It sometimes happens that Cheffy makes us something for dinner that we might not have seen before. With the abundance of seasonal produce around here, we’re not surprised at occasionally finding a new variety of lettuce in our spring salad, or a new type of braising green with our pork chop. Thank goodness for google!

For the last few weeks, Cheffy’s been cooking up a lot of puntarelle, a member of the chicory family that has long, white shoots and spiky leaves like a dandelion. Puntarelle has a pleasantly bitter taste; we like it ’cause it’s fresh and crispy, and great for you!

Here’s a very traditional and simple recipe for using puntarelle at home. Slicing the shoots length-wise and soaking them in ice water for about an hour has the effect of making the puntarelle curl, leaving you with a crisp, compact side salad. It has a dressing very much like a ceasar, and makes a wonderful accompaniment to heartier dishes.

Puntarelle alla Romana

You will need: one head puntarelle (thinly sliced length-wise and soaked in ice water for one hour), 2 cloves garlic, 5 salted anchovy filets, 2 tbs red wine vinegar, 5 tbsp good olive oil, pinch of salt, freshly ground black pepper.

In a mortar and pestle, use the salt to grind the garlic to a fine paste.

In a separate bowl, combine the anchovies and vinegar until the anchovies have disintegrated.

Mix the garlic into the anchovy/vinegar mixture and stir in the olive oil until the dressing is emulsified. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

Remove your puntarelle from the ice water bath, and dry carefully.

Stir the dressing again, then add to puntarelle curls and toss. Top with freshly ground black pepper.

Happy [Seasonal] Eating!

xoxo,

Besaw’s

This May, a percentage of sales from dinner at Besaw’s will benefit Lift Urban Portland (formerly Northwest Portland Ministries), an interfaith community of volunteers that provide many services to neighborhood seniors, kids and families.

What does Lift Urban Portland do?

• Nutrition Services: Volunteers staff their Loaves & Fishes hot meal site at First Immanuel Lutheran Church and Meals on Wheels deliveries. Hot meals include social activities.
• Emergency Food Pantry and Food Box Delivery: Lift Urban Portland’s emergency food pantry offers a five-day food supply for working families and seniors. They deliver food boxes to the homes of isolated or disabled neighbors.
• Food for Kids Backpack Program: Every Friday, volunteers deliver backpacks of weekend food to elementary school children living in homeless shelters and transitional housing. They arrive at school Monday nourished and ready to learn. This is a partnership with Friendly House and the Project Rerun after school program.
• Community Garden: Their community garden produces tasty fresh fruits and vegetables for their food pantry. Recipients eat more fresh produce when they know it was harvested just steps away. Its consumption helps maintain health and combat obesity.
• Christmas Dinner: This interfaith cooperative endeavor provides dinner and social interaction for about 500 people around Christmas.
• Personal Assistance: Lift Urban Portland coordinates individual assistance, such as reading mail, moving a household and light housekeeping.

We love it when our pick for featured charity lines up with their special events. This month, our donations will benefit the annual Lift Urban Portland Food Drive, May 1st-31st. This is especially important to us because it helps feed hungry families in our own neighborhood: the Pearl District, Northwest Portland, downtown and Old Town. For more information, or to find more ways to help, please visit Lift Urban Portland.

From all of us at Besaw’s, we hope you’ll visit us in May. The weather is beautiful, the patio is delightful (your Mom will love it!), and we’ve got an abundance of seasonal goodies to share.

xoxo,

Besaw’s

Today, for your reading pleasure, we offer you this sentimental gem:

The part we’re most interested in reads, “I txt’d Yes to the love of my life after 40 years apart. A day I will never forget.”

Wow! We’re so curious about the back story.

Hoping this spring day is full of love and good memories,

xoxo,

Besaw’s

Besaw's Rooster Guards Baby Tomato Plants!

It’s so much fun getting deliveries from our purveyors. They always have such good stories about what’s going on at the farm. This morning, we got a special visit from Michael at Millennium Farms in Ridgefield, Washington. We talked about his cover crop of red clover, fresh herbs, greens & leeks – how it’s an unseasonably warm spring (wait, really?!), and he told us all about their new tomato plants going in very soon! We’re so excited for tomatoes.

Speaking of, Cheffy just planted our own little crop of tomatoes, and they’re doing just fine. Our Red Russian Kale has already almost doubled in size since we put it in a few weeks ago. We can’t wait to see what happens this weekend when the Portland thermostat is slated to reach almost 80 degrees!

We hope you all get to enjoy the beautiful spring weather. Come see us for brunch this weekend – we’ve got CHICKEN FRIED STEAK on the menu – and for dinner – a lovely new SPRING GREEN SALAD featuring shaved fennel, bright and crunchy spring radishes, arugula & fresh herbs, dressed with lemon oil; so perfect for warm spring evenings.

xoxo, Besaw’s

The recent hit of sunny spring weather has us dreaming of fruity and floral cocktails, perfect for sipping on Besaw’s patio or in your own back yard. One easy way to get a jump on the season—without having to wait for spring’s bounty—is to use dried ingredients to infuse your spirit of choice. This way, you get to experience flavors from the peak season, and they won’t spoil nearly as quickly.

