Oktoberfest and Grüner

I think that the weekends my mom comes to visit result in the best Princeton Eats Portland posts, and I know that is because my mom and I do some damn good eating. This past weekend was no different.

Friday night, a friend of mine and I picked up my mom and headed straight to Gustavs/Rheinlander for Oktoberfest. Not one of the three of us expected the festivities that were occurring in the tent covered parking lot adjacent to the restaurant - long tables packed with people guzzling beer out of 1.5 liter steins, a German band playing all the latest polka hits, sausages, pretzels, and fondue galore. Above are some pictures to give you an idea of how awesome it was.

We may have indulged in a bit too much beer, and had it not been for the sausages, pretzels, bread and fondue we ate, it might have been a rough Saturday morning. Instead, my mom and I hopped out of bed around 7am to run 10 miles. "Hopped out of bed" is not really what we did, but we did run the easiest 10 miles either of us have ever run. We agree that perhaps we hadn't yet metabolized all the alcohol from the night before making the run a bit easier. Who knows.

After the run, we wiled away the day eating and drinking and watching football, basically wasting time until dinner. Not to downplay the eating and drinking we did; we had a wonderful breakfast at Bakery Bar, beers at Migration, lunch at Pambiche, then more beers at Migration. Oh, and a hunt for remaining Missoni for Target stuff resulting in a THROW PILLOW for me! And my mom scored an adorable zig zag bikini bottom for $6.  Why it was marked down is a mystery.  A fantastic mystery.

Thank you to whoever returned this to the Mall 205 Target:

Then, the next event: dinner at Grüner. I have been hearing hype about Gruner for many months now, but this was the first chance I got to dine there. We started with a charcuterie plate consisting of, from top right moving clockwise, country pate, rabbit mortadella, salame gentile, liverwurst canapes, speck, spicy coppa, and house made pickles and mustard.

The speck was the star of the show. I have never had speck served like prosciutto. And, yes, I know speck is smoked prosciutto, but I usually see it diced and used in small amounts. Thinly sliced and served alone is a marvelous way to eat it.  Who knew?  The liverwurst canapes and the country pate came in a close second.

Next was frenched green beans, duck breast, blackberries, goat cheese, hazelnuts, black currant vinaigrette, and crisped shallots.  Absolutely delicious.

For the entree, we split grilled golden trout with a white corn ragout, crayfish sauce, and crisped speck and a mixed grill of sudan farms rack lamb chops and cevapcici - spicy slovenian lamb & beef sausages, cherry tomato-parsley salad, and cucumber-yoghurt salad with mint.

And this wasn't all the great food we ate.  Stay tuned for the rest of our eats!

Bon appetit.

Green Papaya Salad

It's a little weird that I am about to talk about cooking classes two days in a row. I have only taken four cooking classes in my whole life, and it just happens that two of them were in the last week. So here goes.


I heard about the Portland Culinary Workshop last winter and knew immediately I wanted to take a class. I mean, they have a turducken class. Any place that teaches turducken is alright in my book. I have been trying to fit a class into my schedule for months, and a couple of weeks ago when I saw that there was a Thai street food class on a night that I could attend, I signed up.


For those of you who read my blog regularly, you may have noticed that I do not specialize in Asian cuisines. The extent of my Asian cooking skills is as follows: peanut sauce, putting Sriracha on things, and curries made from store-bought curry paste. Oh, and my little sister taught me how to make fried rice recently. And I used to make Japanese food with some regularity, but haven't in years. It's strange that I can't/don't cook any Thai, Vietnamese, or Japanese food. Those cultures make some of my favorite foods.  Perhaps it has to do with the plethora of excellent Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants in Portland, but I have decided I am going to change things. The Thai street food class was my first step in doing so.


The menu of items we made, with their Thai names, is as follows:
- Green papaya salad (Som Tom)
- Chive cakes (Kanom Gui Chai)
- Crunchy prawn cakes (Gung Foi Tort)
- Grilled pork skewers (Muu Bing)
- Sticky rice with mango (Kao Niaw)


One of the best parts of the class? I can and will make everything on that list at home. And I have started with the green papaya salad.


