Virginia Willis' Alphabet Soup: IACP, PDX, PRS, and SPA!
I had a GREAT week in Portland for IACP, but am in serious need of a bike ride, yoga, and some real exercise, not to mention a hardcore deep tissue massage to remove the gnarly gremlin that has moved into my shoulder blade from toting too much heavy luggage. It's mean. Mean and mad. AWESOME food. Pok Pok was a real fave. The hot wings are frankly something you just kind of want to roll around in they are so good. Ping was good, too. Big new experiment from both of those experiences will be the flavored drinking vinegars. Stay tuned. The Heathman Hotel was OUTSTANDING. Their tag is "where service is an art" and they are not kidding. James Beard award-winning Best Chef Northwest Philippe Boulot, originally from Normandy, is brilliant. He trained in Paris with Joël Robuchon. Think Rock Star. Very charming, handsome Rock Star. Everything I put in my mouth at the Heathman (and one day, practically everything including breakfast, lunch, and dinner originated there) was absolutely superb. Seriously perfect execution. The Dungeness Crab Salad with Mango and Avocado? Sure, I knooow, that's been done and done again, frankly. But this one? A perfect combination of sour, salty, bitter, sweet. French influence runs deep in the heart of Northwest cooking. Exquisite.
One night we enjoyed razor clams the chef had dug up from the sand himself from the Washington State coast just the day before. The minerality and sweetness was positively and distinctively seductive in my mouth. Rich lamb tongue salad was counteracted with an bracing mustard vinaigrette; meltingly soft smoky cedar plank salmon was paired with sweet, green sauteed pea shoots; rabbit was stuffed with meaty mushroom farcie, wrapped in caul fat and roasted until smoky and brown.
Veal sweetbreads on a perfect julienne of apple and pear with bitter lettuce. Even thinking back to that bite induces a dreamy sigh of contentment from me as I type. The Heathman food was really amazing. Very, very balanced flavors and just really good cooking.
IACP, or the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference was great. Kim Severson , NYT journalist and author of Spoon Fed (Ahem, BUY IT.) enjoyed her inner Ellen with Ruth Riechl. Ruth Riechl addressed the Big Elephant in the Room about the demise of Gourmet magazine. The opening reception was amazing with a great assembly of restaurants and representatives from the PDX street food culture. There were tons and tons of great seminars and of course, the cookbook awards. The best of the best for the year. One of the books nominated for an IACP award was Golden Door Cooks at Home by Chef Dean Rucker and Marah Stets.
Um, no caul fat. None. Not the first bit.
Spas? Their point is to make that stuff go away.
Marah and I were at LaVarenne together working with Anne Willan back in the 90s.
We were laughing last week. I walked into the kitchen the first day, scared to death, really. Thinking I was going to peel potatoes or chop onions or such, I somewhat hesitantly leaned in to ask Marah, "So, um, what can I do?"
She cleanly looked at me and replied, "Cook dinner."
Alrightly, then.
And there I was and it was most likely the best words that could have been spoken. Those two words meant, "You are a cook, so cook. This is a busy place. Sink or swim, but don't weigh anyone down in the meanwhile. Get to work. Don't be scared. And, when you are done? Do the dishes." I have long admired her no nonsense New England attitude. She hired me to do some work on The All New Joy of Cooking; it was an real honor to work with her. Lest I make her sound like an ogre, she is not. She's an absolute master at French, speaking proficiently in lyrical, dulcet tones, and yet was always exceedingly patient with my clumsy butchery of her adopted tongue. She's a dear beautiful, smart woman and a first rate editor and writer.
Ok, enough with the niceties and back to that caul fat.
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