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In general, I’ve been disappointed by most of the bakery I’ve eaten in Portland. It just seems like a lot of the bakeries around here take a lot of shortcuts with their products. However, in the interests of research, I’m always up for trying out a new bakery. I’d heard good things about Criollo (4727 N.E. Fremont St) and the other day one of my friends and I went to try it out.

And it was sooo worth the drive. I had a passionfruit pie (really more of a tart) filled with the most amazing passionfruit curd and covered with whipped cream. I’m not a big passionfruit fan in general, but this little pie changed my view of the fruit completely.

My friend had a slice of carrot cake that she assured me was really tasty as well.

I can’t wait to go back.

Jon told me I should write something nice about him in my blog, so here goes.

If you were a dessert, you would be a yummy dessert, something with coconut and chocolate.
If you were a cheese, you’d be the finest Jarlsberg.
If you were a movie, you’d be a cool movie with ninjas, or pirates, or kung fu.
If you were a crab, you’d be a cute little hermie, not just the kind that make you itch
If you were a meat, you’d be an organic, no animal byproduct-fed, Painted Hills (or possibly Nieman Ranch) beef.
If you were a furniture, you’d be one of those really cool end-of-the bed benches that I want.
If you were a video game, you’d be Super Monkey Ball 2 (but only Monkey pool, because that’s the coolest).

Anyways, you get the idea. Love you honey!

Since I went to school for baking and work as a baker at a restaurant, when I go out to eat I usually look at the dessert menu, both out of curiousity and just as inspiration for new ideas. In Portland, when restaurant desserts are mentioned, the name Papa Haydn invariably comes up. I’d never been there, but I’d heard that it was pretty good. We decided to go for my birthday, which was in November. I had an excellent cheeseburger and fries, and then it was time to peruse the dessert menu. The night we were there, there were about 10 different tortes, cakes, and cheesecakes, plus 4 or 5 other desserts, from which to choose. I decided on the banana cream pie, since sometimes the simplest, homiest desserts can be the most telling of a chef’s skill. And I was greatly disappointed. The bananas were rock hard, bordering on green, and the pastry cream was flavorless mush. I made much more satisfying banana cream pie at home when I was 10 years old. But I figured maybe it was a fluke, everyone has an off day once in a while.

Last night I was at a friend’s house, and she decided that she had a craving for cake, specifically coconut cake. Immediately I thought of Caprial’s Bistro since last time we were there, coconut cake was on the menu. But alas, it was Sunday, and they’re closed on Sundays and Mondays. So I thought why not give Papa Haydn another try. I know they’ll have something with coconut in it. And so off we went, hopes high, in search of coconutty goodness. When we arrived, this time at the East Location (on Milwaukie in Westmoreland) it was relatively quiet, and the kitchen didn’t seem too busy, so I decided to have dinner before getting down the the more important business of dessert. I had goat cheese and yukon gold potato ravioli in a cream sauce with bacon and caramelized onions. They were really good, especially since I’m not usually a huge goat cheese fan. Then I took my friend’s 9-year-old daughter with me up to the dessert case. After a serious debate on the relative merits of various cakes, cheesecakes, and tortes, I decided on a slice of lemon chiffon cake, my friend had a slice of german chocolate, and her daughter had chocolate mint truffle torte. After deconstructing the desserts (my friend is also a pastry chef), we were unimpressed. It should be impossible to have dry, crumbly chocolate cake layers in a german chocolate cake, due to the gooiness of the filling moistening them, but Papa Haydn managed it. The cake was hard (stale?) dry and crumbly. I had a similar problem with the lemon chiffon cake. The lemon curd filling was good, nice and tart, but the cake was really dense and crumbly. I don’t think that they use soaking syrup on the layers, and that simple (and relatively inexpensive) step would dramatically improve their cakes. The buttercream on the lemon cake was also mediocre; it had an off flavor and a slick mouthfeel, presumably due to the use of shortening along with the butter.

