We at Chez Wacky are long-time devotees of the Beaverton Farmers Market. It’s still the best market in the Portland metro area, both in terms of selection and shopping experience.

Here’s a little something I whipped up yesterday. Let’s call it:

The Market Cocktail, v. 1.0

Ingredients:

• Fresh strawberries from Denison Farms in Corvallis, OR
• CranHoney sticks from Little Oak Farms in Cornelius, OR
• Chopin potato vodka
• 7-Up or sparkling water
• ice

Method:

Slice 3-4 ripe strawberries and muddle with contents of one CranHoney stick and as much vodka as you like to pour. Add ice and top with a splash of 7-Up or sparkling water. Enjoy with your lovely spouse, and toast the coming of summer!

Chioggia beets with caramelized onions and garlic and pan-seared green beans an zucchini with crisp basil, Parmesan and lemon zest

I love beets. Despite this love, and despite having been a produce guy for 10 years, I never tried Chioggia beets until I grew them in my garden this year. They are an Italian heirloom variety, milder than your average beet, and they don’t stain. The first batch I harvested, I roasted to bring out their sweetness, but tonight I wanted to steam them to appreciate their unadulterated complexity.

I also harvested the first big batch of green beans tonight, and some baby zucchinis, and the basil’s still kicking of course, so I whipped this up for dinner tonight.

Ingredients

• 5 medium-small Chioggia beets, peeled and sliced
• 1 fistful of green beans with the ends cut off
• 2 baby zucchini, sliced thinly
• 1/4 sweet onion, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
• zest from 1/4 lemon
• juice from 1/4 lemon
• a couple sprinkles freshly grated Parmesan or other dry cheese
• several leaves fresh basil, sliced length-wise, plus sprigs for garnish
• olive oil
• steamed rice
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

Heat olive oil over medium-high flame in a cast-iron skillet. (Use more olive oil than you think you’ll need; this will not only cook the onions, garlic, beans and zucchini, it will dress the beets and rice.) Caramelize onions. While onions are caramelizing, steam beats.

Once onions are starting to brown, add green beans, thinly-sliced zucchini, and thinly-sliced garlic; sear well. Add salt and pepper and lemon juice. Add a little olive oil if it doesn’t look like enough.

Arrange beets on a bed of rice, top with skillet mixture, Parmesan cheese and lemon zest. Garnish with a sprig of basil. Enjoy wth a glass of Pinot Griggio and your super-hero spouse (serves 2).

Tonight’s garden feast: capellini with garden fresh pesto, rustic whole wheat bread, and rice salad with fresh green beans, zucchini, basil, and jalepeño. I haven’t made pesto for years, but it’s not hard to remember.

Pesto

• fresh basil
• garlic
• olive oil
• some kind of dry, grated cheese (Parmesan works great)
• pine nuts
• salt to taste

(You could use some other kind of nuts — walnuts, almonds — but then don’t call it pesto.) We’ve got some old food processor I never use, but it’s perfect for this. Go cut a bunch of basil. I used the equivalent of about four bunches at the store. Rinse the bugs and dust off them, the strip all the leaves (and the tender buds) into the food processor. Add several cloves of garlic, a couple glugs of olive oil and some grated cheese. Puree the heck out it and set it aside in the fridge. Toss with hot pasta later.

Rice Salad with Green Beans

This is a variation on something I used to do with cilantro, but I’m not growing any cilantro this year. I added garbanzo beans to make a complete protein. Make a bunch; keeps well in fridge for several days.

• a pot of cooked rice, cooled
• cooked garbanzos, cooled, thawed or from a can, drained (I used one can)
• 1 small zucchini, grated
• 1 small jalepeño, minced
• 1/4 sweet onion, minced
• a couple fistfuls green beans, par-boiled
• lemon juice
• olive oil
• a small handful fresh basil, minced
• salt and pepper to taste

Prep beans like you’re going to freeze them: submerge in boiling water one or two minutes, then transfer to ice bath. While beans cool, mix rice, beans, a glug or two of olive oil and a fair amount of lemon juice. Add minced jalepeño, onion, basil, grated zuchinni, salt an pepper. Lemon zest would be great if you’re using fresh lemons. Add the beans, stir well, and set aside in the fridge to marry flavors.

Here’s a little number I whipped up for breakfast today.

