YumPDX - A Portland Based Food and Wine Blog

Recently we signed up for Organics to You, a local organization that delivers organic produce (mostly local, farm-grown) straight to your doorstep. Part of the reason we wanted to sign up for this service is also a bit of a challenge: we have no idea how to cook many of the contents they deliver.

This recipe, after just one try, has already become a new favorite. While we had had collard greens before, we didn’t know a good recipe to cook them at home. Also, neither of us could even recall eating radishes, let alone cooking them!

After some searching in recipe books and blogs, we tried a make-shift recipe trying out some suggestions that sounded good from various sources. The result was an amazingly delicious, interesting recipe combining the bitterness of the greens (any greens could be used here, not just collards) and the semi-sweet tinge of radishes. The … Read more…

We’ve made this curry a couple of times and it’s quickly becoming one of our staples. Really, the whole reason that this dish is amazing is the red curry paste from Thai Kitchen. Prior to using this, we relied on a hacky recipe involving squash soup and way too much curry powder. Much better now that we’re using the real deal.

Now excellent curry just means mixing a spoonful of this red curry paste with a can of coconut milk, then throwing in our favorite in-season veggies. We really love the versatility of this recipe.

Additionally, we have been able to make it much healthier by using lite coconut milk. Now don’t get me wrong, normally we’ll opt for the most fatty, artery-clogging option out there. But this curry is actually better with lite coconut milk. In a way, the heavier stuff actually masks the … Read more…

Bamboo Sushi is by far our favorite sushi place in Portland. But it’s bigger than Portland: in my NYC days I got used to going to fancy sushi, and generally spending around $100 a person. But the quality of Bamboo’s sushi exceeds my favorite spots in New York, and at about half the price.

Best of all, Bamboo does a bitchin’ happy hour, where the prices on sushi are downright insane. You can get the four piece nigiri set (pictured here) for $5. That’s right $1.25 a piece – for some of the highest end sushi I’ve ever had. And take a look at the salmon piece – that shit is neon (sorry for the lousy iPhone pic).

Additionally, Bamboo provides a ton of vegetarian options. I’ve always made fun of Kate for liking sushi and being vegetarian, to me sushi is all about the high … Read more…

The other night we were lucky enough to have our good friend Felicity invite us over to dinner to show off her mad cooking skills. The theme of the meal was Indian—a cuisine that we love and is somewhat hard to find in Portland. Best of all, whenever we cook with Felicity she teaches us a lot of her cooking knowhow, and we come away able to better prepare our own meals. So we jumped at this opportunity to pick up some pointers.

One thing we learned is to use lots of garlic (don’t have to tell me twice :)). Felicity also taught us about a few Indian spices that we don’t ever really use: coriander and turmeric. Besides these new additions to our spice rack, Felicity also showed us why she uses grape seed oil for Indian frying: … Read more…

The other day at Fred Meyer we saw acorn squash on sale for 50 cents. Although neither of us had ever tried acorn squash, I had just read an article in Edible Portland about various types of squash, and we have also been wanting to cook more seasonally: which means lots of root vegetables for fall / winter.

After browsing a few acorn squash recipes online, we decided on Moroccan-style stuffed acorn squash. In this simple recipe, the acorn squash is stuffed with a mix of couscous for sustenance, garbanzo beans for protein, carrots and celery for crunch, and finally raisins for a little bit of sweetness. This sweet and salty stuffing combines wonderfully with the flavorful creaminess of the acorn squash.

Since the ribbing on acorn squash makes it difficult to cut, pretty much everywhere recommends cutting the squash into halves and roasting. … Read more…

This veggie chili is one of the easiest and most versatile recipes we know, so we make it often. There are a few base ingredients that you’ll always want to include which we always keep on hand, and then you can add lots of other items to suit your taste.

This particular batch of chili was really made fantastic by the harvest of green peppers grown in my mom’s garden (thanks mom!).

Base ingredients:

• 1 can (14 oz) black beans
• 1 can (14 oz) red kidney beans
• 1 can (14 oz) pinto beans
• 1 can (14 oz) stewed tomatoes
• 1 small can (4 oz) green chillies
• 1 medium onion (any yellow or white kind will do, sweet ones are especially good in this recipe), diced and fried
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp salt

Read more…