Shelf to Table
by Liz Crain, October 7, 2020 9:44 AM
Photo credit: Malte Jager
Editor's note: Join us for our event with Liz Crain on Tuesday, October 13, at 6 p.m. She will be joined in conversation by home preserving expert Marisa McClellan.
When COVID-19 shelter-in-place spread across the country this spring, I started doing semi-regular Zoom cooking sessions with my nieces,10-year-old Marielle and 8-year-old Hannah, who live in Cincinnati. I've lived in Portland, Oregon, since 2002. It was a way we could all be together, in a sense, and do two of our favorite family things — cooking and eating. My sister-in-law, Laura, and brother, Andy, joined in sometimes too.
These were long cooking sessions — usually three to four hours — and we treated our cooking time together like jazz, improvising, riffing, and working with what we had...
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Shelf to Table
by Christopher Shockey and Kirsten K. Shockey, June 28, 2019 9:17 AM
Our publisher approached us to write a cookbook that would bring together the ancient techniques of different bean and grain fermentations so that it all felt doable, more familiar, and exciting to explore. Neither of us had made miso, tempeh, natto, or koji from scratch, so it was a really deep dive for us. The fermentation community is an embracing group and many folks with professional experience spent hours mentoring us from afar. We are forever thankful for their generosity. From the initial reactions to the book from our friend Sandor Katz of The Art of Fermentation and colleague David Zilber of The Noma Guide to Fermentation, we think we did it well...
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Shelf to Table
by Andy Ricker, May 21, 2019 9:42 AM
Pok Pok Noodles: Recipes From Thailand and Beyond is the final book in a trilogy of works that started off with Pok Pok: Food and Stories From the Streets, Homes, and Roadside Restaurants of Thailand and followed by Pok Pok: The Drinking Food of Thailand. Each book was roughly based on a restaurant, Pok Pok, Whiskey Soda Lounge, and Sen Yai, respectively. Sadly, Sen Yai (the restaurant this book was supposed to be based on) no longer exists, but my love for the dishes we chose for the noodle book remains unabated. Noodles have always been a huge part of my diet whether traveling or at home in Thailand or Portland. I can’t get enough!
Quick to dish up, easy to stage from a small cart on the street or simple shophouse, inexpensive for locals, delicious and filling, noodles are part of the fabric of life in Thailand, and all over Southeast Asia for that matter...
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Shelf to Table
by Bren Smith, May 16, 2019 9:25 AM
Photo credit: Ronald T. Gautreau Jr.
What was the genesis of your current project?
Eat Like a Fish started out as a cookbook with some personal stories sprinkled throughout — a way to get people to explore the largely unknown Western culinary tradition of seaweed and how to make it a center-of-the-plate ingredient. As I worked with the publisher, the book expanded to include more of my story and about the work of GreenWave, our nonprofit that trains new ocean farmers in the restorative 3D farming model. Now there are five parts to the book. The first is my evolution from a kid who dropped out of high school to take up commercial fishing to an ocean farmer pioneering 3D farming. This took some major recalibration — I spent my life hunting and killing things for a living, now I’m basically like an arugula farmer...
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Shelf to Table
by America's Test Kitchen, April 29, 2019 9:29 AM
Why publish a cookbook about burgers?
There are so many things you can do with a burger — it’s like a blank canvas. We wanted to elevate each element and inspire you with topping ideas and flavor combinations that complement the patty without overpowering it. Our goal with this book is to give you concrete recipes that work, but also push you to think outside of your usual expectations for what goes on a burger. Take mascarpone. Sounds weird, right? But it adds a creamy element (similar to mayonnaise) and a cheesy element at the same time. When you think of it that way, it makes sense. Ultimately (see what I did there), burgers should be fun, and we hope our recipes encourage you to play around a bit...
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Shelf to Table
by Tyler Malek, April 5, 2019 9:54 AM
Before I entered the ice cream business, I was a 22-year-old who had just quit his job after his boss yelled at him for being too nice. I had no clue what I’d do next. Then my cousin Kim called.
This was in 2011, before she and I had launched the cart in Portland, Oregon, that became Salt & Straw, a trailblazing ice cream operation with shops up and down the West Coast and millions of die-hard fans. For decades, Kim had dreamt of opening a little neighborhood ice cream shop. She had called me to catch up and told me that, after a career at Starbucks dating back to when there were only 30 stores, she was moving back to Portland to make her ice cream dream into a reality.
Immediately I knew, more than I had ever known anything in my entire life, that I needed to be the one who made the ice cream...
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Shelf to Table
by Maria Noël Groves, March 22, 2019 10:03 AM
Photo credit: Carleen Madigan
When it comes to healing the body, we have more medicine options available to us than ever in our human history. Modern conventional medicine achieves amazing feats daily with an ever-evolving list of pharmaceuticals and procedures. Chiropractic care and naturopathic medicine, massage, nutrition, acupuncture, and other holistic modalities are now mainstream and may even be covered by insurance. We are in the midst of an herbal medicine renaissance, reconnecting to the medicine we lost for just a few decades after the Flexner Report successfully villainized holistic medicine. Yet, healing herbs have been used for thousands of years to promote wellness, and they remain the number one form of medicine used worldwide. By turning to the plants in your backyard for their healing properties, you’re reconnecting with the planet and your human existence...
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Shelf to Table
by Adam Lindsley and Steve Jones, March 18, 2019 2:19 PM
Photo credit: David L. Reamer
Funny thing about loading up your table edge to edge with boards of cheese and an armful of random bottles in a crowded restaurant: it tends to draw some attention.
Many were the nights in the distant past (2014) when such a scene would greet diners as they crossed the threshold into Cheese Bar and found us dwarfed by an evening’s repast of what was surely far too much dairy and alcohol for two mortal humans to consume in a single sitting. Eyes lingered on the spread, curious, hungry, then longing. Inevitably, a brave soul would approach our two-top altar to excess and make reasonable inquiries as to our intentions, at which point we’d welcome the acolyte into the fold for a sample of whatever marvel we’d most recently pieced together...
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Shelf to Table
by Kate McDermott, October 19, 2018 9:39 AM
Even though I was told in my early twenties that I had the astrological chart of a writer, I’m not sure if I’ll ever quite get used to people thinking of me as one. Of course, I had heard the words “find your voice” but I hadn’t a clue as to: One, what that meant; two, if it was something I really needed to know much, if anything, about; and three, if I did, how would I go about finding it?
My earliest attempts at writing were high school English papers. I went to a very small school (there were 24 students in my graduating class) and each year we had the same English teacher. Almost all of the papers I wrote were returned with a mark of B- and the comment, “Needs more development.”...
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Shelf to Table
by Yotam Ottolenghi, October 16, 2018 9:13 AM
Photo credit: Jonathan Lovekin
There are all sorts of ways to get a meal on the table, depending on the sort of cook you are. One person’s idea of cooking simply is the next person’s culinary nightmare. For me, for example, it’s about being able to stop at my grocery store on the way home, pick up a couple of things that look good, and make something within 20 or 30 minutes of getting home. My husband, Karl, on the other hand, has a completely different idea of what “simple cooking” is. If we’re having friends over on the weekend, he’ll want to spend a good amount of time beforehand prepping and cooking as much as he can so that very little needs to be done when our guests are around...
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