Tea & Cookies

3. 12. 2012

The Sylvia Beach Hotel

This winter I finally made it somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for a long time: The Sylvia Beach Hotel.

You might be excused for thinking Sylvia Beach is a place—the hotel does overlook a long and wide swath of damp sand with crashing waves. But Sylvia Beach is not a beach, Sylvia Beach is a person. She was the founder of Shakespeare & Company, the legendary English language bookstore in Paris.

Knowing this will set the stage for all you might experience if you ever drive along the Oregon Coast and stop in the town of Newport to stay at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. This is a place for book lovers.

The building itself is an old hotel that had run down on its luck when it was purchased, twenty-five years ago, by two childhood friends who decided to revive the building as a different sort of hotel. Perched high overlooking Nye Beach in Newport on the central Oregon coast, it’s a place I’ve been hearing about for years.

When Goody Cable and Sally Ford bought the now 100 year-old building, they asked friends to help decorate the rooms in the style of their favorite authors. The friends had fun with the idea and did them proud. From jungle prints and stuffed animal heads in the Hemingway room, to a map of middle-earth painted on the wall of the JRR Tolkien room (the large boots outside the door belong to Tom Bombadil). Everywhere you look is creativity and whimsey.

The rooms are an utter highpoint of the stay. They’re mostly on the smaller side, with a washstand in the room and toilet and bath in a separate bathroom. This isn’t the sort of place you go for a luxury vacation, this is where you go for unique quirky charm. You can tell the people behind the décor had a sense of humor. There are bottles of gin lined up in the F. Scott Fitzgerald room, and this sign by the sink in the Shakespeare room.

I mean, you gotta have a sense of humor if you’re putting together a Doctor Seuss room, right?

Every day we were there, we looked forward to check-out time when other guests would leave and we might be able to peek into the rooms while they were being cleaned. The cleaning crew was very tolerant of this. I am sure they are used to it.

This is the Steinbeck Room, as you can imagine.

My favorite (though it’s awfully hard to choose) was the Colette suite. There are three suites, which feature fireplaces and little sitting areas and superior views: Colette, Mark Twain, and Agatha Christie (there are clues hidden around the room). The Colette room, as you would expect, is terribly romantic and feminine.

In addition to the literary theme of the rooms, the third floor of the hotel houses a library, filled with comfy couches and chairs where guests can curl up with a good book (or with their e-reader, as I saw at least one person doing).

There’s a little kitchen off the library where you can help yourself to endless tea and coffee to go with your books.There are shelves filled with a staggering array of board games, should you want to distract yourself. And every evening, after dinner, there is mulled wine served to the guests. And a fire in the fireplace. Did I mention cozy? The weather was quite nice when we were there, but I imagine how lovely it must be when the winds and the rain come and you’re curled up in an armchair next to the fire.

The entire hotel feels like it might have stepped out of a novel—one where people stay in pensione, meet intriguing characters, and have meals together in the dining room, their Baedeker guides clutched at their sides.

Part of this is because meals are taken communally. The dining room has eight-seat tables, which encourages interaction amongst strangers. This is a refreshing change from those seaside getaways where couples keep to themselves (solo travelers will feel quite comfortable here). People are friendly at meals, and the other guests are interesting folks, as you would imagine of those who make their way to a place like this (the ratio of Prius-owning, NPR listeners is rather high here). Breakfast, which comes with an impressive array of baked goods, was made fun each day by good conversations.

And it gets even better at dinner.

The hotel has a restaurant called Tables of Content, on the bottom floor of the big building. Dinners are served family style to each table and people chat with each other throughout the evening. This might be because of The Game.

The game is two truths and a lie—where you go around the table and each player tells two things about themselves that are true and one that is made up. The other players ask questions trying to figure out which is which. You don’t have to play, but it’s actually quite fun, and a fascinating way to get to know your tablemates.

And between baked goods in the morning and big dinners in the evening, you can take breaks from your reading to walk the beach (To the Lighthouse! Past The Waves!) Yes, there is a Virginia Woolf room).

I should probably mention the Sylvia Beach Hotel may not be for everyone. It says so on the website. “When you walk up our garden path to the front door,” the website says, “the old building will give you a big hug or spit you out, depending on what really matters to you.” And it’s true. There is no wi-fi, no telephones in the rooms, no television. This is a place for people who love books, who like cozy and quirky and perhaps a little worn. People who are not allergic to cats (there are two).

But if you are one of those people, then you may feel like someone has built a hotel just for you. A place utterly delightful where you can settle in and relax to your heart’s content. Perhaps in this armchair in the corner of the Jane Austen room, with a view down the beach.

