Nancy Rommelmann

A Love Story, with Pastry

Wherein I tell the true story of a chance meeting with Kim Boyce, a meeting that's led to continual laughter, sleepless nights, and one of these days, a bottle of wine.

 

Coffee Roaster of the Year

We enjoyed our visit with Star Chefs earlier in the year. Antoinette Bruno and her crew were so fast, so smart, sophisticated and interested and interesting. For a follow-up, they decided to add three new categories to the Portland Rising Stars Awards, to be held December 5. One of the categories? Coffee Roaster. Here are the nominees; congratulations to all.

In case you want to join me, I'm rooting for Din xx

Brandon Smyth of Water Avenue Coffee
Sam Purvis of Coava Coffee
Brian Keefe of Stumptown Coffee
Din Johnson of Ristretto Roasters
Adam McGovern of Coffeehouse NW and Sterling Coffee

Bake Sale For Japan

The Portland Monthly site says it best: This Saturday, April 2nd, face the wind and the rain to score some delectable baked goods and raise money for Peace Winds Japan’s emergency relief operations. As part of a nationwide bake sale (41 sales in 27 cities), Ristretto Roasters and Barista will both be selling countless scrumptious goodies for the cause between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., featuring more than 40 home bakers alongside Portland’s top professional baking aces.

Here’s the impressive list of contributors:

Alder Pastry and Dessert
Alma Chocolate
Baker & Spice
Bakery Bar
Bees & Beans
Confectionery
Fleur de Lis Bakery & Cafe
Kim Boyce of Golden Oven (who bakes for Ristretto!) 
Helena Root of Irving Street Kitchen
Kir Jensen of The Sugar Cube
Little T American Baker
Little Branch Jam
Miss Zumstein
Kristen Murray of Paley’s Place
Petunia’s Pies & Pastries
Random Order Coffeehouse & Bakery
Suzette
Woodlawn Coffee and Pastry

Ristretto Roasters (North Portland location)
3808 N Williams Ave
ristrettoroasters.com

Barista (Pearl District location)
539 NW 13th Ave
baristapdx.com

Questions? Contact pdxbakesale@gmail.com.

Ristretto Reading Series: Kim Boyce, "Good to the Grain," October 29

The only thing that could make us as happy as having Kim Boyce's outstanding pastry in our pastry cases every day, is if she read for us from her spectacular baking book, Good to the Grain. And maybe let us throw her a little party.

So we asked. She said yes.

Please join us on Friday, October 29, at 6 PM, at Ristretto Roasters Williams, for coffee, pastry, reading and Q & A with Kim Boyce, pastry chef extraordinaire.

Want a preview? Check out "Afternoon Delight," a profile of Kim in Willamette Week (Oct. 27).

Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef at Spago and Campanile. While at Campanile, she helped Nancy Silverton with her Sandwich Book (Knopf, 2002) and has cooked alongside chefs like Mario Batali, Claudia Fleming, Lidia Bastianich, Alice Waters, and Anthony Bourdain. She has contributed to Bon Appetit and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times on numerous occasions (both as subject and contributor). In 2010, Kim and husband, chef Thomas Boyce, relocated to Portland with their two children.

This event is free and open to everyone, as are all Ristretto Reading Series events.

Coming November 11: Steve Dublanica and Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper's Quest to Become the Guru of Gratuity

Do Anxious Wives Make Homemade Eggrolls? or, Joy [Part 3]

In thirteen years, my husband and I have had maybe four fights. Three involved copious amounts of alcohol; one involved a book, Don DeLillo's "White Noise."

The most recent was a week ago. It involved yelling, at a party, and later, at home. It made me wake up before dawn and call a cab to take me to my truck, which we'd left at the party. I should have turned west to get home, but instead turned east because the sky was pink, and because driving felt good. I kept going. I didn't know the road. I thought about a Sam Shepard book I reviewed, and better appreciated how driving gets you out of your head, and also, keeps you away from a person or situation where you run the risk of vomiting up a bunch of half-digested emotions that will compound what's come before and which you will certainly regret.

I drove for about 45 minutes. I wondered what, if anything, I would say to Din about the night before. I played out scenarios. I set them up like pylons. Each one, I knew, I could trip over. I knew that to concentrate on them was to give them meaning. I did not want to do this; it was inviting misery. So I jumped over them, and turned the car around.

I was still jumping in my skin. I would need to distract myself to get through the day. I thought, I'll cook. I got back to Portland and went to QFC, where I have just started to shop and which I think of as the post-houseful-of-kids supermarket, a place where one does not buy 8-pound chubs of meat because there are no longer children at home to feed, which the market seems to know, and packages things accordingly, and also, offers dainties you have never before noticed, or knew existed. For instance, eggroll wrappers.