Ingredients:

• a couple fistfuls of freshly dug spuds
• a fistful of basil
• half an onion
• half a bell pepper
• a dash of paprika
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil

Method:

Go out and dig up some potatoes. Admire them for their size. Rinse them with the garden hose and admire their surreal color (These steps can be done the night before).

Preheat oven to 425. Dice spuds and rinse. Chop onion and bell pepper. Put in roaster pan and pour some olive oil over them.

No, more than that. I said “pour,” not “drizzle.” There you go.

Add salt, pepper and paprika; mix well. Put it in the oven and go water the garden. When you’re mostly done watering, pick your basil. Slice it up, and throw it in with the spuds (which have been cooking, oh, 20 minutes by now). Stir well, then put it all back in the oven. Go back out and finish your watering.

Check out the raspberries… they’re past peak production, but some of those late bloomers have the best flavor. Graze a little. Pull some weeds. Get your feet and hands dirty, and enjoy the last fleeting moments of coolness.

Go back in and check the spuds. Put a fan in the back door. Spuds should be browned and basil should be crispy. Don’t forget to turn off the oven! It’s going to be hot today. Prop oven door open, and leave hood fan on high.

Serve with a fried egg, toast and coffee. Chase it with a ripe peach.

I. Love. Summer.

I eat lunch most every day at an Indian grocery near my office. Since they’ve got B4U Music on the big screen, I can’t help but associate Bollywood and cholle.

And let me tell you, nothing tastes better than some good Indian food after a vigorous game of pick-up hockey. (What… you think that’s weird?)

I love the Latin-rock influence in this one. And Sneha Ullal is kinda cute, too. Okay, pulled Lucky Lips; was told it was eh, maybe not appropriate. How about some Tenu Leke from Salaam-E-Ishq (2007), a movie I had the pleasure of viewing while hopped up Percocet after a wisdom tooth extraction:

The “where to eat” conundrum just got more or less complicated in North Portland, depending on how you see things. Sal’s Famous Italian Kitchen appears to have closed with no notice, leaving the Overlook neighborhood with one less place to eat.

I haven’t heard whether their northwest Portland location is still open.

Why couldn’t Roux close instead? (Maybe they will after they open their downtown location.)

I used to be a produce guy. For around ten years, I worked at co-ops and natural foods stores, including the predecessor to New Seasons Markets, Nature’s fresh! Northwest.

While at Nature’s, I agitated for the union, of course, and had a run-in with current New Seasons president Brian Rohter. But I’m not here to talk about anti-union grocery store magnates today.

Back in ’96, Nature’s had a different kind of rat.

The Nature’s store I worked at was in an ancient, poorly maintained building on SW Corbett St. in John’s Landing. There was a crawl space under the wavy fir floors, with ready access to the great outdoors. Combine access to lots of high quality food with the great flood of 1996, which drove herds of river rats off of nearby Ross Island and into the neighborhoods, and you get a serious infestation.

The exterminator placed traps (but no poison), and insisted that staff keep a sighting log (162KB PDF), detailing every sighting, as well as every kill. Kills were denoted with Mickey Mouse ears. At its best, the log, spanning nearly three months, reads like black comedy. At its worst, it’s a shocking expose of the rats I once worked with.

Here’s a transcription of the log:

Sighting Log

4/2 puffed ceral eaten
4/4 puffed cereal eaten, Great Harvest white bread, too
4/5 Abiqua Rye bread eaten
4/7 Bean sprout mix attacked produce walkin
4/9 Puffed cereal again
4/10 Rice cake attack
4/11 one culprit D.O.A.! Bulk
4/13 another one apprehended! and another one too!
4/14 nectar nuggets were re-discovered
4/15 puffed corn eaten
4/17 puffed rice eaten and 10 grain cereal
4-21 Hole located between produce rack & plactic recycling literally smelled a rat
4-19 Polenta tube found by customer eaten out
4-23 Arborio Rice Bag Chewed Open
4-23 Caught two Broom Closet Many more to go!
4-23 Abiqua bread eaten
4-23 potato in produce eaten
4-23 scared one that was absconding w/ cliff bar by candy rack
4-24 another one bites it in the broom closet
4-24 abiqua bread eaten
4-24 Ate through lids on yogurt in free box in produce cooler
4-25 another casualty in the broom closet and another loaf of abiqua bread
4/26 cuke tasted on top left shelf of produce cooler
4-27 Cliff bars keep disappearing
4-28,29 + 5-1 abiqua breads hit
5-3 caught one by candy rack
5-6 two caught — one by candy rack — back half of bady was missing!? one by bulk Peanut Butter machine — it was huge! Moby Rat!
5-12 Happy Mother’s day! Caught one behind bulk honey the trap ended up on the other side of the pnt btr machine Good size one too!! (Threw this trap away — messy, messy)
5-25-96
5-28-96 Corner of Lundberg Rice bag eaten & nibbled on, in addition to the one eaten sat, 5-25
6-9 Large (8″ body, 7″ tail) Rat found mired in a sticky trap behind Weinhard beer stacks, next to cheese case very much alive! Killed by a totally traumatized pg manager with a shovel. Couldn’t find the valium in the medicine cabinet either.
6-13-96 il riso Berretta arborio rice — eaten by one of our furry friends with good taste — un tolpo grande!
6-20 4 (yes, 4) Rats caught under candy rack need more sticky traps

