poisoned in california

seth wants it to be called the great lengua incident of 2010. i'm thinking i should market it as the new lengua diet. in any event, i got food poisoning on day two of my seven day trip to my home state of california.
i was dreaming of tacos for weeks. i had done all this research and found blogs dedicated to tacos in sacramento: yum tacos and perfecto taco de sacto. my family graciously allowed me to haul them across town to eat these authentic jewels of taconess. my mistake was the lengua. yes people, tongue! i love it as many others do, but i think i have likely eaten my last bite of tongue, for at least a while (no pun intended). i will say they were delicious going down. and seth and my whole family ate other types of tacos - carnitas, pollo, carne asada -- but i was the only one who ate the lengua. and the only one to get sick. i have many more photos of this taco truck moment but i can only bring myself to post this one glorious photo of how beautiful and innocent they looked before going down.
i planned on photographing and blogging about every meal in california, but i was sick as a dog for almost the entire trip. i had absolutely no appetite for like four days and the mere thought of food made me ill. in fact, i'm still having some residual nausea as i write about these tacos now. at the worst points of yucky tummy, i thought i would never blog again because i couldn't imagine having the stomach to write about food.
i am happy to report that i got some in-n-out into my belly before the tacos. and on my last day we hit up comforts for their signature chinese chicken salad. i worked at this up-scale deli in high school and i would definitely say it helped to create my obsession for food. the chinese chicken salad is simple but absolutely their best seller for years. romaine and iceberg lettuce, crispy fried rice noodles, scallions, grilled chicken, and this perfect tangy light dressing.

boston eats at susan's fish and chips

my friend and movie maker extraordinaire, sarah, came for a visit to portland and we created another boston eats at susan's fish and chips.
she is also getting some much deserved attention for these creations and was interviewed on wbur's public radio kitchen blog about boston eats. enjoy both!

transitions

friday was the last day of my first nurse practitioner job. and while i am happy to be leaving behind my two hours a day of commuting and multiple daily annoyances that left me feeling like my patients weren't getting the best possible care, i was sad to say good-bye to many amazing people i called my patients. truthfully, i'm on to bigger and better things, including a less than 20 minutes round trip commute, amazing benefits (the painful irony is that i have been an uninsured nurse practitioner for the past 16 months), lots of chances to grow, and many more amazing and also difficult patients.
in this two weeks between the end of one job and the beginning of the next, seth and i are going to california to visit some family and friends. it will be my first trip home in 2 1/2 years. my parents just moved from petaluma, a town they had been living in for the past 12 year to sacramento, the capital of my home state. as a kid, sacramento was a cow town with very little going on. my cousin went to college there so we spent a few weekends there each year, rafting on the american river and looking for something to do. but its a city that has grown up quite a bit. and naturally, i am looking forward to some eating! i plan on reporting back on what i am putting in my mouth. i can tell you right now that mexican and in-n-out burger will be on the list.
as for this beautiful easter sunday that signifies many transitions within itself, i was gonna make lamb with artichokes. unfortunately, i didn't realize that while easter is not a big deal to me, it happens to be a big deal to most other people. the super markets were very much closed so i couldn't buy my lamb. so we will instead be heading out for some indian at hi bombay!

