Gilding the Lily since 2006
A month or so ago, I did a cooking demo for Stonyfield yogurt, and ended up with 4 quarts of plain, nonfat Greek yogurt, with an aggressively impending expiration date. At first I tried just slipping it into everything: burritos! salad dressing! cornbread! But eventually …
Dutch babies are a signature dish of one old Portland institution, the Original Pancake House. When you order one, they bring it out all puffed up on the plate, sprinkled with powdered sugar and with a little carousel of toppings: whipped butter, lemon wedges and …
I know I write a lot about breakfast. Can’t help it. It is, after all, the most important meal of the day, and Portland has such a cultish breakfast and brunch culture (and let’s face it; brunch is just breakfast with alcohol). It might just …
Many foods are evocative of one’s place of peasant origin, of one’s mother-tongue. When done properly, the mere smell of these foods has the power to bring a grown man to his blubbering knees, felled by memories of hiding shy behind grandma’s apron. Borscht is …
Spring has indeed sprung, yet I always find myself at this time of year with a certain yen for autumnal things. Pomes and root vegetables; meats cooked to shredded perfection, their connective stuff all pulverized (by time, or pressure) to gelatin. These are good things, …
A day late and a dollar short, as always. I decided to try my hand at corning so I could participate in Charcutepalooza this month, but I forgot that I was supposed to post this on the 15th. Oops. It’s cool, though, I didn’t really …
I know this isn’t quite the way the Italians do it, but I reckon they might if they got their hands on a bushel of sweet Meyer lemons. I don’t have anything against Sorrento lemons, mind, I just think these smooth little globes of sunshine …
I have, yet again, amassed quite a collection of on-the-verge goodies in my refrigerator: enoki, maitake, shiitake and chanterelle (aka anzutake) mushrooms; hunks of cheese (not the least of which is a French triple cream brie), sprigs of thyme, the remnants of a bottle of …
Now that summer is winding toward its long-lit end, our minds shift toward the harvest. Anyone with a patch of dirt is likely up to their ears in a plenitude of homegrown produce, and this overabundance can daunt the timid. What do you do with …
This is not your mother’s tuna-noodle casserole. Not mine, anyway. This is, though, a basic, easy thing: spaghetti with tuna and lemon. Perfect for a lazy weeknight dinner, easily accomplished between bouts of checking my Twitter feed, playing Words with Friends and other impatient, hungry …