It’s a sad, sad day for my neighborhood. The original Burrito Loco has closed. I wonder what will happen to the Cuckoo’s Nest next door….

Happy fathers’ day; our raspberries are ripe!

I guess I’ve never done a food review on this blog (judging by the fact that I just had to add a “Food” category). But my coworker this morning pointed out that maybe I was born on the wrong continent when we were discussing where to go for lunch.

“I was thinking India Direct. Or maybe Lentil Garden,” I said. That’s when he made his comment. I responded that no, maybe I just chose the wrong continent to be vegetarian on. But luckily the Indians came and saved me from baked potatoes and salad bars.

I work in the “Silicon Forest”, the western suburbs of Portland, Ore., home to major Intel and IBM plants and offices. There is a pretty good-sized South Asian population here, and a handful of Indian restaurants. Some great, some okay, some, eh, not so great. India Direct is my default lunch destination, for reasons I will describe below. If you’re ever in Beaverton, be sure to stop by and check it out. India Direct is actually a grocery store with a lunch counter in the back.

I describe it as a lunch counter, but it specializes in vegetarian “chaat”, or snack foods. Don’t be put off by that, though; these are some serious snack plates, different from what most Americans think of when they think of Indian food.

My favorite is aloo tikki cholle, potato patties fried on a griddle, smothered in cholle (garbonzo bean curry), two kinds of chutney and topped with shredded daikon radish and cilantro. An alternate version of this is available, samosa cholle, which has two samosas (deep fried pastries filled with potatoes and peas), smashed and smothered in the same manner.

Another favorite of mine is the Masala Dosa, a crepe-like roll-up of spicy potatoes and onions served with chutney and a bowl of sanbar (soup). They also do a special “crazy chaat”, a cold dish with chips, potatoes and garbonzos smothered with yogurt and chutneys.

Hungry yet? I’ll keep going. A favorite quick meal after playing lunch-hour hockey is the cholle batura, which is basically fry-bread served up with cholle and Indian pickle.

If you’re really hungry (and you’d have to be to not be satisfied by the samosa cholle), you can get one of three thali plates. The all-India thali includes cholle, dal, the vegetable of the day, roti (bread), rice, raita (yogurt) pickle and desert. The regular thali has dal, veg of the day, raita and pickle. The sadhu thali is just dal, rice and yogurt.

Sounds good, eh? But the real treat is the price. All of the “chaat” items are under $4.00. Add a cup of chai (tea), and you’re well-fed for under $5.00. That’s unheard of these days, unless you’re talking fast food. And this is some quality stuff, cooked up before your eyes by Lisa, a very talented and friendly Mexican woman.

She doesn’t speak much English (or Hindi, from what I’ve heard), but she speaks Indian food just fine. Some days she makes an extra spicy sauce, and will add it to your dish. Be careful of this. I love spicy food, but she’s got a hidden sadistic streak. “Spicy?” she asks, smiling innocently. Spicy is an understatement. (We’ve had some awkward conversations in Spanglish about Mexico and the fact that her special red “chutney” is really a Mexican style red sauce.)

The proprietor knows me by name, and is always friendly and welcoming, which just adds to the list of reasons India Direct is my workplace cafeteria. Wacky Mommy gets jealous of me always eating this yummy food, so I bring it home for dinner quite a bit. The only thing I don’t like about India Direct is that they’re closed on Monday. Monday’s are tough.