Just because you order wisely doesn’t mean you order well. It’s possible to be ‘good at food’ and simultaneously good at very little else. Food is not a virtue.
the mug says it all
Lots of people eat at Mother’s in downtown Portland. Lots of people wait in line, tourists shove their luggage into a doorway the width of a very petite woman. The name of this establishment dictates its patronage; there will be children. You’re an adult with no children in tow, you will wait 45 minutes for brunch because someone you trust says that you should.
crumb
As you dodge launched Animal Crackers and Sippy Cups you might as well get the pecan cinnamon bun/strudel/whatever. You can finish it for dinner.
SOUP
The matzo ball soup is Worth It. Very few places in Portland serve it, even fewer make it well. Get a cup, not a bowl. The bowl makes you look like a glutton.
B & G
I’m a surveyor of biscuits and gravy. I have opinions. The high point of these is the half flour/half corn meal biscuit dough. The gravy is under-seasoned. The eggs are transcendent, see the edge crisp on the over easy? Get yours.
Dungeness Benedict, Esquire.
This is the brunch special on your one and only visit to Mother’s. The hollandaise is whipped to a thick and velvet meringue, the crab is sweet and new, the potatoes are treated with animal fat.
The waiter compliments the two of you on your fine ordering skills.
The intention behind this project was simple – make sausages out of life before life makes sausages out of you. Decided to try my hand at the Korean blood sausage, Soondae. Hoping to employ a bit of ancient fusion I used barley instead of sweet rice. The remainder of the ingredients were easy to source at my friendly district superstore, even the pork blood. Speaking of pork blood, this post gets a little nasty, so if you are my 5 year old niece reading this on her Mother’s iPhone I hope an adult intervenes.
barley in the cooker
Sweet potato starch vermicelli noodles are texturally superior to most other vermicelli. I would know, I have leftovers.
a simple soak
Next step in the prep is to toast some sesame seeds in a dry cast iron, who could refuse? I’m sure this smells great, it kills me.
sesame toast
Time to hand grind the sesame seeds with ginger and garlic:
aroma mortar
My end game was party-of-one Bossam, so I picked up a napa cabbage, oysters, some smoked jellyfish banchan, and decided to tea some quail eggs. I added soy sauce and shioxing wine to the soak because that stuff has been taking up space in my cabinet forever.
tiny things of beauty
One of my greatest joys in this short life is new old stock kitchen appliances, the kind that some fated couple received in the 70s on their Big Day and never used. You can find them cast away at thrift stores, they are usually in battered boxes.
you’re a strong one, you’re a lion
This particular Ouster has a very retro on-off switch that basically requires you to stick your finger into the interior of the machine, that’s a thrill.
Combine all of the aromatics with the barley and vermicelli.
the raw mix
Now it is time to tussle with the 3 feet of pig intestines you’ve purchased:
i know, i know. don’t look at me.
I’ve always credited Anosmia as the gift that allows me to be grossed out by very few things. In fact, most things that really make me gag: glitter, substances that change the color of my tongue, haphazard political discussions, are things that I’m told others enjoy. I was surprised to feel very…tested…when the act of running water through this bovine tract made my stomach curdle. These need to sit in salt water for an hour so after The Handling I took a much needed breather and left my apartment, expecting to return to the task with renewed enthusiasm.
A few hours later:
I’ve got this?
The opening of the pork blood container marked the beginning of the undoing. There is a potent life force involved when dealing with blood and once I ladled into the blood all I could think about was D.H. Lawrence and his “blood philosophy” – this thought sent me tumbling to my bookshelf where I convalesced for a few.
Back on track, the blood needs to combine with the prepped raw mix, run through the grinder and find solace in the intestines of the animal from which it came.
“what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true.” – DHL
This, my wise vegetarian friends, is a snapshot just before I Bailed. Something about the way the blood oozed from the rest of the ingredients and puddled at the base of the casings, well, I couldn’t take it. I wrapped the whole bloody mess in a 5-ply trash bag and walked it up to the compacter at the McDonald’s on Powell. I returned to hose my kitchen down with bleach solution and enjoyed a dinner of napa cabbage, tea eggs, oysters, and jellyfish – sans blood.
I’m on a silly diet. It’s called the cabbage soup diet, perhaps you’ve heard of it? Regardless, I refuse to link any of the information to this site. If you find it yourself and browse through the recipes and restrictions do yourself a favor and stay out of the messageboard. I wandered in accidentally and felt like I’d found a portal to the 8th grade girls locker room of my nightmares. Anyway, after a few months of weddings and goodbye parties I need to reset my dietary intake and reduce my cravings for sweets. To be fair, I also like diets: the structure, the no-brain food decisions. Today I can eat the soup, any fruit except banannas, take my multivitamins and drink water. I also insist on taking my regular dose of fish oil. Um, cabbage soup and fish oil, this could be a horrible idea! 🙂
bunny bread surprise 