Moto Rising!

Well, I didn't wind up making it to last night's final MusicFest show, but I figured I might as well throw in one more non food related post before getting back on topic, which will happen soon, I promise...

My old Motobecane has been back in my hands for a while now, and I finally got around to giving it some attention this weekend. The first task to be undertaken was to strip it of all of its parts, save for the bottom bracket and headset:


I then set about cleaning up the frame with some steel wool and metal polishing cream. And I have to say, it cleaned up quite nicely:




The fork, which was pretty badly colonized by rust, cleaned up especially well. I'm VERY happy about this. Take a moment to behold its chrome plated glory:


I won't be restoring this bike. To try to build it back to its former grandeur would be a fool's game. The componentry is too worn. To find replacement parts would be next to impossible. And this being an old French bike, it doesn't make much sense to try and outfit it with modern componentry (which I couldn't afford to do anyway). So my project for this autumn will be to rebuild the Moto into a fixie. This will entail teaching myself to build wheels, repack the bottom bracket and if necessary, overhaul the headset. And I'm looking forward to all of this. It should prove be a great deal of fun, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I'll be getting back to the food post-haste.

MusicFestNW: Saturday Night

I had only one band on my agenda for tonight's installment of MusicFest: Atlanta feedback pilots Deerhunter.

I've encountered some long lines this weekend, and as I figured Deerhunter (pictured above) would be a pretty strong draw in Portland, I got to the venue a full 40 minutes before their set was to begin. Said venue was, no surprise, the Doug Fir (this place is becoming my home away from home; it's gotten to the point where the bartender no longer has to ask me what I want). And wouldn't you know, once I got there... no line at all! Which meant that I was able to catch some of the previous act, Chicago's Bobby Conn:


This guy was easily the sleeper of this year's MusicFest for me. He's fused 1970s glam rock and arena rock about as well as anyone can in the new millenium. To listen to what's on his Myspace page, you wouldn't think much of him, but what I saw tonight was something else entirely. His stage presence recalls the androgynous vibe of early Bowie (as you can see from the photo, he looks a bit like Eddie Izzard), and he and his band channeled the energy of that decade at its best. Imagine pre-1984 Van Halen with a punk rock violin player. Great stuff! I wish I'd gotten there earlier...

After Bobby Conn, Deerhunter almost fell a bit flat at first. They seemed a bit too noisy, a bit too dischordant. But after a few songs, they began to hit their stride. In their better moments they came close, not quite but close, to channeling My Bloody Valentine (and yes, I have seen My Bloody Valentine live, so I know full well what an amazing, if painful, experience that is...), and washed the room with a beautiful onslaught of crazy, distorted, reverby sound. Just the right note on which to end the third night of MusicFest!

The festival wraps up with a single show at the Crystal Ballroom tomorrow night. It's a show I want to see, but I haven't yet decided if I'm actually going to be there...

MusicFestNW: Friday Night

I went out for another MusicFest fix tonight. First up were Seattle's electro dance popsters Valella Valella at Holocene. I've been disappointed by this band before, but I figured I'd give them another chance. I was disappointed once again. They just don't make sense to me. I'll give you an example: their drum parts are all programmed, but at one point one of them spent the better part of an entire song playing a lone crash cymbol. Why? Just program the crash cymbol and give the guy something useful to do! I really don't get what these guys are doing, but they seem to have found their audience, so more power to 'em...

Fortunately, it got better from there. I made my way to the Doug Fir, stood in line for about 20 minutes, and caught Eric Bachmann, formerly of Archers of Loaf, now of Crooked Fingers. He's currently on tour as a solo act, accompanied by a keyboard player and a violinist. He's got a sort of acoustic country folk troubador thing going on, and his voice, at once assertive and plaintive, perfectly suits the form. Something in his delivery reminds me of Richard Buckner. Very good stuff.

Next up at the Fir were a playful, arty noise-rock outfit from Brooklyn called Grizzly Bear, pictured above. Think Sonic Youth meets Iron and Wine, with occasional four part harmonies (yes, you heard me right). They have a very loose and abstract approach to song structure, which I tend to like. I was impressed.

Stay tuned for more MusicFest...