The main reason I’m so critical of Papa Haydn’s desserts is that there’s no excuse for those kinds of problems at that kind of establishment. They were charging $7-$8 for a slice of cake. With those kinds of prices, they should be able to use the best quality ingredients, and no skimping or shortcuts. I might go there again for a meal, but I’ll go somewhere else for dessert.

As a side note, another one of my friend’s calls Papa Haydn “Expensive Dessert,” hence the name of the entry.

So in light of my near-obsession with good food and the variety of reasons that people visit my blog, I’ve decided to do a separate series of food related reflections. Foodstuff will mainly be restaurant reviews, interesting food-related stories, and recipes. I’ve already had one site link to it, which makes me think that there are interested people out there.

Let me know what you think.

For some reason all the planets were aligned in a “give Heather a hard time” configuration yesterday. It was ridiculous, I spent about 2 hours on the phone trying to get through to the Tualatin Hills Rec Department to register for a class with absolutely no success. More on that in my other blog. I got a chip in the windshield of the car I’ve only had for a WEEK. I bashed my toes on a headboard I’ve been meaning to put up. There were no movies playing I wanted to see. And my friend was supposed to call me so we could get together, but she didn’t. Plus various other annoying things. So I decided that the only way the day could possibly be redeemed was if I had a spactacularly marvelous dinner.

For various reasons, I decided on clarklewis, a restaurant in SE on Water. Being that it was a Saturday night, I couldn’t get an early reservation, and we ended up settling for a 9:30 slot. I’m glad we waited.

The building itself is pretty industrial, with interesting glass accents and an open kitchen. And by open I don’t mean one wall slightly shorter than the others. I mean it’s actually part of the dining room. You can see everything being prepared, from salads to desserts. My poor husband had to deal with me staring over his shoulder the whole meal as I watched the action.

One of the unique things about the menu is that you have three size options with every item: small (tapas-sized), large (normal entree sized), and family. We elected to get salads as our starter, and Jon had an amazing radicchio salad with pancetta and walnuts. The smoky/saltiness of the pancetta was perfect with the bitter greens and the walnuts were just the right amount of crunch. I had a butter lettuce salad with a citrus dressing and a parmesean-y type of cheese. I was expecting the dressing to be sweet, anything that says citrus usually is, but this wasn’t sweet at all. It was tangy and very citrus-y but not cloying in any way. Really good and refreshing. The only issue I had with the starters was that we had to pay for our bread. In my opinion, four dollars for a loaf of (admittedly good) bread is a little steep. I could understand if they baked it in-house, but according to the menu, it’s from Ken’s. The olive oil to dip it in was really good, fruity and peppery, but next time I’ll save a little cash and forgo the bread portion of the entertainment.

For the main event, I had hen and fontina ravioli (a little pretentious sounding, I thought…I would have just said chicken..) and the only complaint I had was that there weren’t enough of them. In all fairness, the waiter told me that they were labor-intensive to make and I’d only get five in the large-sized order. Next time I’ll order the family size, just for me The sauce was a really intense, chicken-y rich pan sauce, like the best chicken soup you’ve ever had condensed down to a slightly syrupy reduction. I used some of my four dollar bread to mop up what was left on my plate. Jon had risotto with chunks of salami and cheese. I’m used to my risottos being a little creamier, but the flavor was excellent. He also got the large size, which ended up being about a cup, maybe a little less, in the middle of a pretty generously-sized plate. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, if they put the large sized entrees on an smaller plate, they might actually seem a little more…well…large. But I don’t do this for a living (baking is totally different) and so maybe I’m wrong.

Desserts were a mixed bag. I had a Dagoba Chocolate Torte with caramelized bananas. It was extremely rich, very chocolatey and not too sweet. Just how I like my desserts. I couldn’t have done it better myself. Jon had a meyer lemon tart. I love lemon tarts. I made him order it just so I could try it. This one though, I could have happily pushed to the side to eat more expensive bread. Lemon tarts are supposed to be puckery, not astringent. It seemed like sugar was completely absent from the ingredient list. Jon said it reminded him of eating lemon-scented dish detergent. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it definately wasn’t to my taste. On a postive note, though, the crust was really good.

