Doing the airport shuffle

Well the good news is I am on my way! Talk about making it hard to get to Australia! And to top is all off a HUGE storm was brewing in San Antonio today just as I was about to leave on my rebooked journey, so I asked Jo to take me to the airport early (I didn't want her driving in hail) which meant that I could beg my way onto an even earlier flight in the hopes it would get out before the storm. I was partially successful in that I got on the earlier flight, but not so lucky with the storm, which was basically in top of us as we were leaving San Antonio. Pilot told us it was going to be bumpy, and I was surprisingly relaxed (I am not a super good flyer...) Well, about 2 mins out of San Antonio and still climbing THE PLANE WAS HIT BY LIGHTNING!! Wham bam thank you storm! Long story short of course it was fine, and I didn't even freak out much. It was bright and very loud but I kept thinking Faraday cages and static dispersal and comforting things like that. I did, however, order a whiskey...straight up.

Now I am in LAX, bags checked and boarding pass to Melbourne in my freezing little hands. Yay for free wireless so I'm playing wow to pass the 5 or so hours I need to kill here. Still better to be waiting here than in some other airport watching the departure time getting later and later. All going well I'll arrive in Tassie a few hours before the wedding, so time to shower and have a coffee. Dress code is glamorous but at this point I'm shooting for awake and standing!

...or not zoom zoom

Well, I'm not in LAX miserably waiting for a flight because I never left San Antonio thanks to nasty weather in Dallas! After 2 hours on hold with various airlines and much gnashing and wailing I realised there was no point taking a very delayed flight to LA only to spend the night there because every flight to Australia (I even tried Brisbane) would already have left!

So I have rebooked all my flights and connections (lets not even talk $s) and I now arrive on the same flight at the same time, just one &#%$ day later. I don't think I'm going to miss the wedding but it'll be close and I am going to be stupidly tired.

Least I get a bonus night home with my Presh, and I don't have to fly around tornados, which is always a bonus.

Zoom Zoom

I'm leaving in a few hours for the Mega-solo Oz tour. I'm not sure if my Australian mobile or SIM will work yet so at this point, if you want to get hold of me, shoot me an email. I will have my US phone on but cost-wise it is emergency use only.

Twenty-four nights away from the Beloved and Tuesday is going to be a little rough on both of us, but we'd done worse I guess. Always hardest to be the one left behind, but I could really use her planning skills at this point!

Anyhow, looking forward to seeing thems of you that I get a chance to see. Bring on some clean air and good Aussie food!

Short and sweet

A few random updates:

# Dad is finally home and recovering in his own environment which can only be a bonus.

# After a week of torrential rain and freezing temperatures San Antonio has returned to the blissfully bright, hot and mostly dry spring that we love so much. Only bugger is the billion oak trees are beginning to spew their toxic pollen so we are all too itchy and bleary eyed to enjoy the glory that is spring in Texas.

# I am officially a twit... Yep, I joined twitter so that I could talk more about food. Yes, it is possible! I also made some changes to the blog including a sexy new tag cloud for handy post sorting and a twitter feed widget thing that will probably let you know what I'm cooking or eating at any given moment. Thrilling huh? Feel free to follow me, or not.

# I leave for Australia in about 5 days and I am completely unprepared! A three week trip without the puffy version of my beloved is going to be hard! This trip is multipurpose, family, wedding (not ours - clearly since I will be solo), work, (food), conference and something else important... oh yeah, my visa interview (which they already changed on me once forcing a rebooking of flights). Email me if you want to try and hook up - I'll be appearing (briefly) in most states.

# The preggersaurus is well, as is the little chew-chew. He has taken to kicking when I talk to him and managed to clock me in the nose yesterday after I politely inquired as to why he hadn't been jigging much that day. Picture attached for all those who still think we're pulling your leg with the impending kidlet thing.

Evella and Jacwabbit Blogoff #1 - Kimchi!