MusicFestNW: Thursday Night

Tonight was the first night of MusicFestNW, Portland's answer to South By Southwest. I picked up my wristband this afternoon at the remaining outlet of Music Millenium, and later set out for the Crystal Ballroom to see Viva Voce's 10 pm set. Unfortunately, this was not to be. I got to the Crystal at about 9:40 and took my place at the end of the line. Which stretched around the block. This didn't bode particularly well, but the line started moving, so I figured there might be a chance I'd catch at least part of their set. But after about 15 minutes, a member of the Crystal's staff came out to inform us all that they'd reached capacity and that none of us were going to get in. This wouldn't bother me too much if it had been simply a supply and demand thing... MusicFest works on the wristband principle. You buy a wristband, which gets you access to all of the venues, all weekend long, and from there it's first come, first served. But here's the rub: The Crystal sold tickets to this show as well. So the folks with tickets got in no matter what, while those of us that had ponied up our forty bucks for the wristband were left holding the bag. Frankly, I found myself a little chapped about this. I figure, if you're going to include the show in the MusicFest line up, don't undercut those of us participating in the wristband flim flam by selling a bunch of tickets. I'm not even sure who to be upset with here... The Crystal? Viva Voce? MusicFest? But hey, I didn't let it ruin my night. I came home, made myself some Mac & Cheese and headed to Berbati's to see Roky Erickson:


I encountered another line outside Berbati's, but this time I was far enough up in the line to get in after a couple songs. Roky fronted a band back in the mid-1960s called the 13th Floor Elevators, and as legend has it, coined the term "psychedelic." There wasn't much psychedelia to what he played tonight, it was pretty much just four guys about your dad's age playing straightforward blusey rock. But they did a good job, and the crowd (average age being less than half that of the guys onstage) couldn't get enough.

From there I went to the Doug Fir to see the Portland's own Shaky Hands:


And, another line (I don't remember encountering lines last year)! But I managed to get in before they started. I saw this band at Holocene about a year ago, and they had a pop-ish sound, sort of a British Invasion Garage Rock thing, going on. They must have written some new material since, because what I heard tonight was a more nuanced, quiet/loud kind of thing. Imagine the Walkmen and the Pixies all mashed together. Pretty good stuff. Worth keeping an eye on.

Tell the USDA to Keep Experimental Drugs Out of Your Dinner and Out of Your Environment!

The USDA is considering new policy options concerning genetically modified organisms, including regulation of "biofactory" farm produced drugs and contamination of the commercial food and feed supply with unapproved genetically engineered crops. Now, I'm not here to tell you what your politics should be, but I strongly urge any of you who are concerned with the safety of your food and the health of your environment to have a look at this. The Center for Food Safety has put together an e-mail petition which you can fill out (and edit to your liking) and send to the USDA via their website. Public comment is only open until September 11, so the time to act on this is now!

Thai Weekend Part III: The Best Pad Thai You're Ever Gonna Eat (outside of Thailand, anyway)!

So I tried my hand at Pad Thai this evening, using a recipe, er, method, I found over at ChezPim. Pim's method calls for combining a number of the ingredients into a pre-made sauce and cooking the dish for as little time as possible, and only one portion at a time. This is, she tells us, how the street food vendors in Bangkok do it. And, well, Pim is from Thailand, so I'm inclined to defer to her authority on this matter. I made a few derivations, but on the whole stayed true to her instructions, although I'd encourage you to have a look at her version should you decide to try this yourself (if you make this with chicken or tofu, you'll definitely want to consult Pim's tutorial). My proportions here are for one serving, except for the sauce, which makes enough for about three servings. It should freeze well, I figure.

Before I go on to the Pad Thai itself, allow me to offer a little useless trivia: Pad Thai was popularized in Thailand during World War II by then Prime Minister Luang Phibunsongkhram, in part to reduce consumption of rice due to shortages. Fascinating, no? Okay, back to the food...

