Quick Bites PDX: EVOE of course!

What else are we expected to do on a Sunday afternoon with a near empty refrigerator and hungers fueled by a 2+ hour hike in the Columbia Gorge? EVOE, with its proximity to our house....a 13 block walk or 2 minute drive...and its astonishingly good food, has proven to be something we can't resist. And the chilled glasses of wine to the left (w's 2007 Elvio Cogno Langhe Bianco Nas-Cetta, an intriguingly lemony-minerally, slightly spritzy, and completely refreshing Piedmontese white; and my 2008 Chateau Miraval Provence Rosé), were our prelude to another unbelievably satisfying mid-day luncheon. Speaking of EVOE and wine, their glass prices and bottle offerings are absurdly cheap. I might suggest you get in and slurp down all of the 2007 Cameron Winery "Willamette Valley" Pinot Noir you can for $7 a glass or a ludicrously affordable $20 a bottle! This is one of the best Oregon pinot noirs of 2007.

Once ensconced at our two ringside seats at EVOE's long rustic lunch table, where the culinary genius of chef Kevin Gibson are on display about three feet in front of you and from a vantage point at which the observant eater can pick up tips to take home to try in our own kitchens, we placed our orders off the myriad temptations on the chalkboard menu. w chose the potato-leek soup with fresh morels and the scallops with a grapefruit-avocado salad. I opted for, after strong prompting from Kevin, his housemade wurst sausages with potato salad (below right) and the vitello tonnato (pic at left). As always, everything was exceptional. Again Kevin's deft touch lets every ingredient stand out, and his simple, totally unfussy preparations and presentations should be a clue to almost every other cook in town. The soup was surprisingly not creamy as potato-leek soup almost always is, instead chunky with cubed potato. It had a rich, heady, morelly broth with a hint of butter. Excellent stuff. The always reliable scallops were, as ever, perfectly prepared with the richness of the shellfish counterpointed by the citrusy twang of the grapefruit. The last time I had vitello tonnato, which is thinly sliced or pounded veal with a tuna sauce, was at a small café in Monforte d'Alba on our Piedmont excursion a couple of years ago. I told Kevin all I wanted was to be transported back tableside in Monforte. He, as he should have, rolled his eyes at the food dork before him and said he'd do what he could. One bite in and while I might not have been back in Monforte, I was pretty damn happy to be seated at the table in EVOE. The veal was perfectly chilled and tender, the tuna sauce a bright, tangy compliment. His wurst sausages with potato salad were also pretty fabulous. Moist, seasoned just so, wurst should never overpower. It's the subtle sausage. And each bite, dipped in a dab of mustard, followed by a bite of potato salad and sip of rosé, was luscious. Again, as I've said before, Kevin's cooking at EVOE is easily among the best in town, and the incredibly reasonable prices make this hands down the best dining deal in Portland.

Cellar report: 2002 Chateau de Chorey...aka "Real pinot noir"

Today's first economics lesson: Good Product + Good Price = Happy Customers

I'm thinking about this because last night I was swilling down this awesome 2002 Chateau de Chorey les Beaune. A French pinot noir, this is everything domestic pinots wish they could be at a lower price than way too many of them. The economics lesson comes to mind because I have a wine shop in the heart of Oregon wine country, where over-inflated pinot noir pricing is seemingly a rite of passage. Now there are some guys, actually a lot of producers, who seem to keep their egos in check and offer their customers good value for every dollar spent...Cameron, St. Innocent, Westrey, J. Christopher, Patricia Green and many others. Then there are those who seem to have insatiable egos that are only fed by emptying their victims...er, customers wallets as fast as they can with their one dimensional, over-ripe, over-oaked wines....Archery Summit, Beaux Freres, Domaine Serene, Bergstrom come to mind. There are a couple of Oregon wineries who actually charge $100+ a bottle for their wine. To which I can only reply "Are you fucking kidding me??!"

Today's second economics lesson: If you pay more than $50 a bottle for Oregon pinot noir you are a sucker. If you do it more than once you're an idiot.

