Salt of the Earth

I have said that I hate salt. And that is completely true but also completely untrue. Salt is an essential ingredient in almost every recipe. Without salt, flavors wouldn't be what they are.


I think the problem with me and salt is that I really don't like food to taste salty. It's a flavor that is almost entirely unappealing to me (there are exceptions. I love corned beef but I hate ham. That's just the way it is.). I think of salt as an ingredient, not a flavor. When I am really excited for a dessert on a menu and then I see that the only chocolate item on the menu is topped with "fleur de sel," I am instantly thrust into melancholy. Some friends of mine brought home a box of truffles from a restaurant one night, and all but one of them had salt in the filling or on the top. This is sadness to me. Sadness in a box. An assault on chocolate and my sensibilities.


When I cook, I always make sure there is a little salt in what I'm making. Salt is a great ingredient that balances flavors and brings out nuances to make food not taste bland. Bland is almost as sad as salty but I would rather have bland food than over-salted food. There was a time in my life where I watched a LOT of Food Network during my down time and I was disgusted with the amount of salt the cooks would use. Without pinpointing anyone in particular, the "chefs" would say things like "you have to salt every ingredient" or "season as you go along." If an everyday cook were to follow the advice they were watching on those shows, they would end up with 4-5 tsp of salt in every dish, including dishes that included naturally salty foods like capers, anchovies, and chicken broth. Why would you add a "pinch" of salt with every ingredient when you are cooking? Isn't it easier to taste at the end, add salt (if needed), rather than come up with something inedible after all of your work?


Whether you believe in a direct connection between high salt intake and health risks or not, Americans have way too much salt in their diets. Currently the standard recommendation is a TOTAL of a half-teaspoon of salt a day. I think there is more than a half teaspoon of salt on a small order of McDonald's fries, which, I don't like because they are too salty. yuk. Don't get me wrong; fries should have a little salt but I get my salt fix with ketchup. I don't need to put salt ON ketchup, it's loaded with salt. Our drinks are loaded with salt. Gatorade? YUK. As a source to replenish your body of depleted nutrients, yes, as a casual sip to get you through the day? Ick. I think the worst offender of this crime are chain restaurants. The food at chain restaurants is so consistently salty--do people really like their food to burn their tongue with salt? That's my reaction when something is too salty for me. My tongue feels like it's burning: not like a fire burn, like a low, dull, chemical burn. It dulls the taste buds instantly and all other flavors are gone, all the switches are flicked to the "off" position...maybe I just answered my own question of why chain restaurant food is so salty. If you're going to charge $9 for a steak, salt is probably your only hope. 


The moral of this long ramble? Cooks, please. Yes, put salt in your dish but please remember it's easier for a diner to add salt at then end than to choke it down with a gallon of water and pretend it's good. Also, please don't corrupt and/or pollute your only chocolate dessert with a "flavor" of salt. 

A Happy Mother

My mother will not admit to it but she is a picky eater. Her normal response to any food is "it was ok" (again, she would never admit this). When she came to visit last month I wanted to make sure she had ONE meal she liked. My sister suggested I make shrimp scampi; my mother had recently said she wanted it and my sister assured me it was easy to make. I looked at a few different recipes but after that I decided to go it alone. Here are my results


Shrimp Scampi by Jen:
1 lb peeled, deveined shrimp
1/3 cup butter 
3-4 tbsp chopped parsley 
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup parmesan or romano
pasta of your choice

This is what I did:

1. Cook the pasta.
2. Chop up the garlic and add it to the butter. 
3. Melt the butter very low in a saucepan.
4. Heat up the olive oil in a large skillet.
5. Chop the parsley and lemon zest very, very fine.
6. When the oil in the skillet is hot, add salt and pepper to the shrimp and cook them. They should be flipped after 90 seconds and only take at most three minutes to cook. As soon as they lose their translucence, they are done.
7. Remove the shrimp from the skillet, and add the butter and white wine. Bring to a boil, cook 2 minutes.
8. Reduce heat to low. Add the parsley/lemon zest. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
9. Add the shrimp and the cooked pasta into the skillet. Add the cheese and let everything heat through.

Taste the sauce at this point. It may need a little of the pasta water to get the consistency you want. It may also need salt or pepper. This is where I decided it was too buttery and added the juice of 1/2 a lemon to brighten everything up. I also added a bunch of pepper.

My sister, who is a much better cook than I, said that this was the best scampi she's ever had; the sure sign that this was beginner's luck and I'll never make it this good again.

I went to Sonny's and was not happy. At all, really.

