Eating Around / Olympic Provisions

Olympic Provisions SE on SE Washington St. in Portland

Portland is a food town, local food is akin to a religious phenomena there.  A few years ago, when the the travelling pig extravaganza Cochon 555 visited Portland, a local chef got into a fist-fight with the organizer of the cook-off because some of the pigs used in the cook-off were not locally sourced.  There was a broken leg, a concussion and the police had to use pepper spray and a taser to break up the fight.  Portland people are very serious about local food.

For a city of its size there are uncommonly many cutting edge restaurants.  In addition to the restaurants, there are excellent specialty food shops, high end grocery stores and innovative food carts everywhere.  Safeway in Laramie is only a poor second cousin to those same stores in Portland. Whenever we travel there we try to find the time and money to eat a meal cooked by someone else, someone who is hopefully more skilled at the stove than we.  This time we went to Olympic Provisions SE on SE Washington Street in Portland.  The chef at OPSE is Alex Yoder. According to their web-page, they were Portland's first salumeria - specializing in charcuterie and cured meats with a menu inspired by rustic Spanish and Mediterranean cooking.  In Portland, if you want excellent European style charcuterie you don't import it (you might get beat up) you make your own, and that's just what they do at OPSE.  You can see the meats hanging in a cure room behind the main counter.

Note window into the meat curing room.

The restaurant itself is a modern loft space in a old renovated building.  Having spent part of my youth in NYC renovating lofts in SoHo when it was still the art district, I am a sucker for these industrial spaces. With the high ceilings the space initially feels large, but it's not really. The dining area is narrow giving it an intimacy that feels just about right for sharing a meal.

Olympic Provisions menu - 22 December 2012

The dinner menu was perhaps not quite as interesting as I might have liked but the wine menu was exceptionally so. There were five adults and two children in our party.  Among the five of us we shared two bottles of wine. One was a nice Chardonnay from Jura: Domaine Labet “Fleurs” Côtes du Jura, 2010. We also shared a very special red from Provence, a bottle of Domaine Tempier, Bandol, 2008.  This is the wine made by the Peyraud family.  Lulu's Kitchen at Domaine Tempier has been extensively written about by food writer Richard Olney, wine importer Kermit Lynch, American chef and doyenne of the local food movement Alice Waters, iconoclastic food writer John Thorne and writer/poet gourmand Jim Harrison.  Lulu is an instinctive cook, never measuring ingredients but working by taste and feel; Richard Olney recorded her recipes and introduced her to America.

Domaine Tempier 2008

The wait-staff was knowledgeable, friendly and efficient. The children happily supped on frankfurters and fries (not on the menu).  Among the adults, we shared a charcuterie French Board which I insisted we order, mainly for the rillettes.  Rillettes are a kind of potted meat - usually pork but also made with other meats as well: duck, hare, salmon. If you've not had them, think of a home-made version of deviled ham.  The rillettes were fine and the salamis and other items on the board were very good.  I have tried my own hand at making cured sausages and the result, while not bad, was nothing like this. We shared a lot of the food - I tried the Baby Octopus that Tom ordered - it had an rich chickpea and aioli sauce that smelled and tasted of the sea  - a discordant note to the other flavors I was enjoying. I ate most of a Belgian endive salad which was light, sweet and refreshing and not something I would have made myself - I might try to duplicate it at home soon.  Others at our table enjoyed the braised cardoons but I did not taste them.  I also ate the braised short rib, a favorite of mine. It was delicious with a rich thick slightly sweet gravy but was no better than I make at home.

All-in-all we had a very good meal with exceptional wines.  With so many interesting places to eat in Portland I'm not thinking I'll be heading right back - though on our next visit we might just buy a selection of Olympic Provisions charcuterie as a prelude to a home cooked meal.  Mainly, when I go out to a restaurant like this I hope to eat something astounding, something I'd never though of or that I can not easily reproduce at home. Though the food was very good - I did not really find that at Olympic Provisions. I enjoyed a very good meal with family in nearly perfect space served by a competent wait staff.