Or you could take a nap in the JK Rowling room, in a curtained bed under a broomstick and quiddich goggles, with wands on the wall and, in the opposite corner, a stuffed owl in a cage (Hedwig!).

If you are the sort of person that fits the Sylvia Beach Hotel, you might find yourself not wanting to leave (there are so many books still to be read). Apparently some guests reserve their next year’s visit on departure, so they can get their favorite room. I can understand this. I would like to be one of them.

Oh yes, Sylvia Beach Hotel. I will be back. Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one curled up in the corner of the library with a big novel and a contented smile on my face.

The Sylvia Beach Hotel
267 NW Cliff Street
Newport, OR 97365
888-795-8422

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3. 11. 2012

One Year Later

It was a year ago today that the earth shook off the coast of northern Japan and the waters rose up and life was never the same for the people who live there. So much has been lost: family members, homes, security, dreams. A year later I still have a hard time wrapping my head and heart around it. I cannot imagine what it has been like for those who have lived it. For those who continue to live it, every day.

On this anniversary of so much that was lost, I wanted to tell you about something hopeful. It is a new book from Elizabeth Andoh, Japanese cooking authority and author of books such as Washoku and Kansha. If you know anything about Japanese cuisine, you have probably come across her name.

Andoh was in her Tokyo kitchen when the earthquake struck a year ago. She did what she has learned to do—put on her emergency backpack and crouched in a doorway for protection. Tokyo was not hit hard that day, but other places were. Unspeakably hard.

In the days that followed, Andoh realized she wanted to do something to help. She devoted herself to a project that would commemorate the food of the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan and raise money for rebuilding.

The result is Kibo, an ebook to share the culinary treasures of this area of Japan that has survived so much, to tell the stories, and to raise money to continue rebuilding efforts. The name Kibo means “brimming with hope.”

I recently downloaded a copy of the book and it is filled with stories and recipes and photographic tutorials of how to assemble these Japanese dishes and what the ingredients look like. I’ve not had time to work all the way through the 237-page book, but what I’ve seen has impressed me. And made me hungry.

Today, on this commemoration day, perhaps you’ll consider buying a copy of Elizabeth Andoh’s new book—at $3.99 it’s an easy way to help, and a wonderful introduction to the food of this unique region. I think you will enjoy it. I know I am.

As one of the chefs interviewed in the book says, “What we need to do now is to simply serve good food to people, because I believe good food is vital to making people happy, giving them strength to move forward.”

There are other ways to help, of course, because the need continues. Though it’s hard to even a fathom this, 325,000 survivors are still living in temporary housing today.

If you’ve been meaning to buy a copy of my fundraising book, Tales from High Mountain,
today would be a good time to do it. Also only $3.99, it features ten recipes and the story of my first few months of living in Japan, high in the mountains in a very traditional town. You can read the first chapter.

There are also nonprofit organizations you can choose to support. In addition to the Red Cross, you might consider Peace Winds Japan, an organization based in Japan that participates in humanitarian aide projects around the world. They’ve been helping since the first days of the tsunami. There are reports of their activities available on the website.

Another organization you might consider is Ashinaga, which focuses on providing emotional and financial support for children who have lost their parents. In Japan there are 200 children who lost both their parents to the tsunami, 1,200 lost one parent.

Here are a few more things I want to share with you. Hopeful things. These really touched my heart. You might enjoy them too.

The Portrait Project

Preserving Memories

Japan says Arigato (thank you) to the World

I say thank you, too. Hope you all had a good weekend.

Cooking Challenge: Indian Food

It’s grey and windy in Seattle today, a little bit of snow even. Time to stay indoors and stay warm. Are you ready for another cooking challenge? I am. This time we’re going to tackle Indian food.

I’ve been wanting to take on Indian food since last November, when my cookbook club picked Madhur Jaffrey’s first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, as our selection.

The day we met, people showed up with pots of curries and platters of naan bread. There was chai and mango lassis and rice and lentils and the kitchen smelled of cardamom. We sat around a big table and talked and laughed and it was the very best way to spend a lazy winter Sunday afternoon. Even since then, I’ve wanted to delve deeper into Indian food. Happily, a number of you guys want to as well.

This month I’m going to share with you some of the Indian food recipes I’ve been making and enjoying. We’re also going to talk about Indian spices and other ingredients, and where to find them. And because I’m not exactly an expert in these matters, I’m bringing in those more knowledgeable than I am. It’s going to be fun.

I’m going to intersperse the Indian posts with other content this month, so it doesn’t overwhelm the site, but you’ll get a post or two a week. And at the end of the month, I’m challenging myself to throw a little Indian food dinner party (part of my resolution towards becoming a better hostess). So stay tuned for that. I’m already scheming a menu. Maybe you want to join me?