So as I mentioned previously, my friend Gabe and I decided to do some blog crossover cooking and for our first blogoff we chose to take on Kimchi. Make sure you check out the Evella half of this blogoff as well. Kimchi is a kind of Korean pickle, usually involving cabbage, chili and fermentation... but there are a lot of variations on this theme.

I had never made kimchi before but I'd had such a huge hankering to try, especially after the Tanuki experience (and the fact that I've been on a bit of a pickling roll lately) . I decided to use a combination of a recipe from pyongyang metro and another from Tigers and Strawberries. I actually did this battle royale in two stages; I made a practice kimchi with radish, turnip and mustard greens because I had no cabbage but I'll only cover the real deal this time.

Napa cabbage or wom bok

Firstly I took one large napa cabbage (we'd call in wom bok in Australia, or baechu in Korea). The good ones are heavy but without soggy leaves or thick stems. I stripped off the outer leaves, cut it into quarters and washed the leaves very thoroughly. Kimchi involves fermentation and I was planning to ferment mine for at least 2 days unrefrigerated, so the most important thing was to make sure everything was clean. I had already cleaned down the kitchen like the good little microbiology major that I am. Once the cabbage was washed I cut it down into strips, about an inch across.

Next step was the salting of the cabbage leaves. Again this kills off all the bad bacteria but hopefully leaving only the useful lactic acid producing bacillus. I used a big ziplock bag, took a handful of salt and and couple of handfuls of cabbage and mixed them well, kind of rubbing the salt into the leaves with a bit of a kneading motion. Repeat with the rest. Then I removed the air from the bag and left it to brine for about three to four hours, mixing it every hour or so. Then it was into the strainer for many many rinses to remove as much of the surface salt as possible. The cabbage was delicious at this point! Soft but still a little crunchy and saltily delicious. Bad Jac no snacking on the job!

Brined and rinsed cabbage

While the cabbage was rinsing I put together the rest of the ingredients. I decided to use a bunch of radishes, a bunch of spring onions, a few cloves of garlic, a thumb sized piece of ginger, about 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1/4 cup of sugar and the most important ingredient, Korean chili powder! This stuff is a lovely bright red but not too spicy so I threw in about half a cup, maybe more. I found it at our local Asian grocer.

The kimchi ingredients

I simply ran the garlic, ginger and soy sauce through the food processor. Then thinly sliced the spring onions and radishes.

Spring onion and gorgeous fresh radishes

Then threw all the vegetables into a mixing bowl...

This pic was too pretty not to include it

Then I added the garlic mush-mush, the sugar and the chili powder and mixed the whole thing up with my hands. And of course I wore gloves!!

I mixed this for quite a while to make sure it was well distributed

At this point I decided to throw in the secret ingredient...a little extra heat. My practice run with the first batch taught me one thing and that was needs more heat! The Korean chili powder tastes good but it just doesn't have the fire that I like. So I threw in a couple of heaping spoons of good old sambal oelek.

For when you really like it hot

From there I pressed the kimchi mix down into a very clean tupperware container, getting rid of most of the air bubbles, put the lid on and let it sit on the kitchen bench for 2 and a bit days. I considered it done when I could see bubbles forming and rising to the surface.

Pre-fermented kimchi looks a lot like fermented kimchi

Finished product is fabulous! Much better than my practice round and I definitely like it more with cabbage. It doesn't smell too funky, lots of garlic in front but the rest is all kimchi, and the heat is really satisfying, especially with cooling radish and cabbage in there.

So what do you do with kimchi? Well really it is a side dish or ingredient for soups, stirfries etc. To celebrate this batch I decided to make Tanuki inspired kimchi chahan (fried rice). No great detail for the recipe here but the ingredients included lap chong (chinese sweet sausage), fresh and dried shitake, bamboo, spring onion, garlic, asparagus, pea shoots and egg. I used a soy/sweet sherry seasoning on the rice.


I make the scrambled egg separately and run it through the rice at the end, but to give it some more grunt I mix a few dashes of chili sesame oil through the egg.