I always think of this when I drink yet another satisfying bottle of French Burgundy like the Chateau de Chorey. Now this is a around a $38 retail bottle, not cheap, but it delivers more pleasure than ANY comparably priced domestic noir. 2002 was an underappreciated red burgundy vintage, and the wines are just now creeping out from under their youthful shells. This is a classic case in point. Still tight when the cork gets popped, as it opened up blueberries, spice, fresh flowers and that Burgundian earth came cascading out of the glass. On the palate the longer it sat open, the more "weight" it put on, filling out in the mouth with each passing minute. Beautifully rich, pure fruit. Smooth, elegant, perfect acid balance, with tons of complexity and years of life ahead of it. Plus it was so freakishly good with my grilled lamb chops. The other sad fact of American winemaking is that domestic grape juice will never have the exquisite food affinity the Euros seem to do as a matter of course. Don't think I don't like Oregon pinot. I do...a lot. I also don't expect Oregon pinot to be like Burgundy and get the differences, but when I have something like this I realize how good life can really be.............
##### ##### #####
one year ago today @ E.D.T.: do you know what white people really like?

Cellar report: 2003 Cameron Pinot Noir; 1998 San Vincenti Chianti

Sometimes when I pull a bottle of wine up from the basement I find it amazing I got to here from where I started. I mean there was time, back when I drank more for effect than for pleasure (not that old habits don't occasionally creep back!) that I would buy Taylor's California Cellars Chablis in the 1.5 liter bottle because I thought that since it had "fancy" script writing on the label and it was a "chablis" that I was pretty sophisticated way to get loaded or impress whatever random date I had back then...or both at the same time. I think the last time I partook of the TCC was with a friend when we were going to the drag races here in PDX back in the early '80s (and believe me, the picture of me at a drag race is pretty incongruous since that is not exactly my normal milieu. Although using a words like "milieu" and "drag race" in the same sentence is pretty incongruous, too.) and since we forgot glasses we were drinking it right out of the bottle. Not exactly connoisseurs, but it had the desired effect!

Those memories are still with me, and I think it is part of the reason that while I love good wine and have amore than healthy quantity laying in wait downstairs, I try to keep it all in perspective. And two of bottles I've had recently certainly improved my perspective. As a starting point, let me say that I love Tuscan sangiovese. There is nothing like (in its good versions) its dusty cherry fruit, earthiness, and how it just screams of where it comes from. What they call terroir. I don't carry any domestic sangiovese at the wine shack. What's the point? They will NEVER be as good, have nowhere near the food affinity, and oh-by-the-way cost two to three times as much. This 1998 from San Vincenti was Tuscan loveliness. In my experience regular Chianti Classicos (as opposed to Reservas) from good vintages/producers really hit their stride at about ten years of age. This one was surprisingly young, really taking time to open up, even after decanting. But it had all the requisite cherry, blackberry, and dust that I like with perfect acidity. It would easily last another five years, but the other night it was exactly right with Marcella's spaghetti alla carbonara!

Then to move as far across the wine dial from Chianti as possible you have the profoundly pleasurable pinot noir from Oregon's Cameron Winery. Idiosyncratic winemaker John Paul is the Willamette Valley's version of a reclusive Burgundian squirreled away in his cellar, doing things his way, making political pronouncements as powerful as his wine. In other words, I am a huge fan! John's pinots are elegant, and he eschews the new oak/overripe-fruit school that way too many pinot producers have signed up for, letting his incredibly pure fruit speak volumes. And he never submits his wines fro ratings by the various wine publications. He knows they're good, and everyone else should too. Along with the amazingly Burgundian pinots from Thomas, I think his are one of the two best Oregon pinots out there. They are nothing if not true. His 2003 "Arley's Leap" bottling we had a couple of weeks ago was delicious. Still very young, but showing his characteristic strawberry-cherry tinged fruit, with earth, spice, and violet notes peeking out, then making their presence known as the wine opened. Brilliantly balanced tannins and acidity. Great stuff, and I'm feeling better about my future happiness knowing I have a two more bottles stashed away.

Sorry for the photo quality. I'd blame it on jet lag from our trip, but that was, uh, four days ago it is actually just a crappy picture!

Down John! HEEL!!

Of all the Oregon wine personalities to be a national food mag wine-celeb, the last guy I would expect to be a publicity hound is laid back Jackson from Cameron Winery, but there he is on page 10 of the July 2008 issue of Saveur, while his "owner", winemaker John Paul is shamelessly mugging in a desperate attempt to draw attention to himself. On the other hand, of all the wineries in Oregon to get pimped hard, Cameron is at the top of my list because if you ever want to drink Oregon wines with integrity, elegance, style, and just plain deliciousness, these are them.

Saveur has a feature in the mag about touring Oregon wine country, where Doug Tunnell's Brick House Wines, producer of equally worthy, equally well-made pinot noir is also mini-profiled. If you don't grab the hard copy of Saveur, click here to see it online (with more pics).

Salut, comrade!

