Edible Portland Blog

WARM ASPARAGUS AND PARMESAN SALAD
From Viridian Farms
Serves 6

2 lbs asparagus, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground pepper
4 oz parmesan cheese, in one piece
4 cups mixed greens

Bring large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the asparagus and cook 3 minutes from the time water returns to a boil. Drain briefly under cold water. They should still be warm. Toss asparagus with lemon juice, olive oil, and pepper to taste. With a vegetable peeler, shave thin slices of parmesan on top. Make a bed of greens on serving plate and mound asparagus on top. Serve immediately.

Written by Angela Sanders
Photos from the Turturice Family Collection
For Spring 2007

WHEN I TOURED THE SMALL HOUSE in southeast Portland that I eventually bought, I asked the owner about the sink, cabinets, and stove hookup I was surprised to find in the basement. "Oh," she said, "the first owners were Italians. They practically lived down here in the summer to keep out of the heat, like they used to do in Italy." Dotted through the neighborhood were fig trees, and my own backyard sprouted leeks and elephant garlic here and there. Oregano filled the side yard. Mint ran rampant, no matter how many of its runners I pulled out. I had moved into Portland's Garlic Gulch.

Between 1880 and World War II, nearly 30,000 Italians immigrated to Portland. They came to escape economic depression at home and to start truck farms, craft stone bridges on the Columbia River Highway, and work in the lumber mills. The first Italians in Portland settled in an Italian and Jewish neighborhood in the Duniway Park area, obliterated in the early 1960s by an urban renewal project.

Italian children earned a nickel for lighting the stoves of their Jewish neighbors on the Sabbath. As the population of Italians grew, it spread across the river to Ladd's Addition, the western portion of Colonial Heights, and the Clinton neighborhood. This second wave of Italians seeded vegetable gardens in empty lots, dried tomatoes on their roofs, and dragged their feather beds into their yards in the summer for the sun to bleach clean.

Written by Kevin Allman
Photo by Carrie Branovan
For Spring 2007

THE WINTER SNOW IS GONE, and grass is sprouting in the paddocks of the Double J Jerseys organic dairy farm in Monmouth, Oregon, an hour’s drive south of Portland. Several large barns in the distance hold nearly 200 cows, but farmer Jon Bansen isn’t letting them out just yet. For three months, they’ve been inside, eating a diet of harvested alfalfa, clover, and grain, but soon they’ll be grazing in the fields, eating the chlorophyll-rich grass that will result in spring milk. Fall milk, which is richer in fat, is better suited to cheesemaking, but spring milk has charms of its own.

“It has a lower protein and butterfat content,” Bansen says. “It has a sweeter smell, a lighter smell. And you can really taste the difference. Milk is just sweeter in springtime.”

This is the seventh spring for Bansen’s organic farm, but he’s been a dairyman all his life. Dairy farming is a Bansen family tradition, though Jon is the first to operate an all-organic farm. Since he converted from traditional to organic farming in 2000, his father and his brother—convinced by Jon’s success and the quality of his milk—have also gone organic. But Bansen says his approach is really nothing new: “We’re just using the same techniques that my grandfather used, but they didn’t call it organic back then.”

Written by Harriet Fasenfest
For Spring 2007

THERE IS A PARABLE I like to tell related to the form versus function debate. That debate, not unlike the chicken or egg controversy, questions what comes first and how we often take on forms or behaviors that no longer serve a purpose. Not surprisingly, the parable finds its best audiences with architects and first-year philosophy majors. But as a Universalist-cum-food preserver, I offer it now as a lovely, if not tangential, segue to today’s discussion on pectin. It goes like this:

A little girl was watching her mother bake a ham and noticed that she cut off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven. The girl asked why. Her mother said, “Because my mother did it that way.” So the little girl went to her grandmother, and asked her why she cut off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven. And her grandmother said, “Because my mother did it that way.” Being blessed with a healthy and thriving matriarchal line, the little girl went to her great grandmother, and asked her why she cut off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven. And she said, “Oh, I don’t do that anymore. I only used to because my pan was too small.”

I love that story. It is a perfect example of our tendency to take on form and traditions even as they outlive functionality. In most cases the folly is benign and, like the ham, represents no more than a wasted stroke. Other times, like the proverbial unexamined life, the consequences are more severe. But then there is the middle ground, and in the case of pectin, the reliance on form versus function stands in for nothing more than a missed opportunity for creativity, serendipity, and jam making outside the box.

Written by Ellen Jackson
For Spring 2007

ONCE UPON A TIME, a sour-cherry pie with lattice crust, still warm from the oven, was the ultimate expression of hearth and home. A thick slice of homemade bread, slathered with sweet butter, was a hallmark of hospitality…if your name was June Cleaver.

Now we live in an age of convenience foods, and everyone complains that they haven't any time. Bread making has a reputation for being fussy and old-fashioned, a tricky collaboration of yeast, time, and expertise, with long odds of a payoff for the amateur baker. The thought of baking a loaf can be overwhelming and conjure up images of an entire day spent in its service.

Actually, baking is the perfect pursuit for busy people because it is well-suited to being divided into steps and stages. Significant chunks of time are spent waiting, but you needn't plan your day around the schedule of a loaf of bread. In fact, the methodology is quite logical and far more flexible than you might imagine.

CONIGLIO ALLA ROMANA (Rabbit Roman Style)
From Cathy Whims, Chef/Owner, Nostrana
Serves 4

This rabbit recipe is inspired by the French bistro classic Poulet au Vinaigre. I wanted a recipe more Italian in flavor and remembered the Roman recipe for lamb called Alla Romana which, besides using red wine vinegar, adds garlic, anchovy, sage and rosemary to its seasoning. It works equally well with rabbit.

1 whole rabbit cut into 8 pieces, rinsed and dried well
5 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
6 anchovy filets in olive oil, drained and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 sprig sage
1 sprig rosemary
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup red wine vinegar

Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch sauté pan over medium-high heat and brown rabbit pieces well on all sides. Remove the rabbit to a plate and season well with salt and pepper. To the pan add anchovies, garlic, sage and rosemary, stirring constantly until garlic colors lightly. (Remove pan from heat if necessary.)

Return rabbit pieces to the pan. Add the vinegar and let it reduce for about 2 minutes. Be careful not to inhale fumes.

Cover the pan, turn the heat to low and let the ingredients cook, turning the rabbit every so often in the juices. Cook until the rabbit is tender, about 1 hour. If the vinegar evaporates too quickly, add a few tablespoons of water to the pan.