I use a short grain rice and mix it through, along with the soy seasoning, just after the last greens have gone in.

Wok on baby

Finished product is the fried rice. topped with kimchi and spring onion. Mix the whole thing up just before eating and hey presto, you're enjoying kimchi! Make sure you check out Evella's half of the blogoff as well!

Fried rice with kimchi

Good news and fun stuff

Howdy peeps. Good news on the surgery front - Dad's histo reports came back showing clear lymph nodes and the margins of the tumor show that they got it all. He's recovering really well and even managed to avoid the day four blues (anesthetic leaves the system at about the same time they cut the morphine - bastards).  Thanks for all the well wishes, they have and will continue to be passed on.

We sat down to a real pickle tasting last night and I was fairly satisfied with the final results. The cumquat pickles are divine and I highly recommend that recipe to anyone who has spare fruit. They can be used in place of preserved lemons, but because they are not as salty they can also be eaten alone, as a palate cleanser or with a cheeseplate/ploughman's.

Homemade pickles: Spiced cumquat, Sichuan beetroot and miso turnip 

I also really enjoyed both the miso and Sichuan pickles. Both were salty rather than vinegary sweet like the cumquats, but both stayed really crisp. The bland turnip was a great base for the miso pickles, retaining a little sweetness to counter the rich salt of the miso bed. The beetroot pickles were a little more spicy than my first taste on day 4, but kept the sweet and earthy beet taste (so no good if you don't like beets! Use carrot maybe) Both would have worked well on a cheese board and had the same satisfying feeling that snacking on olives always provides me.

Finally, in other exciting news, keep your eyes peeled for a new blog event!! My friend and fellow food whore Gabe, who is involved with the food blog Evella, has agreed to participate in a joint cooking affair with the wabbit. The deal is that we will pick a dish or technique and both attempt it in our own way, documenting the whole affair on our blogs. Keep and eye out for the first Gabe and Jac Bloggoff tomorrow where we will be tackling the wonderful world of KIMCHI!

More fun in the kitchen

My pickle obsession continues... The other day I had some time to spare and some lovely fresh ingredients so I decided to have some fun in the kitchen. Since my tsukemono book and pickle press arrived I had been mulling over a bunch of recipes that I wanted to try, so I decided on miso pickles, vinegar turnip pickles, Sichuan beet tsukemono and pickled cumquats. As usual I didn't run with any strict recipes, just read the whole book and then made it up as I went!

The miso pickles were simple: I mixed up some shiro miso paste and a little mirin, then buried some turnip wedges in the miso mix and left them for about 4 days. Rinsed off they are absolutely delicious! Crunchy, salty and sweet.

The vinegar pickles were the only failure - and mostly because I used a combination of rice vinegar and green apple sipping vinegar, which left the pickles tasting like sour apples. They were edible but not really what I was shooting for. I'll have to work on that. The last batch of vinegar pickles I made were delicious, but they were heavily doused with chili flakes so they were hot, sour and satisfying.

Sichuan beetroot pickles

The beetroot pickles are my favorite by a long shot! I warmed a few cracked Sichuan peppercorns in some sesame oil, then added soy, mirin, a little sugar and some star anise and let the liquid infuse for a while. While that was making yummy I cut some beets into sticks, brined for about half an hour, rinsedthem, then put them in a small jar and filled it with the pickling liquid. Then I simply let them sit in the fridge for about 4 days, shaking the jar every day or so. Now that they are ready the beets are still crunchy and sweet, but they're also salty with a wonderful hit of star anise at the front, fading to a warming heat from the pepper and the whole thing is smoothed out by the sesame.

Finally I had this punnet of egg shaped cumquats that we found at Wholefoods and I bought simply because they were gorgeous and I hadn't seen cumquats for the longest time. They are a wonderful tiny citrus, with sour juice and really sweet zest. Jo and I used to grow them back in Tas, and we'd pickle them in sugar and brandy for 6 months until they were syrupy and divine. However, this time I didn't have the patience for 6 month pickling and Jo is unlikely to be drinking brandy even by then, so I took a different route.