With the weather heating up, my mind starts obsessing over bottles of fresh, crisp ice cold dry rosés and great food to go with them. This week one of my annual favorite rosés came out, the whimsically subversive Vino Pinko from John Paul at Cameron Winery. John's been making stunning pinots and chardonnays under his Cameron label here in Oregon for a long time, and he satisfies his jones for all things Italian by releasing some limited production wines under his Cameroni label. A pinot bianco, an Italian style white blend, a nebbiolo, and this crisply delicious pinot noir rosé. Che never looked so good!

So with all this good pink stuff swirling about satisfying my thirst, I naturally and inevitably start to get hungry. For me one of those ultimate food and wine hookups is rosé and shrimp. The acid and fresh berry flavors in a chilled dry rosé counter perfectly to the sweetness of fresh shrimp. We had mom over a couple of nights ago, and since it was an after work get together and I had been rocking hard at the wine shack, I wanted something fast and easy. This pasta we adapted from a Tyler Florence recipe off of the Food Network site is just the ticket for a warm summer evening and a cold bottle of rosé. Pass the pink, please!

********************

Shrimp Scampi with Linguini
adapted from Tyler Florence

1 pound linguini
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
2 large shallots, finely diced
10 cloves garlic, sliced
Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
20 large shrimp, about 1 pound, peeled and deveined, tail on
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3/4 to 1 cup dry white wine
2 lemons, juiced
1/3 cup finely chopped parsley leaves

For the pasta, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. When it has come to the boil, add a couple of tablespoons of salt and the linguini. Stir to make sure the pasta separates; cover. When the water returns to a boil, cook for about 6 to 8 minutes or until the pasta is not quite done. Drain the pasta reserving 1 cup of water.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Saute the shallots, garlic, and red pepper flakes (if using) until the shallots are translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper; add them to the pan and cook until they have turned pink, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the shrimp from the pan; set aside and keep warm. Add wine and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons oil. When the butter has melted, return the shrimp to the pan along with the parsley and cooked pasta and reserved pasta water. Stir well and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle over a bit more olive oil and serve immediately.

A fashionably satisfying evening!

Last night another reason why I love my life. My friend Jake runs the marketing for Portland retail fashion icon Mario's. In our humble burg, if you want Armani, you go to Mario's. Prada, Zegna, Dolce & Gabbana? Ditto. So I get a call from Jake talking about his plans for their fall catalog. Jake is a big wine fan, and he wants to go with a wine theme this issue, so I hooked him up with two of our local wine icons, John Paul from Cameron Winery and David O'Reilly from Owen Roe.



Bright and brilliant Oregon Box Crab Salad with arugula and grapefruit!

We met for dinner and conversation at Castagna, as you know one of my favorite places to get my grub on. Owner/chef Kevin Gibson put together an incredible seven course tasting menu (corner left) to go with some crazy bottles of wine John and David brought. It was a fantastic evening listening to David and John talk about their experiences, philosophy, their commitment to sustainable, organic, non-manipulative winemaking practices. Oh, and the food rocked, and the wines were off the hook.

John Paul, larger than life!

Highlights for me? For wine all seven bottles opened were stunning. Among John's offerings was a superb bottle of his 2001 "Clos Electrique" Blanc, a dead ringer for a great white burgundy, and still so young, filled with character. Simply awesome. Among the Owen Roe offerings, David's '06 "DuBrul" Riesling, '05 "Kilmore" Pinot and a staggering '04 "Slide Mountain" Cab Franc blew us away. And of course Kevin's food was spot on. Not a weak moment from the lighter than air gougeres to the sensual semi-freddo. My palate was rocked by the box crab salad, his house cured meats (the lardo was insane!), and perfectly pillowy agnolotti that both John and I agreed were the equal to anything we've eaten in Italy. Then his savory, earthy squab breast with English peas and morels with John's '05 "Dundee Hills" Pinot and David's '05 "Kilmore" was one of those perfect wine and food moments that almost makes me weep. The lamb chop and pistachio-praline semi-freddo were equally incredible.

Agnolotti with spinach, speck, and parmesan in a heavenly broth!





A wildly satisfying night, and a huge reminder that I am so fortunate to be able to have these experiences. Wow!

* * * * * *
Add Castagna: If you've been putting off experiencing the sublime pleasure of eating in Castagna's dining room, through June 21st parties of four can save $20 off their tab (parties of more will save $5 off each diner's entrée). Just grab one of the postcards off the front table when you walk in and save $5 per person. This is a great offer, and a wonderful chance to take advantage of Kevin and Monique's classic seasonal cooking from the area's best local food purveyors! Call 503.231.7373 for reservations.