A Pleasant Surprise

"... it was doubtless made for an opinionated older man past his greatest strength but still enthusiastic, with good taste and a limited budget."   John Hill 

The January/February issue of Shoorting Sportsman magazine arrived the other day and after dinner I sat down to page through the new issue.  Imagine my surprise when, turning the page, I saw the word "Sidley".  "Ha!" I thought.  "Someone else has a Sidley."  And then I looked at the photo and realized it was MY Sidley!  Of course the author was Steve Bodio - and I knew the rest.  What a pleasant surprise.

Shooting Sportsman, Jan/Feb 2013, pp. 102

As readers of this blog know, the Sidley came to me from Steve Bodio in a "trade" earlier this year. I  subsequently had good success with it in my local grouse and snipe coverts.  Since then I've had no luck finding any reference to then name "Sidley" anywhere.  It is probably the name of a English ironmonger who decided to market some shotguns under his own name.  The name engraved on the action and barrels of my boxlock remains a mystery.

New (old) truck

2004 Tacoma Double Cab 4X4 TRD Off Road

Bought this truck in Denver yesterday to replace my old faithful Tacoma. On the way down we test drove a couple of new ones - damn they are big.  This one has 77,000 fewer miles than my old one and, overall, the condition on this one is much better than the one we lost.  It's silver, not white like the old one, but really it's more gray than silver. Things could be much worse.

Truck woes.

Damn!

A bad week last week. We lost the Tacoma in a rollover accident in an ice storm.  Thankfully, the driver (who shall remain unnamed) only sustained a minor concussion and was otherwise unhurt.  The roads were icy and, even going 20 MPH under the speed limit, an ice patch resulted in a sideways skid off the road and a 450° roll.

It was a 2004 Toyota Tacoma 4WD Double Cab with the TRD Off Road package.  I bought it new in 2004 and eight years later it had 187,900 miles on it.  We used it hard. It had virtually new new pair of Goodyear Wangler LT 235/85R16 tires on it.  Perhaps worst of all was that less than week before I paid $700 to have the door fixed and a bumper fixed. The door got away from me in a 60 MPH wind and blew open bending the hinges. We had it remounted on the hinges.  The bumper had been damaged for years after I hit an antelope. The deductible was $500, just about what a new bumper cost so I kept putting it off; until two weeks ago. That truck took me many places only 4-Wheelers dare to tread.

My truck in better days - sighting in.

This means I need a new truck, and the need for a new truck has put the brakes on a gun trade I was working on.   Can't really say there is any truck I'd rather have than the one I lost - so I've been looking at used ones like it. They are hard to find classics and they go for top dollar and tend to have a few more miles than I'd like for the money.  Toyota started changing the body style of the Tacoma in 2005 and since then they mostly look to me like they've been pumped up on steroids. The white color was great for the dog - the truck stays cool even on hot days in the summer - but I'm not sure I'll get another white one.  Somehow the later model white ones are not as appealing. Probably the big white bumpers on them.

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Lifted 2009 Tacoma Access Cap in Pyrite Mica with a Softtopper.

I do like this one (not for sale) but I need to find something quickly and they're somewhat rare in this brown color - which will not be as good for the dog.  I liked the double cab for all the room inside (locked space).  I think the extended cab (Toyota calls it an Access Cab) probably has enough room in the back.

Elk Milanese

Last week, poking around on the net, I ran across Hank Shaw's recipe for Jaeger Schnitzel and immediately I wondered why on earth I had never made elk Milanese.  My wife spent time growing up in Argentina and her family made Milanese whenever good veal was available.  I whipped this dinner up last night after a long day at work.  Call it what you like: Milanese, Wiener Schnitzel, Steak and Frites, Chicken Fried Steak and Fries.  Whatever, it was a truly excellent meal that I can hardly wait to repeat.