One of my favorite restaurants in Portland is Local 188. I had a fabulous, expensive, extravagant dinner there at Christmastime one year with a friend.  Folks, I am all about spending a lot of money for a great dining experience. I don't think twice about planning to spend $100 on myself for a meal if the food, service, atmosphere, and overall experience are memorable. I don't drink a lot, I don't smoke, I don't have expensive toys, so food is where my money goes.


This is all back story to my lunch today. I have had a few friends who have told me that they went to Sonny's for dinner and it was great--as good as Local 188 or better. When my friend and I saw that it was open for lunch we didn't think twice--we abandoned our initial plans for lobster rolls and headed up Exchange St. to Sonny's.


The restaurant is beautiful. They have taken any fast-food-feel (from the former O'Naturals) out of the place. It's full of exposed brick, nice window seating, comfy looking couches, and vaults; it looks like a really cool place you could go after work for drinks with friends and linger on through dinner. I especially loved the concrete bar which is enormous but does not overfill the main room.


We were the first lunch customers that I can recall. I ordered a cocktail and the waitress/hostess told me that she didn't know if she could make me one because the bartender didn't show up. After a phone call, she showed up with my drink. It tasted like it had absolutely no alcohol in it whatsoever but she charged me $8 for it anyway. They did not have ginger ale or root beer. Pepsi products (which is a minus for me every time; I'm a Coke or ginger ale girl at restaurants mostly). They did have ginger beer.


You can look at their menu through the link above; it's not a huge lunch menu, which is fine. Sometimes too many choices can be overwhelming. I chose the enchilada combo: a cheese enchilada with a red salsa and a bean enchilada with a green salsa. There was almost no cheese in the cheese enchilada at all. It was basically a rolled up tortilla with salsa on it. The bean one had a lot of beans, again, no cheese, and green salsa on top. The salsas were good but nothing stood out about them. There were more black beans on the side, with a tiny spoonful of rice that was yellow but had absolutely no flavor. This plate was covered with cabbage (I assume to make it look like a big plate of food). This entirely vegetarian meal that probably cost the restaurant no more than $3 cost me $9. I was totally underwhelmed. There was nothing wrong with the flavor. It tasted fine. But I didn't feel like I had $9 worth of anything, and honestly, would have been just as satisfied with a Taco Bell soft taco. It was that unimpressive.


My friend had fish tacos; two small tortillas, covered with salsa, lettuce, more cabbage, tomato, and two tiny pieces of fish. Each taco probably had 2oz of fish in it, and that is overestimating I think. Again, $12 for this extremely cheap-to-produce lunch. She said "It was a good salad, but it didn't have much fish." We also ordered an appetizer of yam fries with a poblano-cream sauce. The fries were delicious! They had a crispy breading with a mashed potato inside. The cream was more like a spread; it was too hard to dip the fries into without breaking them. It had a nice flavor. The fries came out with our lunches instead of as an appetizer (further proof to me how easy the lunches were to make and therefore should have been a LOT cheaper).


After a very long wait to have our plates taken off the table (again, there was 1 other party in the whole place and I spotted 6 people between the kitchen and the bar areas), the waitress brought us a dessert menu. $7 for every dessert. At lunch time? My lunch was overpriced at $9, I wasn't about to find out how disappointed I would be in such an expensive dessert.


1 cocktail, 1 appetizer, 2 cheap-to-produce lunches, and a bottle of water should NEVER cost $40; it should cost even less when the drink is weak and the service is bad. I will not try Sonny's again.

What Not to Do

Friends, I started with the best of intentions. I started with the best of ingredients.

It was last summer, that perfect time of summer when strawberries and rhubarb are ripe together. Strawberry rhubarb pie is my favorite and I was determined to make it for the first time, and make it perfectly the first time.

That being said, I started with a store-bought crust. I wanted it perfect, remember, and my crust-making skills need some honing, to say the least. What I didn't want was for the pie to be runny. So I read websites, I took advice, I researched. I pre-cooked some of the fruit, added the sugar recommendation from one site, tapioca recommendation from another.

 I filled the pie with a zealous anticipation. I cooked it, summer fruit smell filling my house (yay for air conditioning on 100 degree summer days!). The result? Well, I failed. Miserably. I can't even say I have a photo to show you because I thought I took one but I can't find it. Now, the flavor was amazing--how could it not be with the freshest and most delicious of beginnings? But the pie was so runny. I ended up using some of it as ice cream topping but dumping most of it down the sink (no straining needed). It was just so runny. Sadface (as my niece would say).

My mistake? I think I didn't have enough fruit. It looked skimpy when i put the top crust on but I hoped for the best and ended up disappointed. At least I had strawberry rhubarb sundaes for a few days. If I ever figure it out, I'll post a recipe.