In the Cupboard

Forgot to mention, we’re open at 9AM on Mother’s Day!
(and, below, some unexpected news)

The breathtakingly beautiful salt marshes of Ile de R

markbitterman :: May.08.2009 :: Newsletter Archive :: No Comments »

Everybody wants love, especially your Mom!

We adore tomatoes (these ones we picked up at Marche Aligre on our recent trip to Paris), but flowers make for
better delivery. Let us arrange for flowers to be delivered to you mother anywhere in the U.S. and beyond. We also offer
great optionsfor local delivery, like Flowers & Champagne, or Flowers & Chocolate, or even Flowers & Chocolate&
Artisan Salt! Call us (503-288-4633 or toll free 888-388-4633), or visit online. We’ll also have buckets of fresh flowers
in the shop, so come by and pick something up!

Salt Class May 18th

Bring your mother with you on a trek across the vast and unexplored wilds of artisan-made finishing salts.
We will discuss six artisan-made finishing salts and explore how they combine to bring greater flavor, beauty,
and nutritionto your table, from breakfast todinner, from cocktails to dessert. The event includes wine.
Space is limited, so sign up now!

Monday, May 18- 6:30pm to 8pm – $15 per person – click to reserve>>

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

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markbitterman :: May.05.2009 :: Newsletter Archive :: No Comments »

TheMeadow is spending April in Europe! We are visiting salt works across France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Wewould love your recommendation for places to see, people to visit, and things toeat. Visit www.saltnews.com to see our route, andplease submit your suggestions in the comments! You can follow our trip inreal time on Twitter at twitter.com/Selmelier. Other news below.

Photo courtesy of the generous and talented Ms. Lesley Trites.

While we are gone, our wonderful staffwill be holding down the fort. Please visit them so they don’t get lonely. Ifyou haven’t stopped by in a while, check out the Chocolina Sheep’s Milk and PinkPeppercorn chocolate. On the brooding and buttery, coffee-rich side, thereis the new 70% Rio Carribe bar by Rogue. Not to mention, some great new wines, suchas the Hacienda Don Ramon 2006 from Rioja, plus enduring favoriteslike the Cuvee des Ardoises 2004 from Fitou. As always, plenty of salt. Trymaking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with Bali Rama, a large hollowpyramidal crystal salt from Bali: as beautiful as they are delicious.An easy recipe and tasty photographs thereof at www.saltnews.com.

The Meadow
salt – chocolate – wine – flowers
503-288-4633 – 3731 N. Mississippi Ave. – Portland OR

markbitterman :: Mar.24.2009 :: Newsletter Archive :: No Comments »

Face it, if you like Cesar Salads in most restaurants, you also probably like canned fruit, white bread, etc. Cesar salad unites the two worst things in the American diet: romaine lettuce (even iceberg has its teen male-fantasy sexyness; think Brigitte Nielsen in Rocky IV), and the inescapable adjective, “creamy.” Take blandest of industrially grown lettuces and put creaminess on top, perhaps in some festive form involving whole spears of the lettuce leaves, or if you really shirk every encounter with flavor, just the hearts of the romaine, et voilà.

The beauty of the common Cesar Salad (Caesarius banalus) is that it give us everything we crave: saltiness (from the parmesian or pecorino cheese), crunchiness from the lettuce, and of course, creaminess, which reminds us of those cherished days when mom and dad would go out on a much needed date and leave us at home with a perky young babysitter and a warm oven full of defrosted chicken pot pies. Like so much in our diet, the Cesar Salad is kids food gussied up for show at the adult diningroom table.

All aforementioned legal formalities dispensed with, it goes without saying that Caesar is the king of salads, conquering nations and enslaving its people. The Caesar: assertive garlic, citrus, and pepper on tumescent greens glistening under a dewey veil the color of cornsilk. I am here to praise the Caesar Salad not to bury it.

My Caesar Salad is–not to put too fine a point on it–the best available, anywhere, ever, provided you are not in the mood for rice crispy treat gooey mac and cheese nostalgia. Obviously if you have a last name with more syllables than your lungs have wind to power, like Vongerichten or if you have at your disposal a stable of the world’s most passionate sous chefs and “a privately owned auberge situated in the French Huguenot valley of Franschhoek” and chicken eggs raised on grubs fed from the chef’s virgin daughter’s own lips, maybe, just maybe you can compete with my Cesar Salad in the eyes of wax-twisted moustachiod restaurant critics–but your sous chefs will still be sitting at my peasant’s table. Fighting words.

To make the best Cesar Salad, one delicate enough to precede almost any meal yet hearty enough to suffice as meal in itself:

