Eating Sunday – West Coast Cuisine?

Just what is West Coast cuisine? When confronted with this in restaurants, it seems to imply hazelnuts and salmon. If anything, I think of the abundance of produce, the diversity of cultural influences on what we choose to eat, and a consciousness about how our food comes to us. I don’t think we are the only ones, we’ve just be doing this a lot longer than other regions.

So what’s on the menu tonight? The hot weather. This means my head is anywhere but cooking. I considered whipping up a smoothy and hanging a digital “gone fishing” sign in this space. That of course undermines the whole reason I started this. So, tonight it’s short and unfussy (sort of).

There are old friends who might differ with me on this, but dinner in California without crusty chewy fresh bread (and butter) would have been unthinkable. I miss the readily available sourdoughs of San Francisco, but there are plenty of bakers around here to feed my bread lust.

I know rieslings are too sweet for most people and some could easily be considered dessert. But a well balanced one? Practically summer in a glass.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Oregon is having a stellar year for berries and even more so, stone fruits of all sorts. Think juicy black plums, last week’s roasted nectarines, and this week, fresh plucots.

For mains, a little bit of pasta…

 

Some fat, buttery, winey, garlicky mussels…

(along with goat cheese, basil, almonds, mushrooms and thyme fresh from the nursery and ready to go into the garden)

And you get a mostly fast and only a little steamy dinner…

Polish things off with cold everything-but-the-kitchen-sink salad of local organic celery, tomato, almonds, apples, cucumber, and more of those mushrooms…

dressed with a bit of ricotta, yoghurt, and dark and gooey balsamic syrup…

A dinner for another sunny west coast Sunday!