Cumquats!

I decided to modify this recipe. I washed the cumquats, halved them and removed any pips. I then brined them really quickly by throwing them in some boiling salt water for half a minute then draining them (to soften the skin up some). I made the pickling liquid using rice vinegar and green apple sipping vinegar (3:1 ratio, about 1.5 cups total), some sugar (about half a cup) and the spices shown below - a small cinnamon stick, some cloves, cardamom (pods almost impossible to find here) and shredded fresh ginger.

Spice mix for the pickled cumquats

When the liquid was happily simmering away I added the drained cumquat halves and cooked the whole lot for about 5 minutes but not long enough for the fruit to lose its shape, then added everything to a freshly boiled jar, sealed it up and let it cool. I left them to infuse in the fridge for 4-5 days, turning the jar occasionally to make sure the spices were well mixed through. The finished product is lovely! Sweet, sour, salty and well spiced, but with the clean citrus taste towering over everything else. Perfect on their own with cheese but I'm sure they're also going to be fab to cook with!

Finished product

And after all that I still had the energy to cook the beloved and I a yosenabe style soup for dinner - a chicken broth base with udon noodles, pea shoots, asparagus, shitake mushrooms, hot sesame egg, spring onion and enoki...sprinkled with togarashi it is just the best!

Happy thoughts please *updated*

Just a quick update. My Dad had his surgery for the prostate cancer last night, so it'd be great if you could keep him in your thoughts and prayers - secular or otherwise. All I know so far is via text message, but the surgery went well (roughly 2 hours) and the doctor was happy. The recovery process is going to be pretty tough (10 days in hospital - which used to be the norm if they even thought you had the flu but is pretty much unheard of nowadays) but here's hoping it all goes fairly smoothly. I'll keep you all posted.

**Updated with an email from my mum**

Michael arrived back on the ward at 10.20 p.m. and this was after I had received a lengthy call from his surgeon...he told me that Michael was a fit man and that made operating on him, such an easier job as he didn't have to cut through layers of fat to get to the prostate. He said he had preserved the nerves and also had pathology on standby, as he removed bilateral lymph nodes and the joy of joys was that they were all clear and so far the cancer was contained to the prostate, but this has to be checked on tissue samples to make sure he has all the margins.

It will probably take a few days for the final histology reports to come in but that sounds promising. Keep the happy thoughts coming for a swift and successful recovery (lets not go into the details of what I mean by successful though!)

The Tree House

As promised, lots more pics of the tree house. Well the living areas anyway.

The living room (I'm standing in the kitchen to take this)

Basically the same shot but showing off the breakfast bar and the gorgeous flowers

The kitchen, spring asparagus soup in progress

More of the sitting room and our lovely deck and tree top views

A fireplace! In Texas! At least it means we have a mantlepiece :D

Looking back towards the kitchen and you can see where the stairs come up. It's so nice to have the front door away from the living space, and also to only have one flight of stairs even though we're on the third floor.

The dining area and more windows

More of the dining area with my new herb project

View from the deck.

And from the other end of the deck (lots of birds!!)

More deck view 

We are absolutely loving the new house. It is so quiet -  nothing but birdsong most mornings - and so full of light. We're almost finished unpacking, only the eternal rearrangement of closets to go. We had John and Jo over for dinner on Friday and it felt really good to entertain here. During breakfast on the deck this morning we came face to face with red cardinals, red and yellow house finches, pesky white-winged doves and my favorite, the blue jay.

Trees and peas

Looking out onto our new deck and beyond

We are getting settled into the new apartment after the big move last weekend. Thanks to our wonderful friends who arrived with cars, trucks and seemingly boundless energy it took less than 3 hours to move all our stuff, including the plants! I will post more detailed pics and descriptions of the new house soon, once we get the last of the pictures hung and the clothes unpacked, but here's a few teasers. We really like the new place. Lots more room, more light and more airflow. It also feels like we're living in the tree tops so we have dubbed new home "the tree house"!

