A Jersey Girl in Portland

Welcome to my Blog

Hello! Jersey Girl in Portland is me, Nancy Schaadt. Born in New Jersey, lived all over, found my heart’s home in Portland Oregon in 2008.

I’m an chef, freelance writer, and cannabis culture fan.  Currently budtending (like a bartender but for weed) and trying to decide my next career move.

I’ve pinned this to the top of my blog because I need to warn anyone who wants to read my advertisement free scribbles, or search for any of the hundreds of bonafide recipes on this blog, that the Typepad search function is total crap.

Please use the search engine the nice people at Google have created.  Enter “Jersey Girl in Portland” and whatever recipe or article you desire like tomato jam or dope soap or pie or beans or sourdough or hashtag-whatever. The results are accurate and much better than the Typepad search function.

Thanks!

Soup game changer: Vietnamese canh

 I read about this soup in the New and Improved Bon Appetit magazine. It’s called Canh, an everyday Vietnamese soup of mostly fish sauce, onion and water. It’s a near-perfect soup base to be paired with a protein entree, or to stand along.

I made it last night and Oh My Gawd it’s amazing. Dark, fishy, packed with umami. And ready in 30 minutes or so.

Make this soup.  You can thank me later. 

Canh

1 onion, diced

2 T coconut oil

2 T diced ginger

2 T garlic, minced or sliced on a mandolin

1/3 cup good Vietnamese fish sauce (I like Red Boat)

6 cups City stock (ha ha ha, tap water)

3 cups chopped veg like bok choi, mushrooms, thinly sliced carrots

2 cups protein (raw shrimp, cooked ground pork or tofu or whatever)

1/4 cup bias-cut green onion (garnish)

 Darkly caramelize one yellow onion in coconut oil.  Get it plenty dark.
Set aside six cups of water.  When the onion is dark, deglaze the pan with some water.  I want to extract every bit of goodness from the onions so cook the onions down au sec or down to a syrup.  It’ll only take a few extra minutes.  

Add the rest of the water along with fish sauce, a few tablespoons of chopped ginger and a few tablespoons of chopped/minced/sliced-on-a-mandolin garlic and whatever greens you have on hand.  I used half-a head of bok choi, some sliced crimini mushrooms, leftover cooked ground pork and some raw shrimp. 

Simmer for 20 minutes or until everything is cooked, and serve.  

Garnish with chopped green onion.

It was amazing! 

It is thin but has a clean, fully fishy flavor. I put it on the table with some crispy shallot and WOW it was amazing. The balance of flavor — with a HUGE fish sauce presence — had a ton of umami.

My sweetie/husband doesn’t eat carbs but I would totally serve this with a scoop of rice. 

And the photo above is the same soup, day two with a poached egg and green onion.

It was a game changer on a day that sorely need change.

Be well & much love.

Nancy

Jersey Girl in Potland 

Fun with tripe: Dim Sum #tripe & #Pepperpot Soup

 

A little French apple cake

I’m always looking for a good, easy apple cake.  I wrote about one  pre-pandemic, but I think I like this one better. 

French Apple Cake

1 c whole wheat flour

1 c AP flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon 

————

2/3 c sugar

6 oz (fluid) yogurt

(Pro tip: any yogurt, flavored or not, will work)

3 beaten eggs in a small-ish mixing bowl

2 t vanilla 

1/2 cup oil (I used OO but any oil will do—even melted butter)

3 c (or two apples) apples peeled, cored & chopped medium dice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Grease two medium loaf pans (8x4 ish) with butter, spray stuff, Crisco, whatever

Combine flours, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Add sugar (adjusted down slightly if using sweetened yogurt) and yogurt to beaten eggs.  Beat in vanilla & oil.

Fold wet into dry until mostly combined (or vice versa, whatever). Fold in apples. Spoon (the batter may be too stiff to pour) into loaf pans.

Bake 40 minutes. Use a toothpick to test for doneness. Or, with an instaread thermometer the cake should temp to 190 - 200 degrees F.

I’m not married to the cinnamon/apples marriage.  Next time I’ll nix the vanilla, use ghee for the fat and cardamom instead of cinnamon. Yum.

Afterword:

I used two loaf pans because I wanted one for home and one for work.  We ate one whole loaf, loaded with melting butter, while powerwatching Marchella (a British police series about a flawed detective) on Netflix.

I love pandemic cooking with flexible recipes.