1. Cut three or four slices of Como or other firm crusty European-style white bread into cubes and set on cookie sheet
2. Set cookie sheet with bread cubes in oven at 350 degrees
3. Squeeze 2 small-ish or 1 1/2 medium-ish lemons into a quart mason jar
4. Crack 1 free-yard, bug fed chicken’s egg into the jar
5. Press 2 or 3 cloves garlic into jar (the only excuse for owning a garlic press is Cesar Dressing)
6. Mince three or four Scalia anchovy filets and add to jar (Scalia are the best Cesar Salad dressing anchovies I have ever enountered–nutty, buttery, delicately perfume, bringing richness and balance where no (or few) other jarred, salted, or fresh-marinated anchovies can compare).
7. Arrange remaining anchovies on a plate from which guests may serve themselves
8. Pour olive oil remaining in anchoy jar into the mason jar
9. Crack 2 or 3 teaspoons good black pepper (like Parameswaran’s pepper) into the jar
10. Add 1 teaspoon good red wine vinegar (a TOP SECRET secret that I can’t believe I am sharing with the likes of Vongerichten and Ripert and Waters). I am crazy about Toro Albala, which may or may not be available in the future
11. The jar is now filled about 3/4 of an inch to 1 inch of liquid, mostly acid parts of the dressing. It is time for the oil. Here comes another TOP SECRET tip that assures a salad that is both light and full flavored:
12. Add 1 part grape seed oil and 1 part very good but not absurdly expensive olive oil (I use Almazara Luis Herrera Aceite de Lagrima Olive Oil, which has great fruit and vegetable and floral notes). The two parts combined should just-less-than-double the amount of liquid in the jar, so you should now have something like 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches of liquid in the jar, total. Keeping the amount of oil lower than the amount of acid brings the balance we are looking for, and cutting the amount of olive oil in half creates a beautiful lightness to the body/mouthfeel of the dressing
13. Tighten top onto the jar and shake like mad for 15 seconds to blend and emulsify
14. Turn bread crumbs on cookie sheet to brown more evenly
15. Wash and dry 1 head of very good romain lettuce, preferably from your garden or a local Farmer’s Market
16. Break letuce into a large salad bowl in pieces small enough to to toss but big enough to be a hassle (cutting down on the pretension level of the salad while still leaving you with a substantial piece of green to cut and fork and crunch and occasionally make a mess with while you eat)
17. Grate 1/2 cup good Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and set aside. Parmigiano Reggiano is ideal because it is less salty, more nutty, and more delicate than cheap parmisan cheese or most commonly available pecorino cheeses
18. Remove bread cubes from oven and let cool, observing that they are now a toasty golden color, and formidably hard and brittle
19. Shake dressing again for a few seconds, and then spoon from the bottom (to help get some of the bits of garlic and anchovy) onto the salad and toss until all leaves are nicely coated
20. Add bread cubes to fill around 3/4 of the mason jar containing the remaining dressing, and turn jar back and forth a few times to soak the cubes in the dressing
21. Sprinkle half the grated parmisan cheese on the leaves and toss to distribute evenly
22. Turn mason jar to re-coat bread cubes.
23. When the cubes have soaked up all the dressing, pour them over the greens and toss
24. Serve the salad onto large plates, and sprinkle lightly with some of the remaining parmesan
25. Advise guests not to shy away serving themselves additional anchovies

The amount of garlic and pepper can be adjusted to taste, but I advise even the most ardent anchovy avoiders to use the full amount of anchovies, especially if they are good ones, as they are responsible for they are largely responsible for the majesty of the Caesar Salad.

Serve with dry white wine or classic provencal rosé wine.

markbitterman :: Aug.31.2008 :: Eat :: 3 Comments »

Jen and I have been restaurant hopping for a few days straight, dropping into a few of our favorite spots in Portland and trying some new ones. Then voila, a spinach salad stopped us in our tracks.

On the way home we had dropped by Autentica, a restaurant serving up traditional Mexican food inspired by the cuisine of Guerrero Mexico, where owner and Executive Chef Oswaldo Bibiano grew up.

Sitting at the counter of the open kitchen, we ordered two of their nicer tequilas of the silver persuasion, a delicate and light I forget what and a warm, smooth, fruity I forget what (sorry). Chef Bibiano recommended we try fish, the filete de pescado con oro verde ($19), which today was lingcod served over a fresh avocado sauce and a jicama salad. “Fresh and spicy and clean – great the hot day today.

It was getting to be dusk, the sky was scudding a few faint clouds outside the windows, and we were probably a little hopped up from a chili pepper infused tequila Margarita at our previous stop, Toro Bravo.

We ordered the bisteck de bola con chile mole ($20), which is a grilled cascade sirloin steak served over a traditional dried chile sauce with a side of sautéed fresh cactus. I guess because we were supposed to be “hopping” restaurants and not actually eating at them, we also kept it light by ordering the espinaca con limon ($8): “spinach tossed with spicy lime juice, red onions, cilantro and avocado.”

The food arrived: salad a tall haystack of spinach ribbons laced with a startling, citrusy dressing and crunchy-sweet macerated onions. We were, totally blown away. Dag nabbit if this was not the best spinach salad I have ever had in my life. The steak was done perfectly, tender, lounging atop and in a powerfully spicy and full flavored sauce. Three nice salsas and a basket of tortillas hot off the hands of the tortillarista (my tortilla barista) working at the far end of the kitchen.

So, halfway through the little snack we were supposed to be having before bopping off home, we ordered the fish (and another tequila and a Pacifico to keep us afloat). The fish arrived, piping hot and flakey and not-flakey-because-it-was-also-tender-and-chunky atop cool sauce with crisp vegetables atop it. Atop is a nice word.

The fish was beautiful, super subtle but also super flavorful: angelfire and friskiness to the steak’s demonic flood of brooding. When I was a kid I lived in Mexico, ate catfish gifted to me by the lake fishermen, bought steamed corn with lime and chili powder from the passing senoras, played with sparklers in the houses of neighbors, shutters drawn to make sparkly night in the daytime. How you take onions and spinach and lime and turn that into the fragments another time I cannot say. But it was a good spinach salad.

markbitterman :: Aug.07.2008 :: Recently Visited :: No Comments »