Elk Milanese:
Slice an elk steak into thin slabs, maybe 1/2" thick and then, covered with a piece of plastic wrap or wax paper - pound/press them even flatter.  I used a wine bottle. A quarter of an inch thick is fine and even thinner is not unacceptable.  Salt and pepper the meat.  Have three shallow plates - one with flour, one with a beaten egg and the third with bread crumbs. Heat 1/2 a stick of butter and olive oil in a large pan (I use a cast iron frying pan).  Add as much olive oil as needed to make the oil  1/4" to 1/2" deep in the bottom of the pan.  Dip the meat in the flour, then coat with egg and finally drop it in the bread crumbs, sprinkle a bit more on top and press.  Once the oil is hot - place the breaded meat into the pan and cook for a few minutes a side - until golden brown.  Put them on a paper towel to soak up any remaining oil and then put them in a warm oven while the next batch cooks. Garnish with sliced lemon wedges.

A favorite food book.

Packed away somewhere in my basement is a copy of Joseph Wechsberg's  book The Cooking of the Vienna's Empire. I can't remember the exact trick but I seem to recall that he has rather excellent advice on how to flour, egg and bread the meat so that the crust lifts off in a thin layer.   Maybe it was in his other excellent book Blue Trout and Black Truffles - also some in my basement.  I could not find Wechsberg's technique in any of the cook books I do have access to.  I was surprised that it is not mentioned in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Meat Book, but it isn't.  I am surprised that Nicola Fletcher does not include a Milanese recipe in her excellent book Ultimate Venison Cookery.

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Between the two of us, we shared a small elk steak, a large potato and a bottle of Chardonnay.  The potato was cut into fries using an inexpensive but handy mandolin.  A salad would have been a nice addition - but it was late and I was tired and we were hungry.  Properly done, this a rather delicate presentation - a thin golden brown crust, with the meat still pink inside.   The earthy and slightly gamey flavor of the elk was magnificently present. We drank a Chardonnay with this - perhaps not the best choice, but it was the bottle we first opened when we got home and really, it was just fine with the meal. Next time perhaps we may uncork a light red - perhaps a Pinot Noir.   This meal is highly recommended.

Spawning Browns on the North Platte

What I was after.

For a few years now I've been wanting to get up to fish for the big brown trout that run up into the North Platte from the series of reservoirs west of Casper.  The run of spawning browns is a mid-November to mid-December event that happens to fall during prime pheasant and sharptail hunting season so I never seem to make it.  This year, with the drought, reports from pheasant country are not promising so the decision to fish instead of hunt was not difficult. Jeff and I drove up to the North Platte leaving at 7:30 Sunday morning from the West Laramie Fly Store.

Tom McGuane (via Steve Bodio) wrote "Shoptalk is lyrical."  Here's the technical details for them that likes them. I was casting a 5wt 11 foot Z-axis switch rod loaded with a Scientific Anglers 280 gr Extreme Skagit head with a 10' Airflow Salmon/Steelhead fast sinking polyleader with a bit more than a foot of 15 lb. tippet attached to a streamer.   My running line is the yellow Airflow Ridge.  This is all spooled on an old Lamson LP4 which really needs to be replaced; if the reel gets wet the drag slips or even goes free spool and the spool occasionally spontaneously falls off.  The orange Skagit head is 18' long. I feel like I'd cast it a bit better when I'm not in deep if was a couple of feet longer - but I do pretty well with it. Although I am no expert, I can Spey cast a lightly weighted streamer far further with this rig than I can with a 9 foot 8 wt. rod.  For this kind of fishing I far prefer fishing the 5 weight switch rod to my 14 foot 9 weight Spey rod though that works too.