Be well & love big

xoxo

Nancy

 

What to do with all those love apples? Conserva & more

I think tomatoes are one of my top five favorite foods. Take a firm, red tomato.  Cut a fat slab from the center. Sprinkle a pinch of Maldon* and take a bite.  The flavor almost explodes in the mouth. It’s tangy and a little sweet, with a savory-ness to balance. And the crunchy salt that spreads from the roof of your mouth down to the teeth, is just salty icing on a tomato cake.

I love ‘em all.** Heirloom tomatoes, in all their beautiful, colorful glory; meaty San Marzano tomatoes for perfect sauce; tiny, sweet pear tomatoes, just made for snacking, still warm from the sun.

But my favorite is Cosmonaut, a variety that reminds me of the New Jersey tomatoes of my youth.  They were so acidic and sweet that I’d get mouth ulcers from them, like I’d eaten half a bag of Sour Patch Kids.  I’d slather mayo and butter on a toasted hamburger roll or English muffin and eat the perfect summer sandwich. 

Usually I go tomato crazy but this year I only bought 30 pounds of Roma tomatoes from Deep Roots Farm so I spent just a day canning tomatoes this summer. 

I made Tomato Conserva which is like a rich tomato paste.  To make it, quarter 10 # tomatoes, put them in a large pot and add 1/2 cup OO and 1 T kosher salt. Cook them on top of the stove until the skins fall off. Put them through a food mill and return them to the pot. Reduce by 1/3.  

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Pour the crushed and reduced tomatoes onto two sheet trays and bake for two hours.

Make sure the tomatoes aren’t getting too dark around the edges by stirring them from time to time.  After two hours, combine the paste onto one tray (wash the pan if you, like me, only have two sheet trays) Bake for another hour. Continue to stir and condense on to a clean sheet tray for 30 more minutes. The conserva should be a dark brick color.  Spoon into three sterile one-cup jars, top with olive oil and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Yes, 10 pounds of tomatoes yields three cups of conserva.

My next favorite thing to do with tomatoes is simply canning them ‘whole’. Start with cutting an X in the bottom of each tomato.  In batches, blanch them in boiling water for a few seconds. Shock them in cold (ice) water, core them and jam the flesh into sterile quart jars. Add a fat pinch of salt and a tablespoon of lemon juice (juice from concentrate like ReaLemon is fine) to each jar. Top with boiling water OR cook and strain the pulp and seeds you removed from the tomatoes and use it to bring up the water level of the jars. Process for 20-30 minutes.

I also made a fun Confit Tomato the other day.  Take four good-sized heirloom or other round tomato variety. Cut an X in the bottom. Blanch for 30 seconds, shock in cold water and peel.  Then very gently, remove the core.  It’s not easy as the tomatoes are slippery.

Take 2 Tbsps of sugar, mix it with the finely chopped zest of two lemons. Put the tomatoes in a baking dish, divide the sugar and lemon mix evenly between the four tomatoes. Drizzle with 1/2 cup of the fruitiest olive oil you have. Bake @ 200 degrees for three hours.  Baste at least thrice per hour to keep the tomatoes moist. When a thin knife blade meets little resistance, the tomatoes are done. Serve warm or at room temp. Serve one per person in a small bowl, drizzle with pan juice. WOW they are delicious! It makes a great appetizer or side dish.

Celebrate Love &

Love Apples.

xoxo

Nancy

 

*(coarse sea salt from the town of Maldon, in Essex on the Blackwater estuary, on the eastern side of the UK.

**Please allow me to nerd out on the pinnacle of the nightshade family, the love apple, the tomato.  According to Brittanica, the species originated in the Andes mountains, Peru and Ecuador. Domesticated in pre-Columbia’s Mexico the name comes from the Aztec word tomatl. As members of the deadly nightshade family, their edible nature was almost unexplored as it was domesticated as an ornamental plant in Northern Europe.  And thought to be quite deadly. But what I didn’t know is that the roots and leaves are poisonous and contain the neurotoxin solanine.  