The windows above our couch and the treetops!

In food news I came across some pea shoots in the store yesterday and figured I'd give them a whirl. Turns out they're really tasty, like a slightly less peppery water cress. I figured I'd make a brothy soup and throw the pea shoots in at the end.

So I used a pho base (beef stock, star anise, cinnamon, garlic, soy sauce) and added some sliced bamboo (Jo thinks I'm part panda based on my bamboo intake), some dried shitakes (rehydrated in the broth to add more umami to the soup), some fresh ginger and then the pea shoots.

The soup came out well and the shoots were wonderful! Could have done with some duck though ;)

Obsessions

It doesn't happen to me often but occasionally I develop obsessions. Luckily they're not usually anything life destroying. For example, ever since my palate-blowing Tanuki experience, I have become obsessed with tsukemono, or Japanese pickles. Why? We only had a very small tasting of house-made pickles at Tanuki, as well as kimchi (so it isn't just a Japanese thing) but somehow that was enough for me to devote a large portion of my brain to thinking about nothing else. I want to know what they all taste like. I want to know every ancient technique for making them. I want to know what things you can pickle and what you can't and why...and it is driving me mad! I have four different kinds of homemade pickled diakon in our fridge right now (yes 4). And that is before my super do-it-yourself tsukemono book and pickle press arrive from Amazon! Right now I'm running blind and I still love every one of them...well ok maybe not the one I drowned in salt but even that was edible!

Daikon four ways

I know pickles are a weird thing to get obsessed with (especially since I'm not the pregnant one) but it is the process as much as the eating. The other thing I am currently somewhat obsessed with (and have been for a while) is a particular diaper bag. I have to call it that because nappy is a racial slur here so I'm trying to train myself to use diaper. Usually I would just stick with the Australian word (rubbish not trash) but not when it could be an insult. Anyhow, this diaper bag is perfect. Utterly perfect. It is also expensive, hence obsession rather than ownership at this point. No matter what I do, no matter how many other bags I look at, none of them come close. I am not going to link it because I'm not looking for a debate - I'm just ranting about obsessions and the odd directions mine seem want to take.

Anyhow, still no fix on the Tuesday home movie so for now you'll have to be content with another week 19 snapshot.

Tuesday week 19 - Hand to mouth

Tonight is Hell's Kitchen night, where we hook up with Matt and Claire for dinner and watch Gordon Ramsey speak morse-code (thanks to US censorship) while people cook in the background. It wasn't on the other week so we watched an episode of his British show The F Word (which I guarantee will never be shown in the US). He was trying to get his kitchen team to cook a simple appetiser of scrambled eggs with wild mushrooms, and by popular demand it looks like I'll be attempting it tonight! Lets hope I can do better than the people he had on the show.

Attack of the 5' 7" preggersaurus!

Today is Shrove Tuesday so we're having pancakes for dinner - well that's my excuse anyway! This time last year we were at Mardi Gras in New Orleans!

A couple of updates. I mentioned a little while ago that there was some medical stuff going down in my family. Well my Dad (Michael) has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. That came as a bit of a shock, as I'm sure you can imagine. He has opted for the surgery which will be early next month, and I am optimistic (good Gleason score of 3+3, no evidence of spread on CT plus he's fit as a horse) but of course every surgery comes with great risk and the side effects of this surgery can be pretty bloody awful.

Also, some updates on the preggersaurus and her ever growing hump! All is going well. Week 20 now and Jo is starting to feel kicks and pokes, probably more than she wants to! She nearly dropped the laptop on my head the first time and accused me of jabbing her! She's not really putting on much weight but her belly sure is growing (remember what she looked like at week 14?)

Sexy new maternity jeans. For when buying 'one size bigger' normal jeans just doesn't cut it anymore.