All in all, I would definately go back for more; some of the items we didn’t try looked really promising, and I’m hoping the lemon tart was just a fluke. Next time, though I’ll go during the week so we can snag an earlier table.

After some consideration and more than few visits to restaurants around Portland, I decided to create a separate blog for food-related musings. Mostly I’m envisioning restaurant reviews (and rants) with some pictures and some recipes if I come up with something truly worth sharing.

Last week I went to a restaurant on Division called Hedge House with one of my friends. We were really hungry and after discovering that Pix Pastisserie doesn’t do much in the way of a lunch menu, we ended up at Hedge House since it was next door. Upon reflection, I think we would have been better served to eat peanuts from the gas station down the street. In other words, it SUCKED. I had mac and cheese, which is pretty difficult to mess up. But they managed it. I don’t know what recipe they’re using , but I imagine it goes something like this:

Boil some noodles. Add some milk. Wave some cheese over the pot, but do not allow it to come into actual contact with the noodles. Add cayenne pepper, about 2 tablespoons per serving. Cover with stale bread crumbs, bake and plate. Garnish with lettuce that’s at least a week past its prime and serve. After service, do not under any circumstances check to see if the customer enjoyed their dish. Because you know that they didn’t.

Supposedly the sandwiches are good, and in all fairness they did look appealing. However, I’m not going to take the chance of being dissappointed in another meal. There are too many other good restaurants to explore in Portland.

So I read a couple more books:

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident
…Eoin Colfer

Peter and the Starcatchers
…Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

So my friend Alison and I spent the day yesterday (and part of today) making tamales. I’d never made them before, but they weren’t too difficult. I don’t know how they turned out yet, they’re in the steamer now. But in an hour or so I’ll see if the effort was worth it.

On a different note, I went to Caprial’s Bistro for dinner last night. I’d heard good things about it and had been meaning to try it since we moved here but never gotten around to it. I’m sorry I waited so long…it was super yummy. I had a burger and fries, which were both pretty good, and for dessert lemon blueberry bread pudding which was excellent. I was so full when I left. Sometime I’m going to have to go back and try something a little more adventurous.

I know I still haven’t put pics of the new car up, but I really will do that soon

So (suprise suprise) I’ve been kinda slacking in the posting department lately…hopefully I’ll be a little more on the ball this month. Jon and I had a pretty nice (though relatively uneventful) holiday season. On the way home from the New Year’s party we went to, Jon and I were reflecting on 2004. It was a good year, for the most part. I made some incredibly cool new friends, experienced the joys and tribulations of culinary school, got a job that I truly love, and those are just some of the highlights. I hope that 2005 brings more of the same, and on that note, I did make a couple of resolutions.

1. Be healthier…both in body and spirit; excercise more, eat better, and worry less.
2. Be more disciplined…clean the kitchen before it becomes a Superfund site, pay the bills before they’re due, and
check the mail more than once a week!
3. Be the best wife I can be…make more time for Jon, be more flexible and less arguementative

Since those are all really important to me, hopefully I’ll be able to follow through with them

On an unrelated note…I got a new car. As much as I loved the pink truck, it’s time had come. So now I have a white ‘03 Chevy Impala. I’ve only had it for 3 days, but so far I really love it. I’ll put pics up when I get a chance.

And more books:

Summon the Keeper
Second Summoning
Long Hot Summoning
…Tanya Huff

The King of Dreams
…Robert Silverberg

Coraline
…Neil Gaiman

Bones of the Moon
…Jonathan Carroll

The Speed of Dark
…Elizabeth Moon

Bite
…Laurell Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, etc…

To all my family and friends, I hope that your new year is filled with love, laughter, and joy.