSU about cross-breeding, they have become the finest rabbits in Oregon. By cross-breeding three commercial breeds (Californian, Satin, and New Zealand), he has cultivated a rabbit that has good weight gain and a finer bone structure, which means a meatier rabbit that costs less than most of the competition. You can see the dressed weight written on these rabbits are all over 3 1/2 pounds! As with most of Joe's products, quality is high and prices are competitive.

The mighty buffalo roam in their own pastures. This is an entirely different scale of animal. There is about one bull for every ten cows, and right now Joe has a bull near 2,000 pounds! The average buffalo weighs about 1,200 pounds and dresses out to about 600 pounds of meat. It's nice to see the buffalo returning to American pastures. It's a rare sight, but Joe has a rare vision, and it's exciting to watch him bring it to life.

One Dinner, Four Kuramoto

For several years now, I have been sharing my passion for sake by hosting special dinners and pairing sake with my cooking. After travelling in Japan and meeting sake professionals, I have the privilege of bringing special guests to these events to share their enthusiasm and their stories of the trials and tribulations of the craft of brewing sake.

This year, I had the good fortune of hosting four kuramoto at my Spring kaiseki dinner. The kuramoto is the president of a sake brewery, and in some cases (especially among smaller breweries) the president is also the toji, or brewmaster. Each of the kuramoto were visiting from a different prefecture, so I thought it would be exciting for the diners to taste the junmai ginjo from each of the breweries. For the unfamiliar, junmai ginjo is a description of how the sake is brewed, using only water, koji, yeast, and rice which has been polished of its outer forty percent to remove impurities. With all other things being equal, our guests could judge the nuances in the art of sake brewing from different regions.

The meal began with a sake from Akita Prefecture in Northern Japan. Kotaro Saito is the fifth generation kuramoto of Saiya Shuzo, the makers of Yuki no Bosha. This sake is a yeasty, full flavored junmai, rich and floral with hints of apricot and white pepper. The brewery uses Akita Komachi rice, and the toji uses a blend of their own cultivated yeasts and the yamahai method to develop its flavor. I chose to pair it with a salad of hato mugi (a Japanese barley), asparagus and rabbit loin, dressed with white miso and garnished with rosemary blossoms and burnet from my garden. The idea behind the pairing was to accent the yeasts with the barley and white miso. The fruitiness of the sake was complemented by some persimmon preserves I had made in the fall, and the peppery notes were supported by the rosemary blossoms.

For the next course, my good friend Taka Yamauchi poured his Watari Bune 55. Yamauchi-san is the seventh generation kuramoto as well as the toji of Huchu Homare Shuzo. Watari Bune is named after the heirloom rice used to brew it, the father strain of Yamada Nishiki, the most celebrated sake rice. This variety of rice was once widely grown in Ibaraki Prefecture. Because it is a tall rice, it is susceptible to typhoons, and it is also a late harvest crop, making it more vulnerable to insects. It gradually fell out of favor. Because Yamauchi-san wanted to use locally grown rice, he was advised that Watari Bune was a quality sake rice. He found the rice under preservation at the Ministry of Agriculture's National Research Institute. He was able to secure a 14 gram sample of seed. After three years of harvest, he was able to create the first Watari Bune sake in over fifty years, and it does have a distinct flavor worthy of his efforts. Portland is well acquainted with "the fifty five," it's largest consumer outside of Japan. This is one of my favorite sake. It is full flavored, nutty and earthy, yet it has hints of tropical fruits. Very layered, so I decided to pair it with many layers of umami, a miso marinated scallop baked and served on a nettle puree with a salad of seaweeds and mushrooms. Omoshiroi desu ne!

Ms. Miho Fujita joined us for her first visit to the United States. She is the kuramoto of Mioya Shuzo in Ishikawa Prefecture. This region is distinguished by its rich yamahai's, but the style at Mioya is completely sokujo. For their junmai ginjo, the toji, Yokomichi-san uses Gohyaku Mangoku rice to inoculate the koji, and the local Noto Hikari rice for the shubo. This sake is called Yuho, which means "happy rice." It is complex for its soft and silky texture, with a finish of herbs and flowers, a subtle nigami (bitterness) and umami.

I had been thinking of a shellfish dish, so I paired razor clams and hokki gai (surf clams), briefly poached in a court bouillon, thinly sliced and presented with fava beans, red celery and hakurei turnips. Again, I took advantage of my garden lilacs, picking the flowers and making a light infusion with the poaching liquid. Then I made a mousse-like lilac pillow (gelatin sponge) for the salad to rest on. The sweetness of the shellfish and the shibumi (astringency) of the flowers matched the sake perfectly. I ended up liking this dish enough to put it on the spring menu at Park Kitchen.