There is also evidence of the move in the background - yep our house is covered in cardboard debris.

And one final bit of news about Tuesday...It's a BOY! For proof, see below. We actually have some video from the last ultrasound but it is in a weird format so I need to convert it before I can trim it down and put it up here, but this is a still from said footage.

We move house on Saturday so email me if you want our new address. It's going to be great to have a change of scene, and a second bedroom, for the last leg of the Texas journey. Let the nesting begin!

Tanuki - best meal ever? (probably!)

(Warning: eat before reading)

If I had asked my daruma for the ultimate food experience I would be colouring in its other eye right now. Tanuki was that good. I have been trying to get this post out for days, but I’ve been finding it really hard and that’s because I fell head over heals, intoxicatedly and stupidly in love – with the food, the sake, the dinky space that had more attitude that almost every San Antonio restaurant combined, the waitress who managed to perfectly balance presence and absence, and the chef... Janis Martin what have you done to me!!

A little background first. In Japanese folklore Tanuki is the loki-like raccoon dog trickster who spends most of his time mischievously acquiring sake and a free lunch. He also has unsettlingly large testicles and the ability to shapeshift them into all sorts of useful items such as a boat, tent or raincoat. In short a fabulous choice for the patron saint of restaurants.

Yeah those parachutes...they're attached

Tanuki in Portland, Oregon in a kind of izakaya, a bar serving food that goes with beer and sake. It is not Japanese tapas but the concept is similar. In fact, it is not strictly Japanese food either, crossing several cultural and continental boundaries to offer the best beer food from Japan, Korean, the Philippines and beyond.

The outside of Tanuki - Great things come in small packages right?

Given my current mental state I will do my best to refrain from using absolute definitives and give you what I can piece together before my mind turned to happy happy jello. I first heard about Tanuki from this blog that I read. Her review sounded way too good to be true, but since I’m in Portland occasionally and always up for an adventure I decided the check it out. The more reviews I read the more skeptical - and stupidly excited - I became. My colleagues in Portland, Mary and Patti, surprised me by not only willingly indulging me but also agreeing to be completely led on food choices!

Chef Martin affectionately describes Tanuki as “a scuzzy little dive bar” but when we arrived on Tuesday evening we walked into a small (maybe 20 seat) room filled with warm low light, earthy colours and the delicious smell of pickles, sake and anticipation (I might have brought the latter). There was a muted TV on top of the sake fridge showing a nonsensical Japanese program that seemed to consist of manikins modeling 70s knitting patterns in a late night and somewhat twisted version of East Enders, or maybe that was my take. I felt like I had come home!!

We took up residence at a tiny table near the bar and entrance to the kitchen (although, given the size of the place, that describes most of it!) We only looked at the menu long enough for me to begin drooling before aforementioned exceptional wait-person was making us feel right at home and talking me into perhaps the most enjoyable sake I’ve ever had. It might have just been that it was exactly the right night to be drinking it, in the right place with the right food, or it could have just been that good. I stupidly forgot what it was called but lucky for me super chef remembered (yay for email) – it was the Watari Bune Junmai Ginjo 55, unfiltered. I need to get my hands on some more for a second sampling!

Instead of trying to make a choice from the daily changing menu, we all decided (ok I decided but my lovely companions agreed) to take the omakase option. That is, we let the chef decide and suggest how much we should spend. Don't get me wrong, for the agreed price we had the perfect amount of food for three and we all left well satisfied, but in retrospect is seems an insanely small amount to have spent considering the quality of the food we ate. I plan to make it up to Janis by returning and drinking a lot more of that sake... eventually!