Three hour Menudo

^{I’ve been having fun with offal, namely tripe.  It’s inexpensive (less than $4.50/pound), and delicious. I’ve made Roman tripe, but I wanted to make menudo, the famous Mexican soup usually reserved for family gatherings (but also known as hangover cure).}

^{It’s a great soup for a hot day and yesterday was hot hot hot.}   

^{Most recipes I researched for this post called for 8 hours of cooking. Even jobless I don’t have that much time. My friend DeAnna’s mom used to use a pressure cooker to make it.  Smart lady. Make those kitchen tools for you, I say.}

^{So it’s good that I took an accidental short cut.  I got book tripe from the Asian market, instead of honeycomb tripe.  It looked just like photographs of honeycomb tripe on the interwebs so I treated it like honeycomb tripe. But it cooks for much less time.}

^{So, I bring you Three Hour Menudo}

^{2 pounds book tripe}

^{1.5 large onions, medium dice, divided use}

^{10 cloves garlic, divided use}

^{6 New Mexico chili pods (stems removed & indifferently de-seeded)}

^{3 Japones chili pods (same as above)}

^{2 tsp cumin, divided use}

^{2 Tbsp oregano, divided use}

^{2 Tbsp olive oil}

^{2 to 5 cups chicken stock (whatever amount you have on hand is fine)}

^{1 can hominy (white or yellow, it doesn’t matter)}

^{2 Tbsp butter (optional)}

^Garnish:

^{1 cup chopped cilantro}

^{1 finely diced red onion}

^{Put the tripe, 1/3 of the chopped onion & 5 cloves garlic in one gallon of cool water.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 1.5 hours. When finished cooking, remove and rinse in cold water. Discard the tripe boiling liquid. Set the tripe aside} 

^{While the tripe cooks, cover the chilies with 3-4 cups cool water.  The chilies should be fully submersed with an inch of water to spare.  Boil for 10 minutes. Cover & remove from heat to steep for one hour.}  

^{Do not throw out the chili water! Put the cool, drained chilies in a blender with one cup of the chili water along with 3 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp cumin & 1 Tbsp dried oregano (if using fresh, double the amount of oregano). Purée until smooth and not gritty.  This is the base of your soup.}

^{Chop the remaining two cloves of garlic. Heat a stock pot,  add OO and sauté the remaining onion and garlic.  Add 6 cups of liquid to the pot- a mix of chicken stock and water with a minimum of 2 cups stock is ideal.  Add the puréed chilies, 1 tsp cumin and 1 Tbsp oregano. Bring to a boil and quickly reduce to a low simmer.}

^{Now cut the tripe into uniform strips that will fit on a spoon. I say uniform pieces because this recipe has just a few ingredients so each item should shine.  Uniformly. Add the tripe and hominy and reduce to low, partially covered, for one hour, stirring occasionally.}

^{When the soup has reduced, taste it to check seasoning and salt as needed.  If it lacks body, add 2 Tbsp butter.}

^{Serve with garnishes.}

^{Although I lived in Dallas Texas for 15 years I never made menudo.  Why would I, there was amazing menudo all around my neighborhood in Oak Cliff (south Dallas).  Fun fact, Wiki tells me it’s also called mole de panza, (stomach soup) or pancita (little gut). Call it what you will, it’s really delicious.} 

^{Next on my Tripe dance card is Philadelphia Pepper Pot. A beef and beef tripe soup.  But I want to wait for a rainy day to make it.}

^{Stay safe}

^{Love big &}

^{Be well}

^{xoxo Nancy}

Eight-hour deli dill pickles - #HalfSours

Have I been doing pickles wrong for these past 15 years? Oh gawd, perhaps.

But first, what does one want from a pickle? Sweet pickles? Sour pickles? Kosher dill? Do you want to stack it on a burger? Put it in a cocktail? Cut it up to make relish? Or do you just want to eat a fabulous pickle.

Personally, I love funky fermented things like kimchi, sauerkraut, and miso, but my hands-down, slap-your-mama, to die for pickles are not ones that I make.

They are (or were, pre-pandemic) found on the table of Kornblatt’s Deli in NW Portland. They sit on the table, next to the condiment caddy, in an open jar with tongs.  Available at lunch or dinner, no extra charge.

The pickles are salty and garlicky and snap like a fresh cucumber.  They are perfect. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve eaten waaaay more than my fair share of them.

This style is called a ‘half-sour’ and it’s a kosher deli dill pickle. I’ve pickled hundreds of pounds of cukes in my day but have never come close to making this perfect deli pickle.

Until I read Mark Bittman’s newsletter this week.

Half-sours, my favorite pickle, are his favorite too, and are screamingly easy to make.*

The name is misleading as there is nothing sour in the recipe. Just salt, water, garlic, dill.

But.. half-sours have a short life — about 7-10 days. These are pickles to pig out on, every day.

The Process/Recipe:

Here it is: add 1/3 cup of salt to a cup of boiling water.  I prefer kosher or sea salt.  Add ice to cool it down, and set it aside.