finally some good thai taste

round four and our assignment was pom's thai taste. between the congress street location and the cottage road location in south portland, seth and i have been to pom's a least half a dozen times and its my feeling that its some of the best thai food in portland.
this past wednesday, after the bizarre snow cleared to a beautiful evening, we walked downtown to sample pom's again. it was about 6:30 and the restaurant was quite full. there were a few empty tables but they were still waiting to be bussed. as we waited by the door i could see there were two servers working the floor without a busser or hostess, and they were hustling. initially i was quite put off because one of the servers walked right by us on her way to bring a table food and didn't even acknowledge us. i was a waitress for years, and i in no way expected her to drop what she was doing to seat us, but i felt like she should have at least said 'i'll be right with you.' but within another minute she was seating us and apologizing for the wait and the rest of our service was great.
ordering at pom's can be a little intimidating as you are presented with three separate menus -- one of sushi, one for noodles, and one for thai. we knew we were going for thai, so that made things easy for us. and once you get into the thai menu its super descriptive and helpful. i've been eating thai for years but i didn't really know how choo chee varied from other curries until i read the descriptions of the many thai sauces.
i managed to steer seth away from the appetizer sampler and instead we started with the thai crab cakes and the deep fried pork dumplings. this was our second time ordering the crab cakes and they were delicious again. the cakes themselves are a mixture of maine crab meat and ground chicken and don't have the delicate texture i expect from crab cakes, but are quite toothsome (remember kevin's definition of toothsome on top chef?). though the menu mentions some pineapple sauce and ginger salad dressing, both times we have gotten these, they are served with this yummy pink creamy sauce and a sweet and sour sauce. i'm curious about the other sauces, but the two we got are great accompaniments.
the pork dumplings were kind of a disappointment. you can choose between steamed or deep fried, but i really wanted them pan fried. i love the way pan frying crisps up some of the skin but leaves other parts soft. deep frying the dumpling just made them tough. and both the filling and the ginger dipping sauce were bland.
for our entrees we got the yum nuer salad and the spicy crispy duck. we had ordered the duck before and it was amazing the first time so i was really excited to try it again. but i felt like we were sort of going out of our comfort zone ordering the salad as i usually order some sort of curry. when the salad arrived at the table i realized we had ordered it the first time we ate at pom's, along with the spicy crispy duck, so we were basically repeating a previous meal. it was great the first time and it was great again!
the yum nuer is salad of thinly slice of charcoal-broiled beef mixed with lemon grass, red pepper, red onion, cucumber, tomatoes, and scallions, tossed in spicy sour lime juice dressing on a bed of lettuce. it certainly is yum (sorry i couldn't help myself)! the beef itself was a bit overdone for my taste and pretty tough, but the fresh veggies with cilantro and mint and the spicy dressing totally made up for it. i would absolutely order it a third time.
the spicy crispy duck was all that i remembered it to be: half a crispy roasted duck topped with mushrooms, onions, red and green onions, and basil leaves in a spicy chili-garlic sauce. we had a dish very similar to this at viet bangkok and oh my god how pom's version blows that one out of the water. this is the way you serve crispy duck! the crispy crackling skin coated with sticky spicy and slightly sweet sauce ... i'm drooling just writing about it.
i love that pom's features local maine crab and shrimp on their menu. but i'm totally puzzeled as to why they have new zealand mussels. is there something i don't know about these mussels? is it just a species of mussels? are they really so amazing as to forgo local mussels in favor of importing them all the way from new zealand?
one thing i feel compelled to address is price as it was one of the things i bagged on sala thai for. in reality the price points at pom's and sala are pretty much the same, but i don't mind spending the extra money at pom's because the food is better. it doesn't even really strike me as pricey because the quality of the food is so great.
so this was yet another great meal at pom's and it reinforced my belief that this is one of the best thai restaurants in portland.

north creek farm, a slice of heaven

back in decemeber i was reading downeast magazine and i came across this piece about this little place called north creek farm in phippsberg right on the way to popham state beach.
when the weather was forcasted to be absolutely amazing for seth's birthday on march 6th, i suggested we hit up north creek farm for lunch on the way out to a day at the beach. this little place it a total gem. a country store/gourmet market/cafe/farm/rose garden. every little nook and cranny is so adorable you want to plotz. even if the food sucked, it would be worth it just to check out this gorgeous piece of earth. but, in fact, the food is pretty great. we shared two paninni and a cup of tomato soup. the surfer sandwich had smoked turkey, spruce mountain wild blueberry chutney and gruyere, a combo i would never think of putting together but that works so amazingly. the smoked salmon paninno also had cream cheese and roasted red onions, an obvious but delicious combo. if you look really closely at the photo below you can actually see my tongue sticking out of my mouth i was enjoying my sandwich so much.

(i'm trying to add more photos to my blog but i tend to be very unhappy with my food photography. i blame my camera and the lighting in my kitchen at night. it has nothing to do with my photographic ability. as you can see from the photo above, with the right light i can produce great food porn ... i mean photos.)

KON asian bistro

round three and out to kon asian bistro with some of the other contributors to pad-thai-o-rama. i again wanted to just sample from their thai options, but seth already had his mind set on his entree and i had to have the mini beijing duck. yeah, we had already been here before and we know what we liked.
oh mini beijing duck! i dream of you often with your sweet plumy sauce and crispy fatty skin and your fresh cucumbers and scallions and your light fluffy rice flour bun. seth and i ate something very similar to this, called a peking mac, every time we went our favorite little dim sum place in new haven, connecticut (east melange too, sadly closed now). and then i had the pleasure of eating the real deal, peking duck, in hong kong at spring deer. it was pretty much indescribably amazing so i won't try to describe it. anyway, this little rendition of peking duck was almost as great and i toy with the idea of returning to kon and ordering two plates of these all for me.
i did manage to order a thai dish for my main course, thai red snapper -- fried fish in a sweet and sour sauce with fresh vegetables. it was good, but not great. the fish was fried perfectly, with a great flavorful crust that stood up to the syrupy sauce. the veggies were vibrant in color and still crisp and fresh tasting. but the sauce totally unexciting. i also somehow got it in my mind that it was going to be a whole fish, so i was a little disappointed when it arrived as a fillet. but it didn't say anywhere it was a whole fish.
to be honest, it would have been hard for any dish to stand up to seth's main course choice the szechuan crispy dried shredded beef. thin pieces of beef breaded and deep fried, the covered in a sweet, sticky sauce and tossed with sesame seeds and some green veggies. yum. if you are the kind of person who enjoy any rendition of a chinese dish with small bits of fried meat in sweet sauce, and i am that kind of person, you will enjoy this.
i can't really recommend that you go to kon asian bistro specifically for thai, but i will recommend you go there. all the food i tried there was at least good and some of it was exceptional.

