I Love You Recipes

The wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary over the weekend. After considerable conversation about where we might go and what activities we might both enjoy, she came up with an idea that wouldn’t have come to me if I’d sat on a rock for a hundred years. My wife suggested that we start our celebratory day together by visiting the Farmers Market in nearby Portland, Ore.

Lest you’re quick to snicker that I’m as henpecked as a male in an American sitcom, let me be quick to tell you that I jumped at the chance, and only partly because my other half is an incredible cook. I had never been to a farmers market and I was genuinely curious to discover the fuss.

I sometimes think that the only thing that Portland shares with other cities is a common planet. Case in point: we traveled by streetcar to find farm fresh produce. I parked the car somewhere downtown, and five minutes later we stepped onto the grounds of Portland State University, where each Saturday from early April into late December some of the streets are transformed into one serious supermarket catering to thousands of shoppers. Only teleportation would have made it easier.

Got a yen for bassoon with your buffalo or elk? Sweet violin with your strawberries and cherries and cream? A three-piece ensemble with your salmon and fresh oysters? Strumming guitar to the accompaniment of exotic wines and cheeses and butters and breads and every fruit and vegetable known to the Pacific Northwest farm? Like your crowds well mannered to the point of a stranger quietly removing a napkin dropped by a stranger? Yes? Then this place is for you, too.

So we’ll see you next Saturday. Look for the couple with the big cooler…the one with the heavy-duty wheels!

Carrots and onions are budget friendly vegetables that can give a ho-hum meal an easy and colorful burst of flavor. Lightly browning carrots and onions in butter brings the natural sugar to the surface to caramelize.

1 large onion (enough for 2 cups)
6 carrots (enough for 4 cups)
1/4 cup sweet cream butter
Salt
Pepper, freshly cracked and ground

Peel and thinly slice the onions. Wash the carrots and cut into matchstick pieces.

Place the butter in a large saucepan and melt over medium heat. Add the carrots and onions and cook, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are light golden brown, about 20 – 25 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Yield: 4 servings

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A cookie recipe for all seasons, we love homemade lemon thins. Serve with fresh fruit for a light summer dessert. On a cold winter day, hot honey tea and lemon cookies will warm you heart and soul.

1/2 cup butter flavor vegetable shortening, room temperature
2 tablespoons sweet cream butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1 lemon
1-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Confectioners’ sugar, optional

Wash and dry the lemon. Zest 1-1/2 tablespoons of the peel and set aside. Squeeze the lemon for 1/4 cup fresh juice and set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, cream the shortening, butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add the vanilla, lemon extract, lemon zest and juice, beat thoroughly until the mixture is smooth. Add the flour mixture to the shortening mixture and mix by hand until well incorporated. Place the dough on waxed paper and form a log 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap the dough in the waxed paper and foil. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350°. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Using a sharp knife, cut the log into 1/8-inch slices. Place the slices 2″ apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 8 – 10 minutes, until the edges are just golden. Immediately transfer the cookies to racks and allow to cool. Sift confectioners’ sugar over the lemon thins if desired.

I like to make a double batch of this dough and freeze half for use at a later date. Divide the dough between 2 pieces of waxed paper to form the logs and wrap in foil. You can store this dough in the freezer for up to 90 days. Remove the log from the freezer to thaw in the refrigerator; proceed with cutting and baking as directed.

Yield: approximately 4 dozen

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This lemon parsley rice recipe is delicious with chicken or fish, and makes a great light lunch. The flavor is better than the boxed stuff and it’s less expensive, too. It’s better for your health, too, since you make it with fresh ingredients, with no chemicals or preservatives.

1 cup onion, peeled and minced
2 tablespoons sweet cream butter
2 cups long-grain rice
2-3/4 cups chicken stock or broth
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt
Pepper, freshly cracked and ground
1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves, minced

Preheat oven to 350°. Butter one side of a piece of waxed paper to fit your cooking vessel.

Place the butter in a lidded skillet or saucepan that you can use in the oven, and melt over medium-low heat. Add the rice and stir to coat, cooking for 2 – 3 minutes. Add the stock or broth, lemon juice, lemon peel. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Place the waxed paper, buttered side down, over the rice, place the lid on your cooking vessel and transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow the rice to stand for 5 – 10 minutes. Remove and discard the lemon peel and gently stir in the parsley.