I caught one big brown, a few smaller ones and a decent rainbow. I went for a big brown and was completely satisfied to have caught one: you can't always get what you want. The take was textbook perfect - the fish took a white marabou streamer I was swinging in classic Salmon/Steelhead fishing style.   Jeff netted it for me and took a photo.  By then I was anxious to release it so it could continue the sexual business it was there for - and so I did not measure it.  I'd guess it was a 26 or 27 inch fish.  Jeff hooked up more than once but did not land one.

No snow up there yet - a shocking continuation of the current drought conditions.  People all over, even those who don't much like snow,  are wishing we'd get some.

Elk Season: The Conclusion

Fresh snow, rifle, and pack.

As I mentioned I was going to do in a previous post  - I picked up a leftover cow/calf tag and continued hunting this past weekend on the northeast side of the Snowy Range. I hunted with an unnamed friend on Saturday who I'll call The Pirate and on Sunday we were joined by  Mr. Stone.

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Saturday, 10 November 2012: Overnight we'd had two to four inches of fresh snow and temperatures we predicted to drop all day going down into the single digits by nightfall.  As we got on I-80 West out of Laramie the warning sign blinked the message "NO LIGHT TRAILERS - WIND GUSTS 60 MPH+".  This was perfect.

There is no shortage of theories among elk hunters; some of them hold up to scrutiny bearing some relationship to reality and others are just  pipe dreams or wishful thinking. Theories abound as to whether the elk are up high or down low, and if so, why? One theory says that fresh snow, high wind and a significant cold front coming through will tend to push the elk down to lower elevation.  This is the one the Pirate and I were counting on.  How else can you put a positive spin on 60 MPH+ winds?  It's good weather for elk hunting,  that's how.

As we parked the truck at the Pirate's cabin he spotted an elk up a steep hillside in the open sage about three quarters of a mile away.  With my binoculars we could make out six elk. I thought to myself:  "This is just going to be too easy.  I'll be home by mid-afternoon."  We grabbed our rifles, threw on our packs, hopped on the 4-wheeler and headed toward the base of the open slope.  Last I saw them, the elk did not seem to mind the noise of the ATV.  We parked in the timber and carefully made our way on foot to the sage opening where we'd seen the elk not fifteen minutes earlier. They were, of course, gone but the tracks in the fresh snow were easy to follow.   We followed the tracks for two and a half miles before giving up near the top of a ridge with the wind blowing hard and snow falling.  The snow was much deeper up high which made walking a significant effort.  The creeks flow west off the slope we were on and we followed the ridge south to drop back down toward the truck in the next drainage over.

It was after 1 PM and by now and we were cold, tired, hungry and thirsty and a bit wet so we started to get sloppy.  In our rush to get to the elk in the early morning we'd failed to pack our lunches or even drinks. This was a lesson I thought I'd learned before - no matter how short you might think a hunt will be - take everything you would carry for a full day.

Because we were tired and thirsty we were anxious to get back down to the cabin - and so we were moving faster than we should have been, stumbling our way down the mountain.  I'd mostly given up glassing the timber ahead and of course, that's when we bumped a small herd of elk.  They saw us just about the time the Pirate saw them.  He hissed "Elk!" and I looked and saw them.  Nervously trying to fingure which way to run.  I quickly set up on my shooting sticks and though it was a far dicier shot than I like to take, I was willing. As the elk started to run I fixed my sights on an opening in the trees where I'd seen the others pass and as the last cow in the herd ran through, I pulled the trigger. I pulled and nothing happened.  My safety was on.  Exhausted and embarrassed I did not mention the safety to the pirate.

Blowing snow and blue skies on the drive out.

We got back to the cabin in a howling wind with temperatures in the teens and even after warming up, neither of us could bring ourselves to head out for a late-afternoon/evening hunt.  We drove back to town in a big blow.  If it was 10°F and the wind was blowing at 50 MPH,  the wind chill was -39°F (old method) or -17°F (new method). In any case it was brutally cold and a minute without gloves on left your hands hurting. This is weather that can cause frostbite, it is weather that can kill you.

