The Roxy or OMG my stomach, for why did I drink so much last night?

Normally I won't be posting, but in this case I thought I needed to jump in. Jeremy and I went to The Roxy this morning to recover from another night of drinking at BLOWN. The reason I am jumping in is because Jeremy and I had, I believe, a pretty different experience with the food. I'll let him speak to his noms, but here's what I've got to say about mine:

I ordered the Gigabit, which is two eggs over-hard, bacon and tillamook cheddar on sourdough toast with a side of hashbrowns, and Jeremy and I split an order of biscuits and gravy. The Gigabit was... awful. I'm pretty sure that the cook was new, so I'll give him a break for that. But dude. Serial. The toast was SOGGY with butter and grease. He must have put a whole stick of butter on it or something, I don't know. I couldn't taste the eggs or bacon because the butter and cheese were so overwhelming. It was like eating a grilled cheese sandwich with some other tasteless stuff in it. Not what I was looking for at all as I ordered an egg sandwich.

The hashbrowns were bland. BLAND. If you look up "bland" in the dictionary, there would be a picture of these hashbrowns. I don't expect a small place like The Roxy to go as far as grating the potatoes themselves or anything, but when you use a bag of frozen hashbrowns I'm pretty sure you're supposed to season that shit. Salt, pepper, something.

Now, the biscuits and gravy, that's another story all together. That shit was GREAT. The biscuit was light and fluffy and not at all grease/butter-soaked (which is more than I can say for everything else I ate). It came smothered in their super-awesome country gravy, which was just fatty, meaty and peppery enough to excite my taste buds. You know when your cat eats something fatty and they do that smacking their mouth thing to enjoy the fatty goodness? I was doing that. I wanted every part of my mouth to enjoy what had just been put into it - and it did. The meeting of a dry biscuit and the fatty, moist gravy was perfect; the gravy lubed the biscuit up enough to not suck all of the moisture out of your mouth and slide down your throat easily, and the biscuit held up against sitting under all of that gravy without becoming mushy.

Next time, I'll stick to the biscuits and gravy and maybe an over-easy egg.

- Sam

Find out more about The Roxy

KOREAN BURRITO TIME!!!

Koi Fusion has been written up in so many magazines, and it commands a certain respect. The service is sleek, fast and effeciant. Hanging out near the PSU Campus(that spot would be PERFECT for a restaurant!) or deep in the Pearl. It doesn't seem like they have a high impression of their music, it's Michael Jackson or Wu-tang Clan. Which makes for easy listening as you wait, trying to peer into the huge taco-van. The food tastes great, but Korean food is the ONE cuisine of Asian cooking I don't know authentically. But it's a Korean Taco! So sweet and spicy meats mixed with kimchi, fattened with rice and laced with sauce, garnished with green onion cilantro and lime. This is a sweet burrito, but savory in that asian miso/shiitake /udon-broth kinda way. It's spicy and pretty much the best tasting thing I've had in Portland(excepting the Salmon dish at Fenouill or my friend Dancini's Double Decker Hamburger and Bacon Grilled Cheeze) since moving here. It's a nice treat, served piping hot and worth the price.

Visit them at: KOi Fusion PDX

International Correspondent! Foraging Part II

Everyone remember the epic apple expedition! What I very cleverly didn't mention was ANOTHER foraging trip. MWAHAHAHA. All part of my dastardly scheme.

Anyway, the weekend before the apples I went foraging with some Lovely Ladies that I happened to meet via LiveJournal. Who knew people could still meet via LiveJournal in THIS day and age.

It transpired that I unknowingly had in my possession the key information needed to locate the fruit of their wildest dreams. We went to the Hermitage of Braid to pick SLOES. As in, for making SLOE GIN. (Define sloes? Ok! "The hard black or yellow fruit of the blackthorn shrub")

Sloe gin is much better known in the UK than the US, and many people (such as my father in law) use it to transform their traditional gin and tonics into tart and fabulous pink concoctions of icy wonder.

Turns out that sloe gin is pretty easy to make at home!

Step 1: Freeze your 500 grams of freshly picked sloes
Step 2: Buy the cheapest gin you can find. In my case, the most literally basic store brand available - Sainsbury's Basics Gin
Step 3: Combine sloes, gin and sugar in leftover liquor bottles (you should have plenty of those lying around)
Step 3: Shake every day for a week, then every week for 8-10 weeks.

You're done!

Since I started my sloe gin last week it will hopefully be ready for Christmastime, when an appropriate action will be to mix it with champagne and PUT IT ALL IN MY MOUF.

PANTRY CHALLENGE!

What do you do when your husband comes home sick from work and needs lunch?