We were immediately presented with a bowl of chilled edamame that initiated the ‘blow Jac’s mind’ chain reaction. These were not your standard soy bean pods drenched in salt served at most Japanese joints, these were subtly lemon and sesame flavoured with a big togarashi punch (Japanese red pepper spice mix) and I couldn’t get enough of them. While we were still popping these beauties, a tiny plate of the freshest uni sashimi I have ever seen appeared, studded with real wasabi, not that pappy mustard powder crap. Uni is sometimes called sea urchin roe but it is more like the gonads – Aussies who have eaten really good scallop roe will understand. It was light, sweet and so delicate and everyone at the table really enjoyed it (I didn’t explain what it was until later mind you).

From this point on I lose track of exactly what appeared when or was brought by whom. Chef Martin herself delivered some of the dishes and explained them to us with helpful tips on how best to consume them (no pretentions here). In my enthusiasm I took a few photographs of the food and I now feel terrible that I didn’t ask permission (I’m having dreams of Janis tracking me down with her wicked chef’s knife…). She may call her space a skuzzy dive bar, but every dish was impeccably presented with stunning yet simple plating and not a scrap of inedible filler ‘fluff’ to be seen (no clichéd beefsteak leaves, grated daikon threads or carrot roses to be seen). Every dish was a tribute to her skill as a chef; perfectly balanced flavours, serious knife skills, fresh local produce and a sense of style that seemed to transcend boundaries of tradition, pretention and expectation.

To continue on from the subtlety of the uni we were brought hamachi sashimi (yellowtail) plated on slivered lemon wedges lightly seasoned with ponzu-like sauce and a little nub of that delicious wasabi. If you’ve ever had a bad raw fish experience, this would be your miracle cure. This delicate dish was followed by the mind blowing ankimo – monkfish liver pate on slivers of sesame toast with refreshing herb salad that was at once familiar and unplaceable but tasted so good! Citrus and herbs, and fire in the form of a hot sauce that I practically licked off the finished plate.

Hamachi sashimi

The next offering was a plate of kushiyaki – three skewers of sweet, sticky, broiled unagi that had none of that fishy eel taste and all of the melt in your mouth deliciousness, and a skewer of miso hotate; tiny sweet scallops lightly flavoured with mirin and miso and mustard, none of which dominated the sweetness of the flesh. Next time I must also try the ahiru kokkoro, or duck heart kushiyaki.

Chef Martin then delivered a larger plate of fried rice intermingled with lap chong, Dungeness crab meat, fluffy scrambled egg and her homemade kimchi. Nestled on top was a tiny raw quail egg, which we tipped over the dish and mixed through the rice. This was a table favorite, simple, elegant and so delicious that we couldn’t get enough of it. Every bite was different depending on whether you hit a pocket of crab, a sweet piece of sausage or some heat from the kimchi. I don’t think there was a grain remaining when we were finally able to relinquish the plate to our wait-person of infinite patience.

Kimchi chahan with the quail egg and accoutrements

The heft of the kimchi chahan was followed by the absolute delicacy of ebi nikkei; prawns poached in cinnamon tea with bok choi. The prawns were perfectly cooked, slightly salty and the poaching liquid was divine with a slow building fire. We were then served a wonderful plate of half-moon sandwiches of longganisa (Pinoy or Filipino style skinless sausage) between grilled lotus root slices with a selection of four sauces including an umami-rich house-made worcestershire and a squid ink sauce. To top it off this plate had an added bonus in the form of a pile of marinated shitake, again house-made!

Renkon nikuzume - pity I completely hit the lotus and sausage (no hide the sausage gags!)

The meal was quickly balanced by two sweeter dishes. The first was a soft, slightly sweet bun topped with a tiny vein of what tasted like delicious vanilla custard to me and piles of sweet, slightly malty flakes which were actually shavings of dry cured pork belly. Lucky for me I had previously experienced this meaty, candy-like goodness thanks to a fellow food-whore here in San Antonio but this was definitely the best incarnation of the stuff that I have yet to put in my mouth. The second dish was Mary’s favorite: niku dango or wild boar meat balls drenched in a sweet, smoky Korean soy on a bed of rice (to suck up the residual stickyness). The meatballs were delicious, with the texture of pulled pork rather than mince so as you bit into them you scored sticky, meaty chunks of meat so soft you could separate the fibers with your tongue. Or maybe it is just me who does things like that... The meatballs were served with a choko (tiny cup) of a chrysanthemum infused Korean rice wine (Kauelkukhwa) with a light, lemony front and soothing herbaceous finish that kept us from reaching our sticky pork saturation point, to the degree that I think all of us could have done that course a few times over!