The final course was served with Chikurin Karoyaka (lightness) from Okayama Prefecture. Niichiro Marumoto is the kuramoto and toji of Marumoto Shuzo. As if this was not enough, he also grows his own rice, and he is the first and only USDA certified organic sake producer in Japan (as of 2009). In this picture, Marumoto-san displays his yamada nishiki rice. His sake is very elegant, with a slight effervescence reminiscent of champagne, the flavor of cherries and a mellow finish. Marumoto-san uses a technique very similar to the solera system used to make sherry. He blends some of the previous years sake with the new brew, which adds richness and body. I wanted to pair it with a rich fish and a bright, acidic accompaniment. I have been poaching black cod in olive oil this spring, so I paired it with onigiri (pressed rice) studded with pickled radish, a sauce of rhubarb, and a salad of peas and their tendrils. Marumoto-san is a purist at times, and I knew I was taking a chance by serving fish and rhubarb with his sake, but even he seemed to like the pairing.

The dinner concluded with cheers and fellowship, and the four kuramoto had a chance to meet a new and growing audience of sake drinkers in Portland. Many thanks are due to Marcus Pakiser, the sake sommelier for Columbia Distributing. It is his expertise and understanding of sake which has expanded our sake market in Portland. Kanpai, Marcus!

Farewell, Sweet Rapini

With only a few weeks of spring left, and fewer rainclouds on the horizon, we bid farewell to the wonderful Northwest crop of rapini. It's a little strange to be writing about food that we won't see again for another year, but this year it has caught my attention how much misunderstanding there is about this vegetable. I've seen articles published in newspapers and on blogs, as well as a few very respectable books, which all fail to identify what this mysterious vegetable actually is.

Here in the Northwest, we have a shorter growing season than California and many of the southern states. Spring comes very late up here. We don't see the first local sweet peas or favas until it's nearly summer. Instead, we have rapini. Down in California, they don't see a lot of rapini. They don't have to wait for it. By Groundhog Day, they can be planting full fields of crops for spring. Up north, it doesn't matter if you plant your spring crops in February or early March. They aren't going to grow, because there just isn't enough sunlight! If you do plant, the growth is so slow that the crops you plant a month later will actually catch up to them.

So what can you grow? Brassicas that have been harvested throughout the winter are a great source of food from Groundhog Day until the Vernal Equinox. Brussels sprouts and kale, cabbages, collards and turnips; most of the vegetables in the family have a large root stalk. After they are harvested, the plant will continue to send energy up through the root stalk, creating budding sprouts that we call rapini.

These shoots come at different times, depending on the plant. Brussels sprouts have an early sweetness, while some of the cabbages and collards are the last to develop good flavor. They have varying colors and leaf shapes, also depending on the plant. There are deep red shoots from red kales and cabbages, pale green from brussels and turnips, and dark green from cavolo nero and other dark kales. (The photo above shows three different varieties). These crops are enormously popular in Italian and Chinese cuisine, which places a higher value on bitter flavors.

Don't be mistaken into thinking that these are some mysterious cousin of the turnip, or a variety of gai-lan or broccolini. They are all brassica shoots (There is one exception you may see in the grocery store, and that is broccolini. It is actually a cross between broccoli and chinese gai-lan. It resembles rapini, but is not cultivated in the same way). Whatever variety you may buy, they will all have small florets with different leaf shapes surrounding the tips, and thin stalks. The quality can usually be judged by the tenderness at the base of the stalk. Shoots that have been cut too late or long ago will be fibrous and woody instead of tender and bittersweet. I'll be looking forward to them again next year.

Intellectual Property

Park Kitchen was recently contacted by a lawyer inquiring about legislating the creativity of cooking, to protect the intellectual property of chefs. As laughable as this may seem, it already exists at many levels regarding processes and labeling, but the idea of extending the law to include recipes seems like a litigious nightmare. Who will be the lucky person to own the rights to hollandaise, and how long will it take to encompass the rights to making butter or bacon? Once the process begins, how long will it take to include the protection of ingredients?

I am about to take a vacation to the Great Lakes area and experience the culinary creations of the creative chefs cooking there. Chicago is one of America's capitals of molecular gastronomy, in which chef's take food sciences and apply them to fanciful restaurant creations. Some of these processes are protected by law, such as Homaro Cantu's edible paper at Moto. The chef has used food based inks and printed them on starch based papers, so that you can eat the menu. Chef Cantu also requires his cooks to sign a confidentiality contract to protect his ideas.

This kind of protection through secrecy is moving from a traditional to a more legislated phenomenon. In the old days, the means by which a chef created his masterpiece was part of the wonder, sometimes speculated or imitated by contemporaries. This trend toward intellectual property has already taken a dark turn in the U.S. Patent Office, and should serve as a warning to what is possible. Consider the 1980 case "Diamond vs. Chakrabarty," in which a scientist working for General Electric submitted a patent on a bacterial microbe that could act as a detergent to help clean up oil spills. Of course, at that time, living things could not be patented, but the decision was reversed, and has opened the flood gates of patenting every living function on the planet. Today's companies can capture the rights to life ranging from human genomes to genetically modified plant seed, the raw ingredients of life! Chicken bones are patented as a treatment for arthritis! Where do we draw the line between the intellectual property of God and man?