To start, I’m going to tell you some of what I’ve learned about Indian food—not as an expert, because I certainly am not, but as a novice.

• Yes, there are a number of spices involved in Indian food, but you can make quite a lot with a basic handful, many of which you probably already have at home (more on that soon).

• Indian food doesn’t have to be that spicy. The best thing about making your own is you can decide how spicy to make a dish.

• The Indian food you make at home will probably taste miles better than anything you’ve had in a restaurant. It’s astounding sometimes.

• A lot of Indian dishes taste even better the next day. This has been a nice surprise.

But for today I’m going to leave you with a recipe for Baingan Bharta, a smoky roasted eggplant dish I love. This is one of the dishes I order in a new Indian restaurant, to test the quality. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s a greasy mess. But the basis—roasted eggplant with onion, ginger, garlic, and spices—is delicious. I had never made it myself, so this is the dish I picked to make for cookbook club.

I’ve tweaked it a bit from the Madhur Jaffrey original. This book was her first, and I found the recipe writing to be lacking a bit. I’ve tried to clarify the instruction. I hope you like it as much as I do.

Other Indian Recipes on the Site:
Saag Paneer (spinach and cheese)
Easy Orange Lentil Dal

BAINGAN BHARTA: Roasted Eggplant
Serves 4-6 as a side dish

2 medium eggplants, long and thin is best, not too round
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped (roughly 2 cups)
1 piece fresh ginger, about 1 inch square
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
5 tbs vegetable or canola oil
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ hot green chili, finely chopped (optional). Can use jalapeno, anaheim, or these green chilies that are traditional in Indian cooking
1 tbs chopped cilantro, reserve a little for garnish
2 medium canned tomatoes, coarsely chopped, plus 1 cup of the juice from the can OR three medium tomatoes (ideally peeled) if in season
¾ to 1 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp garam masala

Roast eggplant until charred on all sides. I do this on a glass-topped electric stove, but you can do it over a gas flame, on a barbecue grill, or in a hot oven. You want the outer skin to char and the insides to become soft, and ideally you want to avoid piercing the skin, as it becomes messy and hard to turn. This is a job for tongs used gently. You also want to make sure you have fairly long and thin eggplant, so the flesh cooks through. The chunky round eggplant on the left stayed raw on the inside.

The eggplant will become soft and charred and hard to turn. This is okay. The whole process will take 20 to 25 minutes. When the eggplant is done, you can either peel the charred skin off under cold running water, or cut the eggplant in two from top to bottom and scoop out the insides (I peel mine). Chop the eggplant flesh coarsely and put in a strainer or bowl to sit and drain. Remove as much water as possible.

Put onion, garlic, ginger in food processor or blender with 3 tbs water and blend until smooth. Heat skillet over medium heat and add oil. Pour the onion paste in and add turmeric. Fry this mixture, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes (the recipe says it turns brown after about five minutes, but I didn’t find this to be the case).

Add the green chili and the cilantro to the onion mixture and cook for one minute before adding the tomatoes. Lower the flame and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chopped eggplant, raise the flame and cook ten to fifteen minutes, seasoning with salt, lemon juice, and garam masala.

Serve warm, sprinkled with chopped cilantro. I like this with a dollop of yogurt or raita, on top of rice or with chapati or roti of some sort.

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3. 02. 2012

Cookbook Club Does Cocktails

We’ve already established that Maggi, founder of the cookbook club I was lucky enough to join, is a mad genius. But her greatest stroke of genius—or perhaps just her most recent one—was when she decided our January meeting should be a cocktail party.

Yes, in the month after all the holiday parties, the month when everyone goes on a diet and stays home, she decided we needed another party. And you know what, she was right.

January is a pretty dark and dreary month around these parts. The days are short, the sky is grey when it’s not black, and after all the glitter and lights of the holidays, things can begin to drag. It’s exactly when you need to plan a party.

And this wasn’t going to be just any party—it was going to be a dress up cocktail party, girls only, in the private party room at our friend’s high rise condo building.

Basically it was going to be an excuse to dress up and hang out with your friends in an utterly no pressure environment where it was all about relaxing and having a good time. This was going to be fun.

Our book for the month was Gourmet Game Night, by friend and local food writer Cynthia Nims. All the recipes in the book are things you can eat easily and one-handed, so you can play board games or do some serious chatting and mingling. Some of the recipes are things I never would have thought of—large pasta shells stuffed with kale and ricotta, seasoned cubes of tuna poke scooped up with endive leaves. One of my favorite dishes of the evening were these pretzel sticks with three different types of mustard. And the nearly empty platter to the left holds the last of the Roasted Red Potatoes with Bacon-Chive Creme Fraiche, which I will definitely make again.