Take a large jar, like a half-gallon mason jar.  Put a few (3-5) garlic cloves and a handful of dill (or coriander — a substitution Bittman recommended and I endorse).

Cut cucumbers in fat slices or spears.  Bittman likes Kirby cukes but I’m not so particular.

Put them in the jar.  Add the salt water. Top with cold water. Use a weight or a bag of salt water to keep the cukes submerged. 

Wait four to eight hours.  That’s it.  Just 1/3 of a day to make freaking delicious pickles.

Refrigerate them when brined to your taste.  

Process notes:

The second batch I made, I re used the brine.  It needed a little love to be salty enough to make a good half-sour.  For myself, I’ll probably use the brine twice but no more. 

For submersion weights, I love the ceramic “donuts” that my friend Max Graze made but both the ceramic or glass work well.

I put a jar on the table with every meal.  Because... pickles!

Stay well,

& Love Big

xoxo

Nancy 

* What I had been doing is fermenting the cukes then processing them in jars.  They’re OK but not amazing. The key is to eat these while they’re fresh.

Oregon Grape Jam. Wow!

There is a wonderful shrub called Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium).  The leaves are sharp and spiked like holly.  The fruit is bitter and considered to be inedible at worst, or at least not worth the effort. 

I

But it’s a popular and hearty landscape shrub with a few redeeming characteristics. Oregon Grape  roots can be made into a medicinal tincture with antioxidant properties and the berries make a delicious, earthy jam.

(added 8-10-2020: the roots and stems contain berberine the same component in goldenseal. Thanks Cortney T)

I have just one bush so I made a really small batch.

Oregon Grape Jam

8 oz weight grapes

6 oz water

Cook grapes and water, smashing occasionally, until the grapes break down. About ten minutes.  

Next, put the grape mash through a food mill to pull some of the seeds. My skimpy eight ounces of grapes plus water yielded one cup of juice and mash.

I added 1.5 cups sugar. I know, it seems like a lot.  And it is! I brought the sugar and mash to a boil and added two ounces (1/2 a packet) of pectin.  Let it boil for one minute, then pored it into sterile jars. 

That’s it!

As I was researching this post, (actually trying to remember who I snerched the recipe from) I came across Linda Ziedrich’s web site. It’s lovely. Gardening, cooking, preserving...written by a woman in the Willamette valley no less. Check out her recipe, she adds a bit of brandy or orange liquor to ‘soften’ the jam.

Then I realized that she wrote The Joy of Pickling, my most dog-eared, written-in cook book.*  If you can only afford one pickling book, this is it.  

This photo represents a #coronacooking trifecta.  Home made Cultured butter, sourdough bread and Oregon grape jam. 

Eat Well,

Stay Safe &

Love big.

xoxo Nancy

* Although it drives my book-loving husband crazy, I write in all my cook books. I make notes on substitutions and record dates & other stuff. The cookbook almost serve as a journal, where I write notes to my future self, looking up a recipe. 

Pork bun dough recipe

I've adapted this from an Epicurious recipe.

• 1 cup warm water (105-115°F), divided
• 1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 3 tablespoons sugar plus a pinch
• 2 tablespoons nonfat dried milk
• 3 1/2 cups AP flour
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• Canola oil for greasing and brushing

Easy, Fancy & Frugal #sourdoughcrumpets

Sourdough starter discard is the bane of a frugal baker’s existence.  When cultivating a starter (a combination of equal parts flour and water that, over time, develops a wild yeast strain), there is a lot of good quasi-dough that gets tossed (hopefully not down the drain).

With flour so hard to find, it’s criminal to throw away the starter that’s left over when you make a loaf of bread.

I have a few things I like to make with discard like a simple (but doughy) pancake or Whole wheat sourdough crackers (which are amazing - thank you King Arthur Flour)

But the simplest and tastiest discard recipe is for the humble crumpet. The crumpet is basically a molded pancake.  They’ve been described as a cross between a pancake and an English Muffin.*. (crumpets with strawberry jam)—->

Just add a teaspoon of sugar and a half-teaspoon of salt to a cup (give or take) of starter and mix.  Add 1/2 teaspoon of magic, AKA baking soda and mix again. That’s it.  

While the mixture gets fluffy and pillowy, (it will increase one half it’s volume) heat a griddle or pan to 350 degrees (three or medium on my flat top or stove griddle) and grease up round crumpet molds.  What? No crumpet molds? Use large cookie cutters or do what I did; I used Ateco round cutters. They were different sizes, but who cares?