Easter Eggs from the Chicken Bus

The Delicious Eggs of Big Table Farm

Our friends Brian Marcy and Clare Carver moved from Napa Valley to the upper Willamette Valley with barn full of ideas. Brian is a craftsman of all kinds, from winemaker to welder, carpenter and inventor. Clare is the keeper of their many farm animals, several hogs, cows, horses, goats and chickens. We were invited to Easter supper at their farm this year, and as fate would have it, we would be delivering a special parcel. Gatherings at their home are frequent and generous, the source of their name, Big Table Farm.

Clare called on Saturday to tell us about her situation. There had been some mistake with the delivery of her spring chicks. They were stranded at the airport. We agreed to pick up this chirping box of cluckery and bring it with us for supper. As unlikely and amazing as it may sound, newborn chicks are packed tightly together and shipped by mail to their faraway destinations from the hatchery. These day old chicks were ordered from one of the best known, Murray McMurray's, and the chicks emerge from their shells fortified with enough nutrients to survive the shipping without food or water. Again, this is amazing. Clementine helps Clare watch over the young chicks until they are old enough to join the flock.

With parcel in tow, we head to Gaston, where Brian and Clare have purchased about 40 acres of hillside and forest. These little chicks will replenish their flock in the cycle of brooding and culling. Clare maintains a flock of about one hundred hens, keeping two or three roosters around to protect the ladies from their predators. She likes to have a variety of breeds, with different plumage, and laying eggs of different colors and sizes. When pressed to choose her favorite four, she named the Buff Orpington, Black Australorp, the Araucana and the Delaware, which are generally well-behaved, with beautiful and diverse feathers and eggs.

When Clare and Brian lived in Napa, they kept chickens in the city for four years, so they had a good idea of what kind of a coop they wanted for Big Table Farm. Brian designed and constructed the chicken bus from scrap metal and mounted it on trailer wheels. In fact, all of the animal huts on the farm are portable. The bottom of the bus is metal grating, so the chicken manure just falls right through, and they move the bus twice a month, so the hens can pasture freely over their farm.

The eggs from Big Table Farm are particularly delicious, and the reason is their diet. The hens enjoy many acres of fresh pasture, and their diet is supplemented with an all-organic feed, which is considerably more expensive than conventional feed. Clare is working with other farmers in the Willamette Valley towards a local organic feed co-op, an enormous project which would take years to establish. Clare believes more people could afford to use organic feed if transportation costs could be reduced, and many others agree with her. Inspired by the writings of Joel Salatin (featured in Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma") and others in the Stockman Grass Farmer, a journal of grassland agriculture, the farms of Willamette Valley will pursue the idea that with the right environment, animals can be raised naturally, healthy and profitably.

The Secret of the Magic Egg

When Clare delivers eggs to the restaurant, each one is lovingly dated in pencil, and sell for the bargain price of $5 per dozen. When you crack open an egg, it tells you it's whole story. The firmness of the albumen tells you how fresh it is, and the darkness of the yolk tells you what the chicken was eating (eggs at the grocery store can legally be on the shelf for up to two months). It is more difficult to peel very fresh, hard-boiled eggs, because very little of the albumen has evaporated, and it grips very tightly to the shell. Boiling the eggs in very salted water helps to dissolve the skin under the shell. Clare didn't believe me until she tried this for herself.

At the restaurant, I have been using her eggs for a salad of braised leeks dressed with a dijon vinaigrette, and placed on a sauce of nettle puree. The eggs are cooked for seven and a half minutes in boiling salted water, then drained and cooled in ice water before peeling. I quarter the eggs, and the yolk is still creamy inside. Lay the egg wedges against the leek and sprinkle with breadcrumbs (we use rye) and duck hams, made from a short-cured tenderloin.

Another egg dish I have used recently with Big Table Farm eggs is a technique I saw in Milan, Italy, at the restaurant of Carlo Cracco. Like myself, Mr. Cracco has spent some time in Japan and has brought inspiring techniques back with him. There is an izakaya tradition of fermenting egg yolks in a mixture of miso and mirin for a few hours. The exterior of the yolk becomes firm, and encapsulates a still fluid, although cured interior, which flows out once it is cut. The richness of the yolks from Clare's hens make this a delicacy.

Begin by making a puree of cooked beans, salt and sugar, and lay the egg yolks in the mixture. They will float because of the high specific gravity of the puree, so after about three hours, you must lovingly roll the egg yolks over, to cure the other side. After another two hours, the eggs are ready. You can also leave the yolks in the mixture overnight to cure them all the way through, and then dehydrate them until they are firm enough to grate with a microplane, as you would bottarga!!

This dish has been on the Park Kitchen menu as the "magic egg," and a winter version of it was used at the Oregon Truffle Festival in Eugene in January. The whites are separated from the yolks, then the whites are passed through a sieve to break up the albumen, then cooked into individual "omelettes." The yolks are cured as described, then the omelette is garnished with the yolk, and a salad of steamed cauliflower, croutons, black truffles, rabbit loin and parsley, inspired by the "a la Polonaise," preparations of French cuisine. Truffles and dehydrated eggs are grated over the top to complete the dish.