The Ingredients:

1/3 cup Ma Kahm (tamarind paste)
1/2 cup Nam Pla (fish sauce)
1/3 cup palm sugar (or 1/4 cup light brown sugar)
Four thai chiles, seeded and minced
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 1/2 cups dried rice noodles (often called rice sticks)
Three Tbsp oil (canola, peanut or safflower)
One clove garlic, minced
One extra large egg, lightly beaten
Two Tbsp chives, chopped into one inch pieces
1/2 tsp shrimp paste
Two Tbsp unsalted roasted peanuts, finely chopped
1/2 cup mung bean sprouts
Shrimp, peeled and deveined, enough for one person
Two thai chiles and a lime wedge for garnish

Here's the meez on that, by the way:


The Process:

Melt the sugar in a saucepan with the tamarind paste, shrimp paste, fish sauce, chiles and paprika over low heat. While this is happening, reconstitute the rice noodles in a bowl of hot water until they're pliable, but not quite soft enough to eat, about 15 minutes, and drain. At this point I put the sauce into an ad-hoc double boiler set-up to keep it warm (I used the lid from the shrimp paste jar to raise the measuring cup off the bottom of the pan):


Place your wok over high heat and once it's almost smoking hot, add the oil, then the noodles and two oz. of the sauce (a 2 oz. ladle comes in handy here). Keep the noodles in constant motion. If they start to stick together or dry out, add a little more sauce. Once the noodles are done, push them to the side and add the egg:


Let the egg cook for about 20 seconds, and stir the noodles back into it. Add the shrimp, garlic and bean sprouts. Stir constantly until the shrimp are cooked, about two minutes. If the mixture looks too dry at any point, you can always add a little sauce. Stir in half of the peanuts and half of the chives, and remove the wok from the heat:


Transfer to a plate, sprinkle with the remaining peanuts and chives, and garnish with the chiles and lime wedge (a little lime juice will finish your Pad Thai off very nicely). Pim said this would be better than any restaurant Pad Thai, and I can tell you, she was dead right. I've eaten more than my share of Pad Thai and this was by far the best I've had. So whip some up and enjoy!

Thai Weekend Part II: Pok Pok

I headed out with my friend Lowrey this evening to check out the wildly popular Pok Pok. It seems you can't swing a dead cat in Portland without hitting a thai restaurant, but for the most part their menus are identical. There are exceptions, places which elevate the cuisine beyond the typical curries and stir fries, Thyphoon and Kun Phic Ban Thai being two which come to mind. With a northern Thai street food inspired menu, Pok Pok breaks the mold as well. They even landed the Oregonian's Restaurant of the Year award this year, so I figured it was about time I gave the place a look.

We started with one of the specials, Tap Waan:


This was a duck liver salad with cilantro, mint, and a fairly mild fish sauce based dressing. I'm not generally a big fan of liver of any kind, but this was quite tasty. The duck liver and mint made for an interesting combination of flavors and textures. Next up were Papaya Pok Pok and Sate Kambing:




The Papaya Pok Pok, the restaurant's namesake, is a salad of green papaya, tomatoes, long beans, Thai chili, lime juice, tamarind, fish sauce, garlic, palm sugar, dried shrimp and peanuts. We ordered it with the optional salted black crab. The salad was a bit hotter than I expected, but it was excellent nonetheless. It didn't come with a very substantial amount of crab, however. The crab is apparently only meant to provide a salty dimension to the dish. Strangely, the sticky rice we ordered at the waiter's suggestion to accompany the salad was served in a plastic bag...

The Sate Kambing, two skewers of lamb sirloin kebabs marinated in cumin, chili, sweet soy, tamarind, garlic and palm sugar and served with a sweet dipping sauce, was good, but not as interesting as the previous two dishes.

At this point Lowrey was done but I had some room left, so I ordered the Coconut Ice Cream Sandwich:


This, I have to say, was something of a disappointment. It wasn't an ice cream sandwich as you might imagine it, but rather four small scoops of coconut-jackfruit ice cream on a sweet bun and drizzled with chocolate syrup, condensed milk, peanuts and sweet sticky rice. You'll notice the sweet bun looks a bit like a hot dog bun. It didn't taste like a hot dog bun, but it had about the same consistency and didn't hold its own against the melting ice cream. The ice cream itself, which is made in-house, was great. If they were to reconfigure this with something other than the sweet bun, it would probably work much better.

Pok Pok is well-known for their Kai Yaang, a charcoal roasted stuffed game hen, and their pork dishes seem to be especially popular as well, so I'll have to make it back at some point to try those.

All in all, it was a good meal. The food was a nice break from the thai standards, the service was attentive, the atmosphere was nice, if a bit noisy. It was a good experience. But restaurant of the year good? I think not. Although I am willing to let that stuffed game hen change my mind at some point down the road...