Green papaya salad is on my top 5 list of favorite Thai dishes, but I have always been too intimidated by it to try to make it myself. Why spend hours julienning green papaya when I can have it ready for me to pick up in 10 minutes from Pad Thai Kitchen? Loyal readers, check out this gadget:

The only thing the in English on the package of the instrument, which I picked up at Fubonn, was its name: Miracle. And miracle is it. This puppy can be used to quickly and easily julienne green papaya, or anything else that needs julienning. Seriously, it is as easy to use as a vegetable peeler. It can also be used as a corer and a slicer. Brilliant.


Now that I have the Miracle, I don't know why I would ever get green papaya salad for takeout. Okay, yes I do. Two reasons: laziness and sticky rice. Unfortunately, sticky rice is not quick or easy to make. And as much as I love cooking, sometimes I do not want to bust out a mortar and pestle in order to eat dinner.


I have ranted enough, and I think it's time to tell you how to make it.


1. Shred/julienne one green papaya into a large bowl.  

If you can't find the tool I showed above, you can use the big grates on a cheese grater, julienne it by hand, or I hear some food processors and other gadgets can julienne. Or if your initials are SD, SB, or are a family member, I can run to Fubonn and get you the Miracle. If your initials are BK, go to Fubonn your own damn self and get one; you'll need to go to get a green papaya anyway. Actually, SB and family, you have more asian grocery stores near you than you could hope for, so you should be able to find one yourself.  SD, I'll get you one if you want one. Can you get a green papaya in the mid-west? Maybe you'll never need the Miracle gadget. My goodness, I need to get back to the recipe.


Green papaya salad usually has tomatoes, carrots, green mango, green beans and/or whatever other vegetable you want. I added halved heirloom cherry tomatoes and a formerly green mango that had ripened to a regular ripe mango and wouldn't really shred so I only added some of it to mine and ate the rest by itself.  

2. Grind about 3 large cloves garlic and 3 Thai chilies into a paste using a mortar and pestle. I only cut off the stem of the chilies and ground them seeds and all, and I actually used 5 chilies. I like my food spicy, obviously, so adjust to your taste.  

3. Grate about 2 Tbsp palm sugar, add to the paste in the mortar, and grind to combine. I added more like 3 or 4 Tbsp because I also like my green papaya salad sweet. You may be noticing that this recipe can be altered to suit what you like, so alter away.


3. Add the juice of one lime and about 2 Tbsp fish sauce to the mortar, and grind/stir to combine.


4. Pour the dressing over the shredded green papaya and other vegetables and toss. Add about 2 Tbsp coarsely chopped peanuts. Toss again to combine.

5. Place in the refrigerator to marinate for a while. I don't know how long is necessary. Mine was in there for about a half hour because I made the dressing and shredded the papaya and mango then ran to the store to get peanuts and tomatoes. You could probably eat it right away and it would still be delicious.


6.  Serve, ideally with sticky rice to dip into the dressing. As I mentioned earlier, sticky rice is not exactly easy to make.  It involves soaking rice for hours and steaming it in a special steamer. I'll do it someday, but tonight, I served with jasmine rice. Also, the salad is usually served on top of cabbage leaves. I forgot about this until I had already left the store, but I really wish I could have done it up right. Oh well.


Make this recipe, and you will be feeling like you no longer need to get green papaya salad from anywhere except your own kitchen.


I have sort of understatement babbled on in this post, but I have one more thing to talk about. The Missoni for Target collection that launched yesterday. I arrived at Target at 7.50 am yesterday morning in order to be there before the doors opened at 8. Shockingly, many other Portlanders had done the same thing. This was the first designer for Target collection that I have truly had to fight with other people for the things I wanted. Of course I went for the clothes first, and once I had snagged what I wanted there, wandered over to the housewares. I grabbed a couple platters thinking I would likely put them back, but after getting approval from Santina, I bought one. Okay, I bought two. But they're so pretty! And they will be the best thing to happen to this blog since the seahorse plates my older sister got me for Christmas, so I think they were a good buy.  And one is featured in this post, if you hadn't put two and two together yet.


Bon appetit

Steak Frites (and a Missoni manicure)

America's Test Kitchen is a pretty amazing company, and their tweets lately regarding job openings are making me want to move to Massachusetts and test-cook for a living.  For now, I will just real-cook at home in Portland using their pre-tested recipes.