What do you do when those fresh gnocchi from [?insert date here?] need to be cooked before they grow hair?

YOU HAVE A PANTRY CHALLENGE!

In the future I'll try to get a photo of the challenge ingredients before I get started but since my cooking usually moves faster than my thinking it didn't happen this time.

Challenge Ingredients:
Half pack of (relatively) fresh gnocchi
Leftover Lloyd Grossman puttanesca
Reduced-to-clear fresh basil I bought like 5 days ago (it's still good!)
Random fridge cheese
That Last Tomato


Parboiled the gnocchi, lined a baking dish with a little sauce, spread one layer of gnocchi with sauce on that, laid out some tomato chunks, sprinkled the chiffonaded basil, drizzled the olive oil, grated cheddar, piled up the breadcrumbs, and topped with fake parmesan and salt/pepper.

VERBS!! I HAS SO MANY OF THEM

They stole our trademark!

nom nom nom

International Correspondent!

Today the International Correspondent brings the thrilling news that autumnal splendor is assaulting the Lothians, and my fair city is strewn with food in the manner of a forager's paradise.

Two weekends in a row I have gone foraging at the Hermitage of Braid, where beyond plentiful wild fruit there are also plentiful domestic dogs and toddlers vying for the International Cute and Muddy Playfellows Award.

This weekend it was APPLES. My precious green bucket, a remnant of the gardening blog of yore, was filled to the top with apples shaken from the very tops of the tallest trees.

I concede that that is not a FULL bucket. Just use your damn imagination and pretend it's full. It was full at some point.

The first step was easy enough. Buy loads of packaged shortcrust pastry cause I'm a lazy baker and make a couple pies. Lucky I got that nifty apple corer last time I was at Ikea!


The second pie was frozen raw so I can gift it to Ross's coworker who just had a baby on Friday! (6lbs, girl, named Autumn. YAY!)

The completion of the pie-for-keeps required lots of nom-ing. But how can you nom a pie when you don't have any heavy cream or ice cream or custard cream?

TRIGGER PANTRY CHALLENGE!!!

So I combined extra thick french creme fraiche (fuck you guys, I am not going to even TRY to do any accents francais), 2% Greek yogurt, vanilla, and icing sugar. It ended up a bit sweet but since the pastry was unsweetened it all balanced out.


The rest of the bucket, along with the cores and peels of the pie-encased apples, ended up in the massive lovely high end stockpot that is and remains the best wedding present EVER.

Since weights and measures are for jerks, I enriched the apple crap with undetermined amounts of raw sugar, orange zest, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and some water, and then cooked it for about a million hours. Ok it was more like 6 hours.



During which time I couldn't decide whether I was making apple sauce, apple butter, or fruit leather. Apple butter took the least effort so I just went with it.

Result?!?!


It looks like canned pumpkin pie gloop but honestly, it's just apples. Apparently one huge green bucket of apples equals two pies and one midsized Best Foods mayonnaise jar filled with apple butter. MATH!

Mom Harris' Soul Food

A cozy hole in the wall, Mom Harris Soul Food is small yet packs a big punch. Cornbread was light and fluffy, if a little caramelized on the bottom, they do a Red Beans & Rice Jambalaya that is just AMAZING and their fried chicken/fish is served piping hot. Our roomate got a sausage sandwhich with their Louisiana Spice Aioli and after taking a bite, was convinced it was on the list of "To Eat" next time we go.

This is authentic New Orleans style food, with the owner/chef a transplant. Come to Oregon during Katrina, and as terrible as that must have been, it means we get to eat amazing food from one of the most culinary-diverse regions in America. Go check it out, they have more seating in the back if it's full up front. You wont regret it! Four Noms outta four!

Visit them at: http://momharrissoulfood.com/

Heavenly Donut

As apt a name as you could get for these donuts, sweet and glazed to perfection. The chocolate cake donuts were like eating cake, fluffy and rich, the chocolate frosting with peanut crumbles giving it a slight peanut-butter/chocolate finish, which is fine by me. Their regular donut was fried to perfection, light and sweet. They could fill up on more custard in their boston cream pies, but I'm sure that it'd be all over you if they went any heavier. All in all a nice change of pace from Voodoo Donuts, and while being a chain, the price and hours are more than acceptable, especially when you're in No'Po' with a hankerin' for donuts! We asked for Hot Chocolate and the lady gave us Frozen Coffee Blends, with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. We didn't say anything, cause how could we say no to that. Half way on our drive to the pumpkin patch I peaked on the sugar high and was SUPER PUMPED for the corn maze.
-Jeremy

Visit them at: http://www.heavenlydonut.com/