Come on over to Feast

We've moved so come on over to our new blog Feast

Feast is the new Speakeasy

Rebranding. A few weeks ago Peter and I were talking about the blog and we came to the agreement that Speakeasy just wasn’t quite the right name for what we were doing. After six months of posting it became clear that we wanted to share with everyone the food we like to cook, the special meals we create for our friends and places we love to dine. So we started thinking about how we could focus the blogs identity to reflect that. After a bottle of wine and some very entertaining brain storming we settled in on a new name for our blog. Feast, a Portland Food Chronicle.

I don’t think its going to be practicle to manually transfer all of our old post over to Feast so we’re just going to leave them over at speakeasy. If there is a savvy blogger out there that knows how to transfer all of our old content please let me know.

So we’re making a clean break. From here on out we’ll see you at Feastpdx.blogspot.com

Happy Birthday to ME!

Typically, when it's someone's birthday in our clan, we make an elaborate meal at home.  Not only is it A LOT cheaper, we can fit a crowd and I have to say the food is better.  Thinking about my big 3-0, I decided it was time to have a big meal out.

We went to Beast, the new restaurant by the venerable Naomi Pomeroy, whom I used to work for at Ripe.  I just have to say the magic is back, because I had quite possibly one of the best meals of my life.  Here is the menu highlighting the 7 scrumptious courses they turned out for us:

Suffice it to say, Beast moves to the top of the rotation!

Bacon Pasta

This is a standard dish in my family.  The smell of bacon, onions and garlic always takes me back to my mom making this sauce.  It's so easy it's ridiculous.  This sauce can easily be made with pantry items as a last-minute dinner.  I never knew it, but this pasta dish is a traditional Italian preparation, called Al'Amatriciana.  It goes on any pasta, but we realized up at the cabin the other weekend that rigatoni goes very well with the sauce, as it fills the shaped pasta.

1 lb. bacon, chopped

1 large red or yellow onion, small dice

4 cloves garlic, minced

pinch crushed red pepper

1 tsp. dried oregano

2 14.5 oz. cans stewed tomatoes

1 14.5 oz. can tomato sauce

1 tsp. sugar

salt and pepper

1 lb. dried pasta

parmesan

fresh basil

Bring a large pot of water to boil for pasta and add 1/4c. kosher salt.

Saute bacon in a large skillet on medium-low heat until it is almost browned.  Add onions and saute until bacon finishes browning and onions are translucent.  Add garlic and saute 1 minute more.

Add crushed red pepper and oregano and stir in.  Add stewed tomatoes and sauce.  Using a flat wooden spatula, break up stewed tomatoes into smaller pieces.  Simmer sauce until thickened, 10-15 minutes.  Add sugar, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until before al dente, 2 minutes before package directions.  Remove to simmering sauce and finish cooking, tossing sauce well into pasta.  Top with torn basil and parmesan, make some crusty garlic bread and enjoy!

Broder

For the most part I love sharing all of my little food finds with everyone, but sometime I think twice about sharing when I find a great brunch place. Not waiting in line is key for me when it comes to brunch. I can become insanely grumpy while waiting for breakfast. A couple of weeks ago I heard about Broder. I went to check it out early on a Saturday morning. I was so impressed I went back the next day with Nick and Peter.

Broder is a Swedish restaurant. I have to admit given my personal experience of living in Sweden I didn’t have very high expectations for the food. I anticipated hearty and bland, but was wildly surprised. I was really excited to discover that Broders front staff was headed up by one of my favorite locals Mohawk Joe. He always brings a bright chipper attitude to a place and knew things were going to be just fine. Two highlights: house cured Grav Lax, and the best Swedish Meatballs I’ve ever had. Ever…

I was excited to find a great menu with several classic Scandinavian dishes and also some other breakfast dishes unique to Broder.

It’s definitely worth checking, but don’t go early cause that’s when I go and I don’t like crowds.
Broder
Phone: (503) 736-3333
Address: 2508 SE Clinton St., Portland, OR. 97255 Google Map
Hours: Mon-Fri 8am-2pm, Sat-Sun 9am-2pm

Here’s an actual review of Broder.

