Travel: Are Truffles Really Worth All The Fuss Made About Them?

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ROBERT BONNELL, OUR CORRESPONDENT IN FRANCE, SAYS YES

Editor’s Note: Truffles, those little knobs of fungus, have long been a prized ingredient in French and Italian cooking, and in recent years have begun to appear on more and more high-end American restaurant menus. Are they really worth their high price and do they live up to all the hype?  Robert Bonnell takes us on a visit to a winter truffle market in France, and explains what the fuss is all about. And yes, you read the above photo correctly, those lovely little buggers will cost you 700 € (about $1,000) a kilogram. Robert reports:

The black truffle, tuber melanosporum, is a devilishly expensive fungus which lives underground, associated with the root systems of oaks and several other trees. In France, truffles are harvested from late November until early March and are considered a great delicacy, their unique taste and aroma making them an exalted addition to a variety of dishes.

Commonly associated with the more southerly French regions of Périgord and Provence, black truffles are also found in the southern Loire Valley. Some are still found wild in the woods, but many come from plantations of truffle oaks, grown from seedlings whose roots were infused with truffle spores. But even in the plantations, a truffle hunter needs help to find them. Once performed by pigs, locating truffles is now the work of dogs. (As one purveyor of truffles says, it’s not easy to talk a pig into getting into the car.) At any rate, an effective truffle-hunting dog at work is a wonder to behold.

Travel: Notes From A Foodie Weekend in Portland

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It’s not exactly a secret that Portland, Oregon has become one of America’s premiere food cities, known as it is for its fresh, local, seasonal, and largely organic cuisine. So, when I made a quick pre-Christmas trip there to visit my fellow foodie friend, Adele, I knew I was in store for some wonderful eating.  I was not disappointed. I was barely off the plane when Adele whisked me to Tan Tan, a friendly, family-run Vietnamese joint in the close-in western suburb of Beaverton. This is an easy-to-love restaurant, serving really fresh food, casual and inexpensive.  Reviewers on Yelp rave about the bahn mi sandwiches, but I found the more unusual Vietnamese crepe to be completely satisfying, and not to forget the spring roll. Most spring rolls don’t get me excited, but this vegan version, stuffed with seitan, tofu, and the usual rice noodles and veggies, delivered so much clean flavor you really didn’t even need to dip it in the rich peanut sauce. Pho, the much loved Vietnamese noodle soup, is  another specialty here.

Several factors have contributed to Portland’s rise as a food city. The relatively mild climate and proximity to the fertile Willamette and Hood River vallies would be two, but also there is Portland’s comparatively low cost of living which has attracted young chefs, because the cost of opening a food business is a fraction of what it would be in Manhattan, San Francisco or most big cities. Diners benefit as well, as prices nearly everywhere seem to be downright reasonable compared to the Bay Area (and Oregonians love to rub in the fact that there’s no sales tax). It would take a couple weeks of eating and food shopping in and around Portland to even skim the surface of its food culture, but in a few days, I was able to squeeze in quite a bit.  My report is after the jump.

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Photos: From the top–1) Vietnamese Crepe with dipping sauce at Tan Tan in Beaverton, 2) Food carts in the S.W. Alder area of downtown Portland, and click on this video for a humorous, but informative report on Portland’s food cart scene. , 3) Retail store at Bob’s Red Mill, 4) Vegetarian Spring roll at Tan Tan contained both seitan and tofu, really yummy!

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Travel: Celebrating Winter Solstice Downtown (Where All The Lights Are Bright)

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I’m not entirely sure why, but this is my favorite time of year. Perhaps it’s a holdover from childhood, when year’s end meant two weeks off from school, and of relative freedom.  But I do think it’s deeper  than that. It has to do, I think, with the change of season, with the solstice, when the nights are longest and hours of sunlight the fewest. Because the sun is lower in the sky, colors are more vivid, and everything feels lighter and less tense. It’s the time of the big yin, a time to turn inward, a time for less action and more contemplation. Our bodies, whether we acknowledge it or not, are attuned to these changes. For many plants and animals, winter is a time of rest, and shouldn’t it also be for us? I wonder if some of the extra illness so many of us experience in winter isn’t partly because we fail to heed this seasonal call to rest, and instead press ahead with ever more work and social activity.

