... a spirited celebration of regional food and culinary craft, season by season, with original recipes by Susan S. Bradley
When we are in Portland, Oregon and heading out on foot to dinner in town, Wildwood in the Northwest district is always at the top of our list of fave destinations. It’s a lovely mile walk, or if we are feeling exceptionally lazy, we can hop the streetcar almost to the front door. (You might have seen my earlier article on Wildwood titled, Sweet Briar Farms Pork Chop with Bodacious Corn Hush Puppies. Just looking at the photo of that amazing dish makes me go weak at the knees.)
The freshly dug sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) look so tender and crisp in Northwest farmers markets right now, I couldn’t resist buying several pounds last week–even though I wasn’t sure what I would do with them. My cookbook, Pacific Northwest Palate, Four Seasons of Great Cooking, features a sunchoke pancake, but other than that, I really haven’t given this vegetable its fair due over the years.
As much as I want to jump onto the spring bandwagon and create plate upon plate of bright, sprightly salads, it’s, well, much – too – COLD. So today instead of turning to the beautiful bunches of chickweed, sunflower seed sprouts, and baby arugula that are overflowing the frig, I found myself instead spellbound by two homely little chorizo sausages. I started thinking about their savory, smoky flavor, and the next thing that popped into my mind was HOT SOUP. But not just any hot soup mind you, a Spanish soup called Zarzuela.
We settled into our Portland city digs for a few weeks, and one of the first things we did was hike over to the Portland Farmers Market. To tell you that the market was glorious yesterday morning is to be guilty of careless understatement. It was over-the-top magnificent! Peppers, peppers everywhere, in every color and every shape imaginable, freshly dug potatoes, heaps of various types of kale, a colorful abundance of winter squash, dozens of varieties of apples and pears, wild mushrooms, and the last of 3 varieties of fresh corn. My mind was reeling with the possibilities. But what should I cook?
I talked about my LOVE for gazpacho earlier this summer in the Spicy Cucumber Gazpacho post. In a moment of wild gazpacho abandon, I promised to share at least six of my favorite gazpacho recipes with you this summer. Whatever was I thinking?
I LOVE gazpacho! Am I alone in this? I’m always amazed that so few restaurants offer it, especially when the temperature soars unmercifully in the summer. If LunaCafe were a brick-and-mortar, versus virtual, café, I would serve a different gazpacho every week all summer long. How fun would that be?
I was about to pass them by but intuition nudged, and I instead asked the obvious question: “What are these?” The vendor replied, “Why these are heirloom carrots of course. And you will never taste a carrot with more complex flavor.” Perhaps in response to the skeptical expression on my face, he added, “Don’t worry about how they look.”
I have tested and retested this soup many times over the years, adjusting the key elements to create a soup with good body and memorable flavor. The onion element, for instance, began as a mere hint of flavor and then expanded, test after test, to a rich depth that fully complements the potato without overwhelming it completely.
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