There are cocktail recipes in the book as well—Pomegranate-Mint Fizz, Key Lime Gimlets, Kir Royale Floats. And dessert as well. I believe this photo is of the Chocolate Tartlets with Brandy Cream, but I don’t remember entirely. My brain was wiped clean by one taste of the Brown Butter Pound Cake with Caramel Dip. Whoa Nelly.

But really, the thing I want to talk to you about is how much fun it was to have an excuse to dress up. And dress up we did.

There were sparkles in the room.

And cute shoes (also, some blurry picture taking as the night went on).

My shoes were less cute, I admit, but I wore a red, drop-waist flapper dress that twirls when you spin. I really ought to have gotten a proper picture of it, but after a gimlet or two I totally forgot.

But the best part of the night is when the shoes got kicked off and we all ended up in the swimming pool. You know it’s a good party when it ends in the pool. There we all were, in our fancy dresses and jewelry, feet dangling in the warm water, talking, laughing, having a ball.

While the city glittered below us.

And that really is what I’ll remember—how much fun it was to dress up just for ourselves. To pull out the pretty clothes we don’t wear often enough. To make fun fancy food. To have that special holiday sparkly feeling back again, if only just for the evening. We all agreed that we don’t do this sort of thing nearly often enough.

Perhaps cocktail parties need to become a monthly event. Grab your friends, grab your fancy clothes. Throw a party. It was so much more fun than I ever would have guessed.

Happy weekend, friends. I hope you have a good (and maybe even sparkly) one.

Filed in: Entertaining Tagged With: cocktail party Leave a Comment

2. 29. 2012

How to Store Flours: A Visit to Cambro Land

As you know, I’ve been doing a bit of bread baking lately. This has been lots of fun, but it brings with it a bunch of new items to my cupboards. All of a sudden there is spelt flour, and barley flour, and rye flour as well. I’ve been trying to find a way to keep it all organized and neat, trying to figure out the best way to store my flours.

Let’s just establish a few basics about storing flours: dark and cool is best. The fridge or freezer is excellent. If I had room to put my flours in the freezer, I would. Mostly I just try for cool and out of the way.

I buy flours in the bulk section. I don’t go through enough to buy a five-pound bag of each type. I only use a few ounces each week, and I don’t want a large amount that might go rancid. But little bags from the bulk section can get messy and out of control, and I worry about losing the twist-ties that tell me which flour is which. There had to be a better solution.

This is why I went to the restaurant supply store the other week, the trip I told you about. I was looking for containers for storing flours. I needed a visit to Cambro Land.

Cambro Land is my personal name for the aisle where they keep all the Cambros—those heavy, food-grade plastic containers most often used in restaurant and catering kitchens. If you’re not in the industry, you might not have heard of Cambros, or may not know what they’re called, but they are awfully useful.

The Cambro Manufacturing Company makes a large number of food storage items—they got their start by inventing those plastic trays used in cafeterias and hospitals—but I was focusing on the plastic storage containers. They come in round and square versions, with lids that snap on tight. They also stack well on top of each other.

I make an effort to store most of my food in glass, but Cambros are my one exception. They are durable,can be used in the fridge or freezer as well as at room temperature, and they seal tightly to keep out odors (which flours easily absorb). They are great to have around the kitchen. I even use one in the sink for my compost, because it keeps the smell in and the flies out.

I’m partial to the round Cambros, because I like the look of them. Anyone scientifically minded will tell you that square ones utilize the space better. I bought one-liter containers for my rye, barley, and spelt flours, which look a whole lot better than baggies from the store. I like that they can go easily into the freezer, and I can see at a glance if I am getting low on a particular flour. I’ve used the brown kraft paper labels I found here, but once I manage to unpack my label maker I will make them a waterproof, smudge-proof label like I did for my spice jars. I’m really happy with this solution.

I have other sized Cambros I use for other dry ingredients. My flour is in a four-liter one, which is exactly the size to accommodate a five-pound bag (you can see I’m running low).

My sugars are in a smaller size Cambro. I like how the wide mouths allow for easy scooping.

So if you’re looking for a solution to dry goods storage that won’t break the bank, consider checking out Cambro Land, You can find them at a local restaurant supply store or through a sales rep in your area. They are also available through online restaurant supply stores, though I have no experience with these so I’m not endorsing any one company. But Cambros are durable and useful. There’s a reason the pros like them so much.

Do you have any clever solutions for storing dry goods? I’d love to hear.

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