Having said that, it’s also true that there’s a great deal to enjoy now. As the weather turns colder, people seem to gather more closely, and the bustle of cities becomes more alluring. I’m not much of a shopper, but once a year or so I enjoy the crowds in downtown San Francisco, which at this time reach an almost New York-like intensity. I agreed to meet up with my friends Susanne Jensen and Sophia Hummell to take in the music, the decorations, to people watch and to have a pre-Christmas lunch. Although it was the Winter Solstice and only four days before Christmas, with temperatures in the 60′s, and a bright sun, the crowds seemed both larger and more relaxed than usual. It felt as if we’d all taken a pledge to be in a really good mood. And so, here’s a little bit of what I saw, on my own, and with Susanne and Sophia on the shortest day of year. Whether or not you observe a holiday this week, I hope you are able to slow down, take a breath, and enjoy this special time of the year. Best wishes in all you do.

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Photos: Top–The world’s largest gingerbread house? Who knows, but you can walk through this edible marvel in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel, on Mason Street at the top of Nob Hill. Occasionally, the story goes, people nibble on it and the hotel pastry chefs must make repairs.  Above: A Christmas tree and menorah side-by-side in Union Square. We were dismayed that neither this tree nor any of the the other trees we saw was real.

Panettone, the traditional Italian Christmas cake, stacked nearly to the ceiling at Molinari's, on Columbus Avenue in North Beach.

Travel: 16th Century China Comes Alive In Portland’s Magical Lan Su Garden

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Travel is one of the things in life which has brought me a lot of joy. To visit historical and cultural sites can make vivid times and places we’ve only read about–Kyoto’s temples or the old city of Venice, to cite two places I’ve been fortunate to experience. I was reminded of this last week when I visited my friend and fellow foodie, Adele, in Portland, Oregon. As a relatively new city, Portland can’t compete with the glories of  Kyoto or Venice, but as I strolled through its remarkable Chinese Garden, I did feel transported to a far-away world.

Located downtown on the edge of Portland’s small Chinatown, the Lan Su Chinese Garden dates only from 2000, but is a recreation of a wealthy family’s walled garden compound in 16th Century China. Most of the materials, including 500 tons of rock, came from China, and sixty-five artisans from Suzhou spent ten months in Portland completing the project (Suzhou is one of China’s great historic cities, and eight of its gardens are UNESCO world heritage sites). Designed by Kuang Zhen Yan, Lan Su is conceived as a spiritual utopia, a place to leave behind the cares of the harried world, and is laid out as a series of views framed by windows, doors and pavilions. Underlying its design is the Chinese concept of yin and yang, the idea that the world can be seen as a weaving of opposite, but complementary forces, such as light and dark or earthy and ethereal. As calming and relaxing as this garden is,  it is also stimulating because all the senses must be alert to fully observe the layers of intricate detail.

Portland is probably one of America’s under-appreciated cities, and well worth a visit even in winter, and it’s Chinese Garden is a must-visit if you do go. In a future post, I’ll blog about what I was able to observe of Portland’s food culture during my brief visit.

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Photos: Top–a view across the pond to the Tower of Cosmic Reflections which is used as a teahouse. Above–the Moon Locking Pavilion from which “on a clear night you can see the reflection of the moon as a shimmering spotlight in the center of the lake, locked in by the pavilions’s shadow.”–Lan Su Chinese Garden guide book. See more photos after the jump (and click on any photo to see an enlarged version).

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Travel: The Hunt For Amazing Wild Mushrooms In France’s Loire Valley

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Editor’s note: Learning how to forage wild mushrooms has long been on my to-do list, and somehow never seems to get done. It’s the sort of hunting which appeals to me, and what can be more local, natural, organic and delicious than wild mushrooms? Robert Bonnell, my friend and correspondent in France, recently went tramping through countryside in the Anjou region of France’s Loire Valley with experienced mushroom hunter, Henri de Fontanges. Here, in words and photos, is what he found:

Hunting wild mushrooms is a passion in France, and the location of a favorite mushroom hunting ground is a closely guarded secret.  Best if it’s not on private property, to avoid the risk of having your harvest confiscated or stomped on by an abuse-hurling property owner (something the author once witnessed in Brittany).

It is said that all French pharmacists are trained to tell the difference between edible and poisonous mushrooms, but this is scoffed at by many. Therefore to avoid being poisoned, the French often stick to gathering certain safe, easy to recognize genera – chanterelles, morels (which are safe when cooked) and cêpes (pronounced “sep”), above all the cêpe de Bordeaux, or Boletus edulis, what English speakers usually call the porcini mushroom.