I hadn’t planned on getting into all of that. What I really wanted to talk about was Aebleskivor. After brunch the other day I was thinking about when my mom used to make Aebleskivor. It had probably been twenty years since I’d had them. I raided my parents house and came home with my mom’s old Aebleskivor pan. Since we were heading up to the mountain I thought it would be fun to give them a shot.

Spiced Pot de Crème

This dessert was quite spectacular. It had to be to follow up a Thanksgiving dinner. There is nothing I hate more than making a dessert that just gets picked at because everyone if full. So I’ve come up with a way counter acting this phenomenon. I try to only make desserts that drive people insane with the desire to consume more dessert. Desserts that generate a deep guttural moan followed up by soul satisfying bliss. Things like banana cream pie that forces you to sit on the couch with it on your lap shoveling directly into your mouth. Or cookies so good guest slip handfuls of them into their coat pockets on the way out door. I’m not sure what gives a dessert this magical power, but over the years I’ve found a few that can really get the job done.

I love Pot de Crème. I like the small individual portions, but more importantly I love the creamy silky texture. I usually make vanilla pot de crème and top it with what ever fruit is in season, but this time I decided to experiment with some spices and see how it turned out. I lucked out this time. They were much better than last summers jasmine tea pot de crème.

1 C heavy cream
11/3C whole milk
6 egg yokes
2/3C sugar
1T vanilla extract or two vanilla beans
1T cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
1/4tsp ground clove
pinch of salt

Set oven to 325. In a sauce pan heat the cream and milk with the spices. Bring it up to almost a boil then turn it off and let it steep. In a stand mixer whisk the eggs yokes and sugar together on high speed for about 3 minutes until it falls in thick ribbons. Then on low speed slowly add the hot milk and cream. Add the vanilla and salt. Pour the entire mixture through a strainer into a large measuring cup or pitcher. The measuring cup makes it a lot easier to pour the cream into the ramekins. In a roasting pan arrange 8 ovenproof cups or ramekins. Evenly fill each of the cups with the strained cream mixture. Add hot water to the roasting pan coming up about halfway up the cups. Cover the whole pan with aluminum foil and bake it in the oven for 25 minutes. Once the custard is set take them out and cool them in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours.

Sometimes you end up with little bubbles on the surface of the custard so I always like to top them off with a dollop of whip cream before I serve them. This time I happened to find a batch of incredibly dark caramel that Peter had made earlier in the week, so I topped each pot de crème with a thin layer of caramel. I also whipped up a batch of pecan short bread to put on the side.

Thanksgiving warm up

It’s getting to be the time of year when all of our food magazines have turkeys on the cover. I always get so excited with all of the different Thanksgiving vignettes they offer up. Southern, South of the boarder, Armenian, Modernist Loft Thanksgiving… You get the point, but every year when it comes down to the big day everyone wants traditional. So we decided that for this weeks Sunday dinner we would try out some of those alternative Thanksgiving dishes that we’ve been eyeing. The more we talked about the wilder our ideas got. We were headed towards lacquering a turkey with a balsamic glaze, but then we fell under the charms of that dreamy Todd English. We came upon a classic episode of Martha Stewart where she and Todd deboned, stuffed and rolled a turkey. By the time we settled in on a final menu we weren’t able to get to far from traditional, but it will still be great. Here’s what’s on the menu for tonight. Deboned, Stuffed Turkey, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Turkey gravy, Oyster stuffing, Roasted Brussel Sprouts and for dessert Spiced Pot de Crème with Pecan Shortbread. Deboning a Turkey is kind of gory, a little bit scary and entirely satisfying. I stood back and took pictures as Peter methodically cut the carcass away from the flesh of the turkey. Half way through it looked like it might be a mess, but then it laid out in one large piece.
After we deboned the turkey and pounded it out a bit we filled it with a stuffing made with ground turky and pork. Right before it was done we brushed the skin with reduced balsamic vinigar. It gave the turkey a rich glossy skin.