Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

                             Mount Hood and Portland, seen from Pittock Mansion

The day I was leaving Portland for Vancouver on the Amtrak Cascades train, our friends Yongkie and Pokie picked me up from Julie's in the late morning and took me to a wonderful Lebanese restaurant for lunch. Now, you know I love Lebanese food (and it's so easy to eat vegan in a Lebanese restaurant!), and this restaurant, Nicholas, is supposed to be the best in Portland, so I was looking forward to it! I wasn't disappointed! Here are photos of our meal, which consisted of a huge flatbread which we tore into pieces to scoop up food, or to dip in a sauce; a lovely tabouli with LOTS of parsley; a simple salad; a delicious rice and lentil dish with browned onion, stuffed grape leaves and felafel with tahini sauce (instead of the usual yogurt sauce); lemony chickpeas:

Mjeddra-- a delicious rice and lentil dish with mouth-watering browned onions on top


                                                         Lemony chickpeas


                     A large flatbread is placed on each table for the diners to share

                                                  Lebanese Country Salad


                                       Tabouli and felafel with tahini sauce

                                    Stuffed grape leaves with tahini sauce

                                          Pokie and me at Nicholas Restaurant

It was so delicious, but we couldn't finish it all, so Yongkie and Pokie took a "doggie bag" home.  Yongkie wanted to do a little sightseeing with me, but we didn't have alot of time before my train, so he took us up to the 100-year-old French Renaissance chateau, Pittock Mansion, which overlooks Portland and has beautiful gardens.  It has been used in several movies, I've heard.  We just strolled the gardens, enjoying the sunshine and the view, but didn't go inside.  It's looks quite sumptuous in the photographs!


                                        Portland from the Pittock Mansion

                                         Pokie and Yongkie at Pittock Mansion

                                         Yongkie and me at the Pittock Mansion 

Thank you, Yongkie and Pokie, for a lovely last day in Portland!

Cheers!

Master baker Peter Reinhart beginning his part of the seminar

(Sorry the seminar pictures are fuzzy-- I couldn't use a flash and I was quite far away!)


Saturday morning I had the opportunity to attend the no-knead artisan bread seminar at IACP, featuring my "bread hero" Peter Reinhart (author of several books, including The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which I have read cover to cover; Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, and his newest book, on the no-knead method, Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day).  "Co-starring" was Nancy Baggett, the author of many cookbooks, primarily about desserts, baking and bread.  Her latest is Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Yeast Breads.  I don't know Nancy's work as well as Peter's, but she's a lovely lady and a good teacher.

(There were two other participants in the seminar, Jean Duane and Silvana Nardone, who were teaching gluten-free breads, but the breads were all made with eggs, so I kind of zoned out on those, I'm afraid! Peter and Nancy's books are not vegan, but most of the breads [except the "enriched" ones] do not contain eggs, and, if they contain milk, non-dairy milks can be used, so their books are usable for vegans.)

Peter made a lovely no-knead Everyday Rye Sandwich Bread for us.



He started out making a sourdough rye starter, then chopping it into his no-knead dough ingredients. He's funny and approachable and very knowledgeable. I was very interested in his demonstration of folding a wet dough to strengthen the gluten. He explained that kneading "organizes" the gluten, but long, slow fermentation and the "stretch and fold" method can do the same thing without hand-kneading or machine kneading. He recommends doing this abut 4 times during the first rise, with 10 minute waits in between.

Here is a short explanation of what this "organization" is: "The plasticity and elasticity are made possible by the presence of an amazing composite of proteins within the wheat kernel, called gluten. These proteins in gluten are long chains of amino acids, some of the longest in the world, in fact, with chains around 1,000 amino acids long! The two major proteins in gluten are calledgliadins and glutenins. The gliadins (think of the word "glide") give the gluten its plasticity because they act kind of like ball bearings or a lubricant. They allow the other major protein, the chains of glutenins, to slide past each other without forming bonds. You can think of the glutenin molecules as long spring-like chains. As the dough is worked and kneaded, these glutenin molecules can link up with each other, end to end, to form super-long, spring-like chains. This makes a tight, coiled mesh, or net, called "the gluten," to trap the gas in, and this gives the dough its elasticity. All those springs want to "spring back" when they are stretched!"
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/FoodSci_p040.shtml

I haven't been using this technique with my no-knead breads so far, and they are still wonderful, but I found it enormously helpful when I made ciabatta buns with a very wet dough.

Here's a video of Peter demonstrating this method:


Here's Peter showing us how stretchy the dough is:


and then showing us the formed loaf:


His second bread was a lovely twisted and iced Chocolate-Cinnamon Babka, made with dark chocolate (both from his new book). Unfortunately, my camera ran out of juice, so I couldn't take pictures of it, and it was a dough enriched with butter and eggs. However, I plan to try a vegan version soon!