Cêpes get fairly large, with a thick stipe (stem) up to 5 inches high and a cap up to 10 inches across. They have a short growing season in the fall during warm periods after a rain. One recognizable difference from most other mushrooms is that they don’t have gills under the cap – instead they have a spongy area there with tubes through which the spores are released. This makes identification much easier, but the mushroom hunter is not out of the woods (so to speak) yet, since there’s a cêpe relative, Boletus satanas, which can deliver a nasty stomach-ache. Luckily it’s red and bleeds blue when cut, so identification is not difficult.

Even considering their large size, cêpes can be difficult to see, since they’re close in color to the dead grass, tree trunks and plant litter of the forested areas in which they grow. When you finally do spot one, and then another and another, in a spot you’ve searched without success several times already, it can be a very satisfying experience. It’s like one of those pictures which first appears to consist only of a meaningless array of dots, and then suddenly you look at it just right and a 3-D image jumps out at you.

This year has been relatively dry in Anjou, in the western Loire River valley, so the cêpes are not appearing in the great numbers they do some years.  There are also a lot of rival mushroom hunters tramping around the woods.  And that’s not the only competition for the cêpes - beetles burrow right in, and slugs love them.  And, while we may eat snails here, slugs are definitely not considered a delicacy. It’s a rare cêpe which hasn’t had at least one hunk bitten out of it.  So we were delighted when Henri de Fontanges, the experienced mushroom hunter who had brought us to this spot, brushed some dead leaves aside and found the double cêpe de Bordeaux shown in the photo.  It was nearly perfect.  Weighing in at 750 grams (1 lb. 10 oz.), it could have fetched the equivalent of $25 at a local market.  Instead it will serve as part of the delicious topping for a homemade pizza.

When this prize was added to basket already holding several handfuls of chanterelles and a couple of hedgehog mushrooms, it wasn’t a bad haul for an afternoon’s stroll in the woods. (More photos after the jump…)

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Robert Bonnell will be publishing an eBook in early 2012 reviewing the off-the-beaten-path cave restaurants, hotels, artisans’ workshops, museums, etc. of France’s Loire Valley.

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Food and Culture: The Amazing Story of Minnesota’s Thriving Food Co-ops

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As some of you know, I’m in the middle of my annual visit to Minnesota. I’m spending ten days with family and friends, and mostly with my 89-year-old mother. Although I’m on vacation, I can’t help noting the status of Minnesota’s food culture.  Two years ago, in my first blog post, I wrote about the notorious food-on-a-stick at the Minnesota State Fair. I didn’t visit the fair this year, but I did check out something which gives me a lot of hope, and that is Minnesota’s vigorous food co-op movement.

Co-ops (short for co-operatives) were brought to Minnesota by northern European immigrants in the 19th Century and thrived well into the 20th. Co-ops are businesses owned by their customers, who buy shares and either receive a discount on purchases or a percentage of the profits, and are usually governed by an elected board of directors. Fifty or sixty years ago, it wasn’t unusual for small Minnesota towns to have a co-op gas station, creamery, grocery store, even a general merchandise store. As those co-ops declined, a new style of co-op, inspired by the alternative culture movement, sprang up all around the country, really, but these new co-ops seem to have endured especially well in Minnesota.

Needing to shop for dinner, my mom and I headed to the new and nearby St. Peter Food Co-op. St. Peter is a college town of fewer than 10,000 people deep in Minnesota farm country, but this market is one any sophisticated urban neighborhood would be happy to claim. I was thrilled to see how roomy, well-stocked and beautiful a store it is.

The St. Peter Food Co-op first opened as an all-volunteer, storefront business in July of 1979. It expanded about ten years later, survived a horrendous tornado which hit the town in 1998 and moved into its present site this past April. The co-op raised $900,000 in new and renewed memberships and received a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to finance the more than $3 million it took to buy and renovate a sixty-year-old auto dealership into a stylish natural foods supermarket. Although the store sells a wide range of goods, they feature local and organic foods as much as possible and have some 500 items in bulk. I was impressed to see an attractive deli, salad bar, in-house bakery, and inside and outdoor seating.  In short, I wish this store were in my neighborhood!

What is perhaps more impressive is that this is just one of more than forty food co-ops in Minnesota, ranging from the Wedge in Minneapolis which operates its own organic farm (and where I used to shop), to the Countryside Co-op in tiny Hackensack (population 313) in north central Minnesota. I’m heartened to see that this healthy food movement is not confined to hip, urban enclaves, but is spread throughout the state. As depressed as I sometimes get about the state of America’s food and health, I am immensely cheered to see how people here in Minnesota are working to create healthy soil, nourishing food and meaningful work. To everyone involved in this movement, I say a hearty thank-you and best wishes for a bright future!