The new favorite on our menu is called Spring at the Races, and was adapted from a recipe by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric in Speakeasy, Classic Cocktails Reimagined, From New York’s Employee’s Only Bar. We used a simple lavender-infused gin and sweet pink grapefruit juice for ours. The resulting cocktail has a lovely floral quality with a hue to match. If you like an experiment, try infusing your gin with herbes de provence, tea leaves or dried mint; whatever suits your fancy. More recipes for fun infused-spirits can be found here.

Lavender-Infused Gin

2 teaspoons organic dried lavender

1 (1-liter) bottle gin

Place the lavender in a small saucepan over low heat. Add 2 cups of the gin and bring to a boil. Immediately remove from the heat and allow to cool. Add the remaining gin. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into a bottle and discard the lavender. Store at room temperature away from sunlight. Will keep indefinitely.

Spring at the Races

2.5 oz lavender-infused gin

5 oz ruby red grapefruit juice

Serve with a sprig of fresh lavender for garnish.

Enjoy the spring sun!

xoxo, Besaw’s

Thought we’d celebrate the sun today with some pics of our garden. Enjoy! xoxo

Thanks to Mary Crowe from Whole Foods FMT for the photos!

Last Saturday, Cheffy had a great time participating in Whole Foods’ annual event, “The Crack Heard ‘Round the World.”

From the Whole Foods Fremont Blog:

Every year, all Whole Foods Market Stores around the world (we have stores in the UK and Canada y’know) crack a wheel of parm at the exact same time to keep our Guinness Record of most wheels of Parmesan simultaneously cracked. This is how cheese heads have fun.

Indeed, we picked out an array of fabulous ingredients, including organic vegetables and chicken bones for stock, and almost a pound of Parmigiano Reggiano to prepare for Cheffy’s featured Stracciatella recipe. Lucky fans sampled his beautiful soup, and watched as Whole Foods Blog winner Lance Michael and Cheese Monger Josh crack open a 98lb wheel of cheese!

In case you missed it, Cheffy’s recipe is below. Stracciatella makes an amazing soup base, to which you can easily add chicken, shrimp and other veggies.

Stracciatella

1 gal chicken stock*
8 large eggs
1 c fresh grated Parmesan cheese
1 c Italian parsley (chopped)

Bring chicken stock to a boil, turn down to simmer.

Crack eggs into a bowl and whisk together.

Pour eggs into stock, whisking thoroughly.Whisk the grated Parmesan into the soup.

Watch for any clumps and remove. Add the parsley last to preserve the bright color.

Bon Appétit!

The official beginning of Spring, 2012 is almost here, with signs popping up all around Besaw’s. All this sunshine (and snow!) and budding flowers has us thinking about new beginnings and new life. It is in that spirit that Besaw’s has chosen Bradley Angle as our featured charity for the month of March.

In 1975, Bradley Angle became the first domestic violence shelter on the West Coast (and only the fourth in the United States). We are proud to provide our aid to this pioneering organization, founded in Portland.

Over the years, our services have expanded to include a 24- hour crisis line, transitional housing, support groups, community-based advocacy, and three programs unique to Oregon: culturally specific programming for African and African-American survivors, an economic empowerment program called Making Cent$, and support for LGBTQ survivors.

Bradley Angle has a long history of providing local leadership to address unmet community needs and services for domestic violence survivors and their families.

Please join us in support of Bradley Angle this month. During the entire month of March, a portion of our proceeds from Dinner service will go directly toward providing Emergency Services, Transitional Housing, counseling and support for individuals and families in need.

For more information on Bradley Angle, please click here.

Despite the surprising March snow this past week, crocuses are coming up outside Besaw’s, our daffodils are blooming, and we are ready for Spring! The snow set back our gardening plans a tiny bit, but as of this weekend, we are back on track. Step 1: beautiful new flowers in our planter boxes. The photos above show our friend Jennie Greene from Artis + Green planting some lovely Bleeding Hearts (my favorite!) and other blush-colored blossoms.

When the sun does come out, as it is wont to do occasionally at this time of year, we have the perfect early Spring cocktail. It’s called “Spring at the Races,” a perfect showcase of this season’s pink, juicy grapefruit and fragrant lavender-infused gin. We think you’ll find it quite refreshing.

Spring at the Races

Cheffy's New Jewel

Scouring Craigslist, Cheffy got this beautiful antique stove for a song – it’s a “Clark Jewel,” made in the 1920s by George M. Clark & Co. out of Chicago.

His collection also includes an 1800s Universal Wood cook stove, a 1950s KitchenAid, and cookbooks from the mid to late 1800s.

1950s Gourmet magazines, The Century Cookbook and Physician circa 1890

One of his favorite possessions was given to Cheffy by a chef and mentor, whose family was on the luxury liner RMS Queen Elizabeth, which replaced The Titanic as the largest passenger liner ever built at the time and for fifty-six years thereafter. His family kept the menus from the trip, and he passed them on to Cheffy.

Chef Michael says that the items in his collection “bring us back to a simpler time, when every ingredient counted. It was about fire, food, and preparing [ingredients] clasically.”

Stay tuned for further tours of Cheffy’s kitchen, and his cooking.