Nancy Baggett made an Easy Oat Bread and a Crusty Seeded Cracked Wheat Pot Boule, both also from her newest book. She uses a different method than other no-knead creators have-- she uses a ICE water in her doughs to slow down the fermentation. I am waiting to get her book from the library (I have bought 4 new books lately, so I want to see if I can justify buying it first!), so I haven't tried her method yet, although I do have the print-out for his class and may try one of these loaves myself soon. Good reviews for this book on amazon, BTW.

Nancy demonstrating her dough (sorry about the fuzzy photo!):


What a privilege to attend a workshop with two such innovative bakers sharing their knowledge!

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That evening, Julie Hasson, Fran Costigan, Gail Davis Rahmy, and I made our way to the Willamette Week's "Eat Mobile" Food Cart Festival.  Gail  has a great description on her blog , not only of everything we ate, but our adventure trying to FIND it!!  Do visit there and see her photos and read the post!  One of my favorites was Asaase Ital Palace, one of only two totally vegan food carts represented at the festival. Their specialty is African-Caribbean/vegan-vegetarian cuisine. They served a tasty Jamaican beans and rice dish and a delicious faux "jerk chicken". I had a fun discussion with one of the owners, about keeping our cultural heritages with vegan food.


Asaase Ital Palace (Photo by Gail Davis Rahmy)

Another favorite was Mono Malo Tapas. Here's what Gail wrote: "("Mono Malo" means "Bad Monkey" in Spanish.) Their vegan-friendly food cart features Montaditos, bite-sized toasted bread slices with various savory toppings. When all was said and done, their grilled garlic and herb portabello with romesco sauce turned out to be one of my festival favorites. After my first taste, I went back for several more." So did I!! I NEED to replicate this! I have already bought some portobellos and I'm getting my smoker out!


Mono Malo Tapas (Photo by Gail Davis Rahmy)

AND, we got to have out picture taken with Peter Reinhart!


(Photo courtesy of Gail Davis Rahmy)

We were so stuffed after this that we couldn't even think of going out to dinner, so we trudged back across the bridge and sought out a place where we could sit and talk and have tea or coffee. Then we roamed around in Whole Foods, checking out new products, and i couldn't resist taking home two 1 1/2 lb. bags of organic powdered sugar-- only $2.99 a bag! It is so expensive where I live! (And I have several birthdays coming up in the family.)

It was a really fun day and such a pleasure to spend it with "kindred spirits"!

I'll report on my last day in Portland on Saturday!

PS: I found out when I got home that there is a Peruvian food cart in Portland and they serve vegan versions of their dishes!! See this article. Guess where I'm going on my next trip to Portland?

Cheers,

                          Homemade Bacon Salt in olive oil

At the Culinary Expo at the IACP Annual Conference in Portland, we tasted a delicious gourmet BBQ "Bacon Salt" (it was vegan).   Now, I know that there is a bacon-mania going on out there (you can even buy bacon chocolate bars at Whole Foods-- yuck!), but, being vegan, I haven't paid too much attention. So, it seems that bacon salt has been around for a while and I just never noticed! All the the bacon salt I have seen on the Internet is vegetarian-- it either just contains the flavorings for bacon (liquid smoke, brown sugar, etc.), or it contains some soy bacon bits, but it may contain milk products.  But, the vegan version is a wee bit expensive and I would have to order it by mail, so I thought I'd have a go at making my own homemade variety.  I knew that it would not be as complex as the expensive variety we tried at the Expo (I didn't have any smoked dried tomatoes, or smoked black pepper on hand!), but I had enough essential ingredients that I was confident I could make something really tasty.  It took a little tasting and re-blending, but it turned out really well!

The amazing thing to me was that I started with 1/3 cup of smoked salt, and ended up with 1 1/2 cups of Bacon Salt!  Consequently, the sodium content of this condiment is much, much lower than table salt-- 1 teaspoon contains 90.2 mg. of sodium; 1 teaspoon of table salt contains 1880 mg of sodium!

(How can this be so low in salt? I used Living Cookbook recipe software to do the nutrient analysis for this and all my other recipes, using FDA nutrition data. Keep in mind that most of the recipe is NOT salt-- only 1/3 cup out of 1 1/2 cups total. If you add up the tablespoons of all of the dry ingredients in the recipe, except for the tomatoes, it comes to 20.5 tablespoons. 6 dried tomatoes pieces (not in oil), ground up, make up the last 3.5 tablespoons, which makes 24, which makes 1 1/2 cups, the recipe yield.

I use Saltworks Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt in this recipe,  the "fine grain", which is actually much larger grained than finely ground table salt, and so has less sodium than table salt. (See photo below.) I used the nutrition facts for kosher salt in the analysis, because is larger-grained than table salt, but not coarse grained.)
Here are some uses for Bacon Salt:
on corn on the cob, popcorn and homemade oven-fries; seitan steaks; in BBQ sauces; in marinades for seitan TVP and tofu; in dips, spreads, and vegan mayonnaise; in baked beans; in salad dressings and on salads; as a seasoning in homemade seitan products; in mashed potatoes; on scrambled tofu; in eggless egg salad (made with tofu); roll tofu pieces in it and pan-fry; mix with olive oil for a French bread dip; on potatoes; in potato salad; on or in veggie burgers; on a grilled (vegan) cheese sandwich; with vegan cream cheese and/or vegan sour cream as a dip or spread; on steamed or grilled or roasted veggies; on pasta with a thin creamy sauce (a sort of vegan carbonara); on grits; in vegan mac'n'cheeze; on many types of sandwiches; in soups (or on them); on homemade potato crisps (chips) or other veggie crisps-- kale chips, maybe?-- I'm sure that's just the beginning!


Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S HOMEMADE SMOKY VEGAN BACON SALT
Servings: 72 (1 serving= 1 teaspoon)
Yield: 1 1/2 cups

This stuff is addictive and the uses are endless (see above)! It is low in sodium, as well—1 teaspoon contains 90.2 g. of sodium; 1 teaspoon of table salt contains 1880 g of sodium!

NOTE: Good smoked salt is expensive, but you only need 1/3 of a cup for this recipe, and it makes alot!  You can make your own smoked salt if you have a stove-top smoker-- I'm going to try this soon and I'll report on it! I'm also going to try making my own bacon bits, and, if I'm satisfied, I'll post those as well.


Saltworks Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt, "fine grain"

Ingredients:
1/3 cup smoked salt of your choice (I used “fine grain” Saltworks Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt)
(IMPORTANT NOTE: The texture of this salt is a bit like kosher salt—see the photo above; so, if you use a granulated salt, you need to use less, and if you use a coarse crystal salt you need to use more-- see photo below.)

1/4 cup veggie bacon bits of your choice (if homemade, make sure they are very dry!) (Canadian link or try a natural foods store)
6 pieces sundried tomatoes (dry, NOT in oil), chopped (the drier the better) (OR you can use smoked sundried tomatoes)
3 Tbs brown sugar
3 Tbs granulated organic sugar
2 Tbs hot smoked paprika (pimenton)
1 Tbs sweet smoked paprika (pimenton)
1/2 Tbs granulated garlic
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper (OR use smoked black pepper, freshly-ground)
1/2 tsp mustard powder
1/2 tsp onion powder

NOTE: If you want the salt to be a little more coarse, mix all of the ingredients EXCEPT the salt in the blender or VitaMix first. When they are powdery, add the salt and whiz until it's the texture you want.

I just mixed everything in the DRY VitaMix (or use a good blender) and blended on high, stopping now and then to stir everything up (because it tends to clump together), and then blending again. When I couldn't feel any tomato bits anymore, I stopped. I scraped the mixture into a dry bowl and mixed it with a spoon to fluff it up. Then I scooped it into a dry 1-pint canning jar with a tight lid.You can put some in a shaker-jar for table use.

Coarse crystal salt-- in this case Saltworks Salish Alderwood Smoked Salt

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per teaspoon): 7.6 calories; 15% calories from fat; 0.1g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 90.2mg sodium; 23.6mg potassium; 1.5g carbohydrates; 0.2g fiber; 1.2g sugar; 1.3g net carbs; 0.2g protein; 0.1 points.

Delicious on popcorn!


And on a baked potato, too:



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PART 4 OF MY FOODIE TRIP TO PORTLAND: DINNER AT THE BLOSSOMING LOTUS

Friday night, as I mentioned before, I went to dinner with Kittee and Julie to The Blossoming Lotus, a very popular vegan restaurant in Portland (there was a sister restaurant in Kauai, now closed, unfortunately). It has a lovely, casual atmosphere and the staff was very friendly.





We had a hard time choosing what to order.

Julie and Kittee both had the Crispy Thai BBQ Salad (Romaine, mixed greens, shredded cabbage, carrot, cucumber, raisins, crispy rice sticks, curried cashews and thai spiced barbecue soy curls, topped with creamy ginger dressing, fresh herbs & toasted coconut):





I tasted it and it was delish!

I had the Four Cheese Lasagna, which contains no cheese! They make their own! (Layers of fresh seasonal vegetable marinara, semolina noodles, herbed tofu ricotta, roasted zucchini & almond mozzarella, and sesame-nutritional yeast parmesan, served on a bed of steamed kale, topped with lemon-basil cashew cream)



Here are some close-ups of the interior:





It was very good and very filling-- I couldn't finish it and took the rest home!

We regrettably passed on dessert and retired to a bench on the street to chat, meeting some Portland interesting characters as well, including a lovely little Pomeranian dog!


Kittee and Julie, replete with a yummy dinner, on the bench outside the Blossoming Lotus

Then Julie and I had a hunt on foot for her car (we couldn't remember where we had parked it!), were rescued by Kittee, who drove us around until we found it, and, after that adventure, we headed home to bed!

Tomorrow I'll report on a bread workshop with Peter Reinhart and Nancy Baggett, the Willamette Food Cart Festival, the Farmers' Market, and a visit to Whole foods (Saturday was a busy day!).

Cheers!