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Photos–Top: Locally-grown, mostly organic produce. Above: The St. Peter Food Co-op faces Minnesota Avenue in downtown St. Peter (more photos after the jump).

Travel: My Father’s Color Images of Southern California in the 1940′s

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Even though I’ve lived in a real place called “California” for half my life, the California of my imagination continues to have a strong hold. I remember as a boy in the 1950’s watching televised coverage of the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl Parade from sunny California, while the temperature outside our Minnesota farmhouse was a frigid 10 degrees below zero. And then there were the colored slides my father would show of life in California where he and my mother lived in the early 1940’s. In my childhood imagination it was an exotic place, warm and alluring. Not surprisingly, I came out to investigate as soon as I finished college, and to live, a few years later.

Those colored slide images fascinate me still.  They show a life long gone, and a place just barely recognizable. In the early forties, California had no freeways, and only eight million inhabitants. An yet, it was not a time of innocence. World War II loomed, and then transformed California forever. Spanish architecture, movie studios, cars, oranges and beaches figure prominently in the California of our imagination and in these photos. These images were shot by my father, Ed Alinder, on 35 mm Kodachrome film in Southern California in 1940-44, and on a visit in 1947. Many more photos, after the jump.

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Photos–Top: Downtown Los Angeles. The L.A. area had an extensive streetcar network before it was ripped out in the 1950′s. Above: Venice beach in 1947, gymnasts and volleyball players outnumber body builders. (Click on any photo to see an enlarged version)

Travel: Celebrating The Stinging Nettle In The French Village of La Haye-de-Routot

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Editor’s Note:  Annette and Robert Bonnell, my friends and correspondents in France, love to visit the various food and cultural festivals put on by villages and towns throughout rural France.  Here is their latest report:

Every April the Norman village of La Haye-de-Routot comes alive for one weekend with its nettle festival.  Located three quarters of the way from Paris to the coastal town of Le Havre, the village draws several thousand visitors to Orties Folies (“Nettle Madness”), the annual celebration of this prickly plant.

Annette and I discovered culinary nettles a few years ago when we ordered a nettle pizza in Berkeley.  It was great.  So when we learned that the nettle festival was taking place around the time we would be in Paris, we decided to go.  This involved taking the 45-minute train trip to Vernon, near Monet’s Giverny gardens, and then renting a car for the additional hour to drive to La Haye-de-Routot.

On the French Atlantic Coast: Not All “Old Salts” Are Old!

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My friend and correspondent in France, Robert Bonnell, visits salt harvesting areas on the French Atlantic Coast frequently and reports that artisanal salt harvesting is still very much alive.  He wrote about salt from Guérande and the Île de Ré here, and below he describes harvesting in another nearby area.  It is good to know that a younger generation is learning a craft so vital to our well being. Robert’s report:

“The saunier (salt harvester) in the poster, Yohan-Paul Eveno, mentioned that there were only three active sauniers nowadays in the salt marshes near the town of Les Sables d’Olonne, although there used to be a lot more.  It appears that the profession never completely died out, though, and one of the three is now in his eighties and has been a saunier all his life.  Yohan-Paul learned the tricks of the trade from the old salt, if that’s what we can call him.  He knows that in Guérande the profession is called “paludier”, but insists that everywhere else in France it’s “saunier”.  For the record, Les Sables d’Olonne is down the coast from Guérande, and up the coast from the Ile de Ré, both of which we’ve described before.”

Restaurants: Will Iron Chef Morimoto Be A Winner In Downtown Napa?

Sushi and salad chefs at work during the lunch rush.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably noticed that our food and especially our restaurants are more and more influenced by what we see on TV and view on line. Celebrity chefs are everywhere: starring in TV shows, writing cookbooks, opening restaurants, blogging, shilling lines of prepared food. While the whole media circus aspect of the food business doesn’t interest me much, I admit I was curious when I heard that Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto was opening a flagship restaurant just a few miles up the road in Napa.  I promised myself that I would check it out, and planned to until I looked at the menu where appetizers at dinner run from $15-20, and entrees begin at $23 and top out at $80 for an Australian wagyu beef steak. For $110 you’ll get an omakase tasting menu. A little rich for my blood. However, I noticed that at lunch you can now order a four-part set menu for $25. That I could do, and so with my friends Bob and Frank, I entered the world of superstar chefdom… (more after the jump)

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The $25 set lunch menu. Clockwise from top left: vegetable tempura, miso soup (or salad), 5 or 6 pieces of sushi, a protein-based entree (tofu, fish, chicken beef or pork).