The sweet bun with pork belly shavings - the vegos would never know!

Janis then provided us with a bowl piled high with asari kimchi to deglaze our sticky palates – clams steamed with sake then chilled and served with kimchi shaved ice. This one was certainly a favorite of mine, and I loved the way the flavor went from chilled to heat and yet stayed so refreshing. The masterpiece was completed with a final dish of broiled mackerel flavored with the remnants of the sake making (kasusaba) and a selection of house-made pickles including sour plums and daikon. Another huge hit with the table and the clean pickles were such a wonderful way to finish that we opted out of the miso soup offered as an optional final course (a decision I later regretted but only because I never wanted to stop eating Janis’ food).

One of my companions, towards the end of the meal, was trying to articulate why our experience seemed quite so magical and I think she nailed it. She said ‘it felt as though the chef had cooked a special dinner just for us’ and it really did. It makes me so happy to know that a place like Tanuki exists, and if I lived in Portland I would be a regular (pest, stalker... call it what you will). If it is within your power to get there, go and go now. Me? I’m still wearing my grin (and my Tanuki t-shirt) and plotting my return to Portland. The beloved’s fish allergy the biggest spanner in the work, but Tanuki has so many vegetarian options that she won’t miss out entirely!

Portland in Winter

I'm home from a few days up in Portland, Oregon where it was deliciously wintry. The flight went via Denver (it is a long way from San Antonio to Portland!) and as soon as we got near Denver there was a sudden change in the lands beneath...Snow! And frozen lakes, and white spiky mountains and, of course, the eye-watering glare.

There's snow on them there hills!

I have a collaboration with some glaucoma researchers in Portland and they are just the best people, lots of fun and really welcoming so I don't mind so much when they work me really hard.

One of the great things about these trips to Portland is that they always put me up at The Benson, which is my favorite hotel in America. Not because it is ritzy or has special shampoos, but because it is absolutely classic in the old school sense. It's not all false pretenses and veneer like most 'pretending to be posh' hotels nowdays.

Simple and elegant, and the bed is memory foam!

It is a 6-7 hour flight so when I first got in Mary (one of two fab collaborators) took me for a stroll around NW Portland where some of my favorite shops are. I popped into Lush (after smelling it from a block away) to get some bath yummies for the beloved. We also discovered a couple of markets or gourmet corner stores full of delicious cheeses, meats, vegies and such (that I'm sure weren't there last trip).

Part of said 'corner store'...I could have spent a lot longer browsing

Since I was pretty tired and there were no real plans that night, I decided to put together a picnic dinner that I could have in the comfort of my hotel - a couple of cheeses including a blue castello (common in Oz, not so much here), some mixed green olives and some salami. And some freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice to wash it all down :D

Dinner!

On the third day of the trip, after a fabulous breakfast at the St. Honoré Boulangerie (fabulous French bakery) I realised it was SNOWING! And not just the odd flake but a constant flutter. All the trees on the hill behind us were covered in a decent dusting of white! I got so excited - and I think that  was a surprise to my collaborators who had already suffered through an unusually white winter and to whom the current fall was small fish... plankton even.

See, trees, coated!

Ahh snow, glorious snow.

A gorgeous little red bush that looked so pretty in the snow

The pine needles just hold the light snow so beautifully. Mind you, I wasn't game to stand underneath any of these because I wasn't sure just how tightly it was holding that snow!

All in all it was a great trip, not quite 4 days in total. We got a lot of work done, and I ate a lot of great food. And yes, I know there's still a big ass food post owing. Manyana...