Place the cutters on the griddle and fill one third of the mold with batter.  This takes a little practice. Especially when the molds are different sizes. So, 1/3 full no matter if you use cookie cutters, crumpet molds or Ateco cutters.

In the photo, the top cutter is too full and the bottom not full enough but the center crumpet is just right.

Pull the cutters off when the edges set, and flip the crumpets over.  Crumpets sound easy — and they are — except when they aren’t. If you pull the forms off too early, the batter will run out.  It’s a simple matter to trim it with a scissors before serving, but the point is to USE the starter, not trim it.

Cut the griddle down to medium low and wait.  Give them a good two minutes.  The centers should be fluffy and moist, not gooey or dry.

Slather with butter, jam, cream cheese or lox. It’s as good a reason as any to have a snack at tea time, 4 pm. 

Thanks for lending me your eyeballs for a minute.

Be well

Much love

Nancy

 

*Note to self. If I can’t afford to make bacon for friends for the holidays, I could make a brunch pack of 4 English muffins, cultured butter and home made jam!

Making Cultured Butter, is it worth the effort?

Oh My Yes it’s worth it!

Anyone who cooks or bakes bread should try it.

Since the pandemic and resulting furlough, I’ve had time on my hands and I’ve been cooking a lot.  (Doh! Everyone is...)

Cooking is what I love anyway, and now I have had time to pursue Big Projects.  Projects like curing bresaola, making good sourdough bread (with a home made starter) (of course), cooking as much from the yard as possible.... things like that.

Truth be told, I haven’t made bresaola yet, and though the Oregon Grape jam was da b0mb yard food, the dandelion experiments were not. 

But the #coronabaking #sourdough bread is fantastic. I’ve been making a half AP, quarter rye and quarter whole wheat (Einkorn wheat* when I can get it) loaf about every five days. I love the process—from starter to scoring to bake—and the way the dough changes with each ‘stretch and fold’.

Naturally I want something Really Great to augment the beautiful sourdough bread. 

So I made cultured butter.  It’s not difficult and it is delicious. Pro tip: you don’t have to culture the cream to make butter, it just makes a better product and if you’re going to make butter, you may as well make cultured butter. 

I snerched the recipe and process from thekitchn.com a great cooking site/rabbit hole. Reading some of the content makes me want to get back to food writing full time, and forget this crazy restaurant work.

Frankly, I don’t have a lot to add to the terrific process piece Dana Velden wrote for The Kitchn.  So read it!

To make this amazing butter, you’ll need a mixer, cheese cloth or butter muslin, strainer, fresh organic Greek style yogurt, good whipping (or heavy) cream that is NOT ultra pasteurized. Also a medium sized bowl. 

The process is simple.  Culture two cups of heavy cream by adding two tablespoons of yogurt.  Mix well, cover with a towel and allow to sit at room temp (about 70-75 degrees) until frothy.  I let it go 24 hours, but it may be ready in 12 hours. 

The cultured cream should be about 60 degrees when you start the buttering process so chill it for an hour or two after culturing (if it’s warm outside) or let it warm up for an hour if it’s been refrigerated after culturing.

Then the fun begins.  IT IS MESSY.  Hopefully you have a stand mixer that you can drape in towels and/or plastic wrap. 

Place a 6” or larger sieve over a medium sized bowl.  Line with cheesecloth or butter muslin.

Start whipping.  Beat the cream with the whip attachment.  First it will whip like whipped cream.  Then it will begin to throw off buttermilk as the fat solids begin to glom on to the whip. IT’S MESSY. 

When you have a solid mass of fat, stop the mixer, wipe the buttermilk off your face, and pour the remaining liquid through the cheesecloth and sieve.  Put the butter in the sieve and gently squeeze it. You want to get out all the buttermilk.

Side note: I had an AhHa!/I’m so dumb moment when I figured out why you can only find fat-free buttermilk. The fat is now butter. Mind blown.

Now the butter needs to be cleaned.  Get an ice bath in a bowl large enough to fit the ice, water and butter.  

Massage it under water until it releases of all the buttermilk. 

The butter itself is rich and slightly 

Yield was about eight oz butter, eight oz buttermilk. Fresh buttermilk is delicious! I almost drank it all but saved some to make buttermilk biscuits. So good.

Will I make it all the time? Hell no. But I will make it for my slut-for-butter husband and probably make a batch or two for gifts.

Be well

Eat well

& Love big

xoxo 

Nancy

*Einkorn is considered an original grain — un messed around with. Look for it, it’s a great grain to grind for flour.