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Sunday, 11 November 2012:  The Pirate's friend Mr. Stone joined us on Sunday. He and the Pirate had been hunting hard all season in the same area where we'd bumped elk the day before but they had never been so lucky.   The plan was that the Pirate and I would hunt together up one drainage and the quiet Mr. Stone would hunt alone up the next one to the south. We planned to meet up in a few hours at the top of the ridge.  It was still damn cold with high winds and it was practically unbearable riding in on the back of 4 Wheeler through the open country trying to get into the trees.

Almost as soon as we got into the timber we cut tracks.  A heard of five or six elk headed uphill.  We followed the tracks on foot.  About a half a mile in, as we neared the top of a steep slope, I just knew they'd be bedded down on the flat in the timber.  The Pirate and I separated a bit, me to the right, and moved up onto the flat.  We quietly stood and looked and listened when we were off the steep. Just like the day before, the Pirate hissed  "Elk!" and I turned toward him and saw them, about 60 yards away through the timber.  After the previous days shooting debacle I quickly got my sights on them, flipped off the safety and, just as they started to run, I pulled the trigger.  I did not see an elk fall and I felt I must have missed - for the second time this season.  I quickly headed toward the spot where they'd been.  There was no blood. I was sure I'd aimed high.

We tracked those elk for more than a mile before we gave up. We circled around and headed back to the 4 Wheeler and to the cabin for lunch.  Mr. Stone had also followed elk and jumped one off her bed but had not had a shot.

Cow elk down last Sunday - just at dusk.

For the afternoon hunt we drove up as high as we could get through the snow on the 4 Wheelers and hunted from there. The winds were still high, my legs were tired and I'd lost hope.  I really just wanted to call it a day.  The three of us split up and hunted uphill meeting on a rocky high point absurd winds ravaging the landscape. As I stood there I heard the honking of a flock of geese and I saw them for a moment through the blowing snow before they were blown away into the haze.  None of us had seen fresh tracks. As we hunted back down the Pirate and I dropped off a steep slope into dense timber and Mr. Stone hunted the contour.

Off that rim and down in the thick timber it suddenly got very quiet and there were elk tracks everywhere. There must have been 20 elk and possibly more in the herd we'd dropped into.  We hunted slowly downhill, separated by 50 feet or so, slowly and silently weaving our way through the trees, expecting to see them at any second.  Further and further down we went until we were well below the 4 Wheelers.  It was close to 3:30 PM and after a short consult,  we decided to hunt just a bit further.  And of course, that is when we saw them.  Determined not to repeat my earlier errors I clicked off the safety and took aim but did not shoot because the shot was not clear. And then they saw the Pirate who was below me  and the forest exploded with elk running in every direction.  A panicked cow tore up the steep gully, not more than 15 yards in front of me, I swung my rifle like a shotgun and pulled the trigger and she ran by.  She fell instantly onto a log sticking out of the side of the narrow ravine.  She wasn't going anywhere but I put a second bullet into her heart to finish her.  The first shot that had dropped her was a neck shot.

I gutted my elk and left her where she lay and walked out to the 4 Wheelers in the dark. From the cabin  we drove out to I-80 in a serious whiteout which forced us to stop frequently to wait for the wind to die down.

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Monday: 12 November 2012

Up at 5 AM again.  During a long elk season a work day, when I can sleep in until at least 6 AM, is almost a welcome reprieve.  This day I had a PhD prelim to attend.  It had been scheduled for months and I could not miss it.  The wind had died down and up on the mountain we were able to get the 4 Wheeler to the edge of the ravine where my elk had fallen.  We were able to use the winch to pull her up and out of the ravine and then were able to drag her all they way to my truck. We managed to load her whole into the back of my Toyota. 

Whole elk in the back of my truck.

Thanks to the Pirate and Mr. Stone for their help.