Yield: 4 servings.

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There used to be a place on Hollywood Boulevard where members of the entertainment industry would line up, often beneath a broiling sun, sometimes suffering humiliation and even physical abuse, for the privilege of dining. And I joyfully joined them, despite the inconvenience and the discomfort and yes, sometimes, the abuse; for the food was so good that to do otherwise would have been unthinkable.

You probably haven’t heard about this place. It sat at the other end of the Boulevard, so far from the intersection of Vine and the glamour of Grumman’s Chinese that they might have been in separate universes. This was a place on a graffiti-wounded corner, in a neighborhood of ramshackled apartment buildings, where sirens were as commonplace as hookers and druggies and dealers. But your rewarded, if you stuck it out, was the best Mongolian barbecue on planet Earth.

Incredibly, I never even knew its name; in fact, I’m not sure that it had one. If I was giving directions, I’d simply say to stay on Hollywood for so many blocks, and then to start looking for the nasty little red and gold storefront with the bullet hole in the window that had a jagged crack that ran like a scar from the top of the sill to the bottom. Oh, and there probably would be a line outside. That was enough. Anyone who was to meet me there always did; and without exception, they, too, became a regular.

Good Mongolian barbecue is nearly impossible to find. In forty years of looking, I’ve stumbled across the real deal only four times, and this was the best of the lot. If you’ve never had good Mongolian, you can’t imagine what you’re missing. Logic to the contrary, it’s not Mongolian. According to the Internet website Wikipedia, Taiwan invented this form of cooking in the mid-20th Century. Imagine a buffet of thinly sliced vegetables and frozen meats (beef, lamb, pork, turkey, usually). The diner places the contents of choice into a bowl, followed by some combination of sauces and oils per written instructions on the wall, adds raw garlic to taste, and hands the concoction to a cook toiling over a huge griddle that can be as hot as 570°F. After almost flash cooking, your food is handed back in a fresh bowl and you proceed to your table where white rice and fresh hot pocket bread await. Yum! Or when done right, incredible! Unfortunately, most restaurants use the wrong ingredients, with predictably terrible results.

So why was that dirty, rundown little hole-in the-wall so good? The answer probably is the family that owned it. I’m almost sure they were Tai, though I never heard the older adults speak; they stayed in the kitchen furiously trying to keep up with the demand for meat and vegetables and rice and hot pocket bread. The one who did speak – often and quite loudly – was their rail-thin daughter. Possessing the manner of a werewolf loan shark, she would dart about like a firefly, one calculating eye on the buffet and the other on the hapless, sweating cook, all the time gauging via some system of her own how many moments had passed since each patron started occupying each of the mismatched chairs that circled several large communal tables. You sat where you could, even if doing so meant companions were banished to other tables. But tarry too long and you were guaranteed to hear the werewolf admonish, “You eat faster! People waiting!” Continue your sins and chances were good that a repeat of “You eat faster!” would be accompanied by a whack of her hand to your back. In no other place that I’ve ever been would such behavior be tolerated. But in this place, in every case that I witnessed, the humiliated diner would utter an apology, as he or she lifted his or her bowl and chopsticks higher in a renewed effort to gobble down every last bit before being ejected to make room for the next hungry mouth. She got away with it because the food really was that good.

Considering the urgency of getting in, eating and getting out, and the fact that the person sitting at your elbow usually was a stranger, conversation was a rarity. But I did witness several that were memorable. One fellow had been the sound engineer on a recording of a Barbra Streisand album. He claimed that her voice was so perfect that he basically had nothing to do. Another had worked the lights on a Dean Martin movie. A third had been part of the orchestra backing up Frank Sinatra. I have no way of knowing whether those stories were true. Certainly they could have been; many of the studios are near that neighborhood.

What I do know is that in the early morning hours of January 1994, the great Northridge earthquake tore up a big chunk of Los Angeles. The restaurant, like so many other mom and pop businesses, never reopened. And my taste for really, really, really good Mongolian barbecue has remained unsated since.