Steak frites is another recipe, like the Ultimate Chili, I spotted in a Cooks Illustrated magazine and have wanted to cook for a long time, but I have been afraid of frying.  After my total success with fried pickles and milanesas, I decided to give frying potatoes a try.

I actually combined two recipes for this recipe, Cook's Country Char-Grilled Steaks and America's Test Kitchen Steak Frites.  I didn't grill the steak, I pan fried it, but I liked the recipe's claim that my steak would have restaurant quality crust.  It did!

Steak frites should really be made with rib-eyes, but I only had T-bones left, so I made a T-bone.  The French would put their noses up to this, but I think the T-bone worked JUST FINE with the meal.

Also, I gave myself a Missoni inspired manicure over the weekend. Adiel over at It's because I think too much recently did a Kate Spade inspired manicure.  As I was browsing through In Style's September issue, I saw the Kate Spade ad that inspired Adiel, and just a few pages later was the Missoni for Target ad.  I thought, brilliant!  A Missoni manicure!  So I texted Santina to tell her about my soon to be Missoni-ed finger nails, and she replies, Ya, Adiel's are rad.  Adiel's?  That bitch stole my idea by thinking of it AND executing it before I could!  You can see my manicure below in the potato cutting picture.

Since this is a cooking blog, I will get back to talking about food now.

Steaks:

1 Rib-eye steak

1/2 tsp cornstarch

1/2 tsp salt

Frites:

2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 large), scrubbed, sides squared off and cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch fries
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 quarts peanut oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

Herb Butter: 
(This is for 4 steaks, so change the quantity depending on how many steaks you are making)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter , softened
1 clove garlic , minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 teaspoon)
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley leaves
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1. Combine salt and cornstarch. Pat steaks dry with paper towels and rub with salt mixture. Arrange on wire rack set inside rimmed baking sheet and freeze until steaks are firm and dry to touch, at least 30 minutes or up to 1 hour.


2. Square the sides off the potatoes and cut lengthwise into quarter-inch by quarter-inch fries, like this:

This picture is included purely to show you my Missoni inspired manicure. The ring I am wearing is from BCBG. I don't really wear rings when I cook, but the spice shelf above my sink and cutting island holds many rings that I have taken off so that I won't get them wet and dirty while I cook. Just before I took the picture, I chose this snake ring off the shelf to make it look like I am well accessorized while I cook.

The above is the "squared off" potato.  Squaring it off makes it easy to cut the potato into quarter-inch by quarter-inch fries.

3.  Rinse cut potatoes in large bowl under cold running water until water turns clear. Cover with cold water and refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to 12 hours.

4. Pour off water, spread potatoes onto kitchen towels, and thoroughly dry. Transfer potatoes to large bowl and toss with cornstarch until evenly coated. Transfer potatoes to wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet and let rest until fine white coating forms, about 20 minutes.


5. Meanwhile, in large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven fitted with clip-on-the-pot candy thermometer, heat peanut oil over medium heat to 325 degrees.


6. Add half of potatoes, a handful at a time, to hot oil and increase heat to high. Fry, stirring with mesh spider or large-hole slotted spoon, until potatoes start to turn from white to blond, 4 to 5 minutes. (Oil temperature will drop about 75 degrees during this frying.) Transfer fries to thick paper bag or paper towels. Return oil to 325 degrees and repeat with remaining potatoes. Reduce heat to medium and let fries cool while cooking steaks, at least 10 minutes.

7. Make herb butter by combining all ingredients in a bowl.


8. Heat a 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Lay steaks in pan, leaving at least 1/4 inch between them. Cover skillet with lid, if you have one, otherwise cover with foil.  Cook, not moving steaks, until well browned, about 4 minutes. Using tongs, flip steaks and continue to cook until instant-read thermometer inserted in center registers 120 degrees for rare to medium-rare, 3 to 7 minutes. Transfer steaks to large plate, top with butter, and tent loosely with foil; let rest while finishing fries.


9. Increase heat under Dutch oven to high and heat oil to 375 degrees. Add half of fries, a handful at a time, and fry until golden brown and puffed, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to thick paper bag or paper towels. Return oil to 375 degrees and repeat with remaining fries. Season fries with salt and serve immediately with steaks.

As you can see in the picture at the top of the post, my fries were not beautifully puffed and golden brown like they are supposed to be.  They were pretty tasty though.  And the steak was perfection.

Bon appetit.