the salt exchange and MRW

last tuesday, for restaurant week seth and i decided to try the salt exchange. as we browsed through the menus on the maine restaurant week website, their menu appealed to us the most and i have pretty much been wanting to try it since it opened.
at 7pm on a tuesday the restaurant had a nice crowd but was not too busy. seth and i both really loved the space, with the painted brick walls and open duct work -- it is airy and elegant, while still retaining the charm of an old port warehouse. our server was attentive, well informed, friendly, and helpful.
in his classic pirate style, seth started with a winter rum punch with meyer's, bacardi, and captain morgan's rums mixed with pineapple and cranberry juice and an amaretto floater. as i have been suffering from repeated headaches from red wine (i know, i'm drinking cheap wine!) i decided to go with an alagash tripel.
the salt exchange is a small plates restaurant heavy on local seasonal foods. they elected to offer 3 savory courses for MRW, instead of the more traditional starter, main, and dessert courses most of the other restaurants offered.
for our first course we ordered the pork terrine and the cheese board. the pork terrine was, not surprisingly, very rustic and served with whole grain mustard, pickled shallots, and candied lemon peel (i think, having trouble remembering the exact details now). the terrine itself was ... porky, but not terribly flavorful in any other way. the extras on the plate were really nice accompaniments, especially the pickled shallots, whose briney tartness helped to balance the fattiness of the terrine.
the cheese board included two cheeses, honey, apples, baguette, and a few pomegranate seeds. i can't remember exactly what the cheeses were, but one was a grassy vermont cheese and the other was a earthy french cheese (descriptives from our waitress). the plate was lovely, the honey was amazing and floral, and the cheeses were fine, but we both really would have loved to have seen a couple of maine cheeses featured on the plate.
for our second course we ordered the pan seared scallops and the farm greens. the scallops were great: perfectly cooked, with chunks of bacon stuffed inside and served with baby purple potatoes and a broccoli puree.
the farm greens, on the other hand, was the weakest course of the meal. the greens themselves were beautifully tender, dressed lightly in a tasty sherry vinaigrette and served with a smear of briney olive tapanade (the only food seth will not eat are olives so i licked up all the tapande) and the most amazing duck proscuitto. i had never had duck proscuitto before so i was really excited to try it. it was cut so thin you could see through the fat marbling and it was salty and lusciously fatty in my mouth. so i know you are asking, you are raving about this salad, so what was wrong with this dish? the greens themselves were so over salted as to make them inedible. part of me thinks this may have been on purpose as there were these other salty elements on the dish, the chef wanted the salad to also have a nice saltiness. the other part of me thinks there was no communication behind the line and each of the three cooks (its an open kitchen) salted the greens personally. in any event, it was WAY too salty.
for our third course we chose the casco bay cioppino and the confit pork belly. seth was dying to try the cioppino packed with local fish and served with the requisite sourdough bread, and this dish really did deliver. growing up outside san francisco, i have had my fair share of cioppino and this was spot on with its tomato broth tasting of the sea with a great variety of shrimp, white fish, mussels, and crab. the pork belly was my favorite dish of the meal, after all it was pork belly confitted in pork AND duck fat! needless to say it was fatty and luscious and fall apart tender. served over one of the creamiest polenta i have ever had with root veggies on the side, which were just slightly aldente. a great complement to the softness of both the belly and the polenta.
we opted to spend a bit extra and share a slice of the flourless chocolate cake and a deliciously fruity (not yucky fruity like an apricot or blueberry ale) widmer bros. drifter pale ale. the cake was decadent and served with a petite cup of hot chocolate topped with a bruleed marshmallow (aka a toasted marshmallow).
overall it was a great meal and i will definitely be going back to the salt exchange. but due to its moderately high price point, it is one of the many restaurants in portland that needs to be reserved for a special treat, at least until i make that billion dollars. the restaurant week price for three courses was $30.01, which saved us about $5 per person. even if this MRW deal wasn't quite a steal, it did get us to try a new restaurant, and like i said, we will be going back.