I looked at the wrappers. I wondered if they, if the store, if the thought of homemade eggrolls even occurring, were part of a purview I had yet to encounter, an unhappy-land where wives make delicacies instead of dinner. Were there others like me wandering the aisles at eight on a Sunday morning, cerebrating over almond paste and annatto and maybe a can of snails?

I bought the wrappers, and ingredients with which to fill them. Also, the makings for beef stew, egg salad, homemade noodles. I brought it all home. I plugged my iPhone into the dock and listened to RadioLab as I made egg salad, and stew, and eggrolls...

Din woke up. He looked at the action in the kitchen. "Wow, baby," he said.

I handed him a plate of hot eggrolls. He ate four.

"These," he said, "are the best eggrolls I've ever had."

They were. I kept cooking because I was afraid I would start talking. I listened to episodes about con artists, and Henrietta Lacks, and Tazmanian Devil facial tumors. I cleaned the kitchen. I contemplated going to the store for more ingredients. Instead, I went downstairs. I told Din, I was afraid, and that I was sorry. He knew what to do and say to make me stop trembling. Then we watched some football.

I don't want to fight again. The eggrolls, on the other hand, we've had three times this week.

After-the-Fight Eggrolls

6 eggroll wrappers 

1 carrot, cut into matchsticks

3 scallions, cut on the diagonal

1 1/2 cups bean sprouts

Grated fresh ginger (I keep a knob in the freezer and microplane it, skin and all)

4 ounces Chinese barbecue pork (prepackaged), cut into matchsticks

2 cups vegetable oil

Mix vegetables and pork. Lay down eggroll wrappers. Fill and wrap according to instructions on back of package.

Heat oil in cast iron pan; it's hot enough when a drop of water flicked in, sizzles. Fry eggrolls until brown on one side, turn, repeat with other side

What My Daughter Found in Her Salad Today

Brooklyn Bagels apologized and is giving Tafv's office... a credit for more food. Gee.

But seriously, the kid could have choked to death. The worry, the worry, it never ends...
 

Kim Boyce Bakes

We are ga-ga thrilled to have Kim Boyce, former pastry chef at Campanile and Spago, baking for Ristretto Roasters. In a post today on Portland Food and Drink, Kim tells Food Dude:

I was sitting on a bench eating bagels with my kids and Nancy [Rommelmann] walked by... I introduced myself and asked if she needed pastries for Ristretto.

Kim and I first played the LA name-game, and then I said, I'd love to try her stuff. I asked her to do some baking for Ristretto based on her fantastic pastry, and her gorgeous book, Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. I was leafing through it one Sunday at the Williams cafe and happened to read her bio... which was when I learned she'd been at Spago and Campanile (the latter, my very favorite restaurant ever). I had had no idea; she'd never made a peep about this. I called Din and said, "This is like having Frank Sinatra ask if he can sing us a few songs."

Kim will be doing all the baking at both cafes, beginning this Saturday. She will be adding lots of items, depending on what she seasonal ingredients strike her fancy and what she wants to create. She pretty much has free reign, and right now, to me, the pastry cases look like jewel boxes. Come by often to see what she's making, and in the meantime, I have three words for you: apricot crumble bars

Actor Kyle MacLachlan Calls Ristretto "Damn Good Coffee"

Oh yes he did, while sipping it this week at Lovejoy Bakers. I might file this under "one good turn..." as last month, we were in Walla Walla drinking Pursued by Bear, MacLachlan's wine -- yes, he's also a winemaker -- and it was really good. Added bonus: I got to watch as three young women were tasting the wine, and then realized just who their winemaker was. Cue extended squealing and fumbling for cameras, both of which MacLachlan took in stride.

Reason Number 4062 We Love These Kids

My daughter Tafv is living in New York.

We bought her an iPhone, with which she takes many photos, many of which she sends to me.

Most of them are of food. I told her, she should publish a book called, "Brunch."

Yesterday, she told me she and her friend were off for a picnic in Central Park.

She sent me a photo of herself, ready to roll.

 

Then she sent the one below, with the subject line, "We brought the wrong sheet." I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

 

Frivolity: What's in Your Fridge?

I admit it: I like when I am reading an interview and this question is asked. So, what's always in yours? I don't mean just the condiments and milk, but the things you love and always need to have.

Here are mine:

Fridge: Natural peanut butter, habanero sauce, soda water, and (increasingly) Greek yogurt.

