Duck legs with red wine, prunes, and carrots

Said 'au revoir' to 2011 with a small dinner party for a few good friends last night.  

Fermented Foods Workshop August 13

Hello friends!  I will be hosting another fermented foods workshop August 13 at Wild Goose Farm on Sauvie Island here in Portland.  We'll be covering different types of Sauerkraut, summer vegetables in brine, hot sauce!, grain ferments, natural sodas, and a whole lot more.  The price will be $45 per person and you'll be able to take some things we make home to ferment in your own kitchen.

Email me at info@timothybartling.com to reserve a space.

Click on the posting title above to see the flyer for the workshop...

Cooking in Rabat, Morocco

I recently spent some time in Morocco with my friend Julia from Munich.  We were fortunate to be invited to cook (and eat!) with a family in Rabat with whom I had arranged to study classic Moroccan cuisine for a few days.

We bought some fish from the local market

and made a seafood bisteeya

as well as a pigeon and chicken bisteeya.  Here fried almonds have been ground and mixed with cinnamon.

Decorating the two bisteeyas on the floor!

The chicken bisteeya with the seafood pie in the background.

Lamb and cardoon tagine.  Check out the small whole preserved lemons.

Lamb with quince and dried fruits

Friday is cous cous day in Morocco

Fluffing the couscous after the first steaming.  We did this 3 separate times between steamings.

The vegetables and couscous are steamed over a pot of boiling lamb.  The lamb is placed first on the couscous, and thus the vegetables are eaten first and the meat last.  Everything is eaten with the hands communally.

to the table!

The lunch feast begins

What to do when there are dead animals in the fridge?

I was recently visiting my friends Didier and Martine Barral in the south of France at their fantastic winery, Domaine Leon Barral. I've gone down the past few years to help out during the vendange and have fallen in love with the (tiny) village life...you know, eating huge meals with animals that they've raised, knocking back many bottles of wine every night, walking out and picking fruit from the trees and bushes, no internet/tv/newpapers, quiet beyond belief, the grandmother stopping by with a platter of head cheese from her veal calf, etc. 

One evening I opened the refrigerator to find a rabbit and a pheasant.  Whole.  Un-skinned.  A bit of blood showing.  Fur and feathers touching the other food.  Vive la France!   

Chanterelle heaven......and the way we eat

It's been high hog heaven here in the Cascades the past 3 weeks. I've been out picking chanterelles (cantharellus cibarius)6 times now and seem to always find a good spot for meaty mushrooms. (I've discovered that these large specimens are actually cantharellus cascadensis.)  We've been having a few cool days of rain followed by a few sunny warm days, which seem to really make the chanterelles grow. The mushrooms in the picture are a larger variety that I've only seen in one spot. They each weigh upwards of 2 pounds!

They've been roasted, sautéed, braised, and grilled. And now I must say that I'm getting a bit tired of eating them, though not in the way one feels after a winter of eating kale a thousand ways. No, it's more of a feeling of great pleasure that comes with picking foraged food from an old mossy forest. I've eaten enough now. Next week I'll probably go out and eat some more.

I've been drying loads in anticipation of a long winter. It's really amazing how a big box full of sweet smelling mushrooms can reduce themselves to almost nothing when they come out of the dehydrator. Last week after a half hour of picking I had about 20 pounds and decided to cram as many as I could in a box and send them to my good friends Jonathan and Nicole in Massachusetts. Apparently they made the cross-country trip and were enjoyed that night over polenta. Hopefully J & N opened a bottle of their delicious hard cider to wash it all down.

Next on the list comes the winter chanterelle (aka...yellow-foot) cantharellus xanthopus. I saw them popping up all over the place when I was out a few days ago.