Pantry: Pretzels. I am hard pretzel freak, and if you know of a brand I need to try, tell me. Current favorite when I can find them: Utz.

Liquor cabinet: Gin, preferably Plymouth and Ransom, red wine.

Choking and Funk

When my daughter was little, I had a paralyzing fear of her choking, particularly on hot dogs. I was so worried that, when she was two and spent a month with my mother in New York, I would daily call my mom, "No hot dogs, or if you do, slice them lengthwise." This, because I knew of two toddlers that had choked to death eating hot dogs cut into little barrels. My mother thought I was overprotective, she took to answering the phone, "Oscar Meyer."

Today's New York Times has a story about the very worst choking hazard foods for very young children. Here's the story, and here's the list:

Hot dogs, peanuts, carrots, boned chicken, candy, meat, popcorn, fish with bones, sunflower seeds and apples.

Dr. Gary Smith warns the following foods should not be given to children under 4 or 5: raw carrots, marshmallows, peanuts, popcorn, hard candies and gumballs. Which makes perfect sense: while babies and toddlers can bite food, they cannot chew it. Further, their throats "narrow to the size of a drinking straw." I have to tell you, I feel a flutter of terror just writing this.

Okay, enough. Watch your children, and then this video, especially Flea, who is - tah dah! -- one of the professors at Bootsy Collins's new Funk University - F.U. f0r short -- where, per his mission statement, Professor Bootsy explains "how you gotta 'bring some funk...to get some funk.'"

NB: I AM throwing a goddamn dance party this summer, and yes, I will be wearing my platform shoes, and yes, this song will be playing, and I hereby invite you to tell me what ELSE I must have in rotation, and of course you're invited

What Do I Do With It?

 
Or rather, in it. Found it yesterday while cleaning off a shelf. Husband bought it three years ago and it has yet to be inaugurated.

All recipes/tips appreciated.

Sable Saturdays/Sundays at Ristretto Roasters

 

Last time we were in New York, we brought a pound of sable home on the plane. Why? Because we can’t find this tender, buttery, not-at-all fishy smoked fish here in Portland.

Which is weird, because sable is black cod, which is fished off the Oregon Coast.

We figured we’d try to make it, with a little (okay, a lot) of help.

Presenting sable on a bagel with cream cheese: $6.

Sable: Smoked by Rodney Muirhead of Podnah’s BBQ
Bagels: Kenny & Zuke’s
Cream cheese: Philadelphia

Ristretto Roasters Williams
3808 N. Williams, #125
503-288-8667
www.ristrettoroasters.com

 

Food Scraps from the Week-End

Had a really good burger at Rontoms. Nice bartenders, too.

In contrast to other opinions, thought Ocean City Seafood good, not great. Do get: salt & pepper calamari. Avoid: sauteed pea shoots.

Anju, the Korean bar food restaurant at the south end of The Hub, the N. Williams building with Ristretto is also located, has closed. They did not generate much heat when open and, sorry, a Korean bar food restaurant with no bar?

Ode to a Greek Diner

After two weeks of feeling as though we've been moving through soft butter here in Portland, what with the heat, I'm finally awake, and good thing: so much going on. Have to hit the road tomorrow, to drive to Baker City for a meeting. Looking forward to seeing the Eastern part of the state. My smashing TV appearance of last Friday is online, here; you can hear the lights crashing and a phantom radio come on, a radio that my husband (who was watching as we taped live) said the techie could not turn off and eventually just threw into another room. Oh, and we started the production in a black-out. It was total fun; host Joe Donlon is all-pro and made me laugh a lot. A nickel to everyone who can peg when during the interview my mind went utterly blank!

Biggish news: new food website ZesterDaily.com launches today, and I have a piece up, "Ode to a Greek Diner," about a restaurant here in Portland called Niki's. I'd been to Niki's a few months ago, when I interviewed Adam Arnold. I went back two weeks ago to hang around, and the article is what I found. That's Niki, in her kitchen.

If I can get my edits right, later today I'll have part five of Stott-Smith up, though not about her and her children, but the murder of another child.

The Art of the Street Cart

More work from me (and two more pieces coming Monday!): food cart dining on the streets of Portland, Oregon, in the September issue of Bon Appetit. Yes, it's a topic that's gotten a whole lot of press -- and a phenom that my pal Cuisine Bonne Femme started following, oh, three years ago. But the carts are only getting better, with more and more interesting ones opening each month. I believe the piece I covered ten places; not sure if I'm not seeing a sidebar online, but anyway, check them out.