Remember: Closed for January

Hello, Nora’s Table fans. Just a reminder that we are closed for an our annual winter break for the entire month of January. We reopen Wednesday, February 1.

Yep, you can reach us by e-mail if you need to talk to us before then. Or leave a message on the restaurant phone, 541-387-4000, which we will check every few days. You can also leave requests for reservations for anytime after February 1, including Valentine’s Day, on the restaurant phone, and we will call to confirm.

Have a great January!

New Year’s Eve menu

Yes, we’re open for New Year’s, from 6 pm to 11  pm. And here’s our menu. Yes, reservations would be most appreciated. You can call or reserve right here on our blog or through Open Table.

Small, luscious things:

• Chanterelle and crimini mushroom pate, crostini
• Shrimp and crab bisque
• Blini and caviar with whipped crème fraiche
• Coconut crab salad with fried plantains
• Butter lettuce salad, buttermilk blue cheese dressing, herbs and pecans
• Mascarpone and arugula pesto torte with pear chutney
• Oysters on the half shell in mignonette, or baked with New Orleans hollandaise, bacon and herbed bread crumbs

The main events:

• Northwest Natural boneless prime rib of beef, gnocchi and crimini mushrooms, Quercus Farm greens, horseradish crème fraiche
• Northwest Bouillabaisse with arctic char, Dungeness crab, mussels, clams and prawns, Italian pepper rouille, grilled crostini
• Mountain Shadow rack of lamb , preserved lemon and garlic butter, rosemary and fontina potato gratin,  Brussels sprouts and lamb merguez sausage

Desserts:

• Lavender creme brulee napoleon, honey sesame florentine, roasted pears and chocolate sauce
• Champagne, tangerine and raspberry sorbets, white chocolate and pistachio meringue kisses
• German chocolate dacquoise, milk chocolate ice cream

Life is like a box of lamb shanks

The Farm to Table restaurant concept (which we fully embrace) means you never know what you’re gonna get. The lamb shanks we expected Wednesday arrived with our favorite rancher, Jim Hanna of Mountain Shadow, on Friday. I’m braising them today: sort of a dust-up between osso bucco and Provencal styles, with roasted heirloom tomatoes, preserved lemon and olives, on a nice bed of pan-roasted potatoes and Wildwood Farm sunchokes.

Razor clams are in the house!

Last year, we couldn’t get any of those sweet, delicious Quinalt razor clams. But we’re getting them in fresh tomorrow. And as luck would have it, Farmer Blayney Myers wrote this morning to say she’s STILL got lush heirloom green tomatoes. We’ll be dipping thick slices of green tomatoes in buttermilk, egg and corn flour, and frying them, topping  applewood smoked bacon rashers, and a crispy corn-flour battered razor clam, with saffron and summer savory aioli.

Our Thanksgiving, at your house

Want to eat what our families are eating this Thanksgiving? We’re fixing up whole Thanksgiving dinners to go. We’re preparing them in  increments of six, so that you can get a whole turkey in the bargain. We are using really nice northwest natural turkeys. I’ve cooked them the past several years … really juicy. Why six? Well, the whole turkey thing, plus a pie has six pieces, and even if you just have four for dinner, you get LEFTOVERS which is what Thanksgiving is all about, right? J It will be available for pick-up between noon and 5:00 on the day before Thanksgiving. We’ll also be doing payment in advance (credit card is fine.)

Thanksgiving menu

You may order your dinner in increments of 6, at $35 a person.

Menu:

Whole brined and roasted Northwest Natural turkey

Traditional fresh herb stuffing made with our own Nora’s Table bread

Yukon Gold mashed potatoes with cream and butter

Pan-roasted turkey gravy with Madeira and shallots

Choose three side dishes from this list

Candied ginger sweet potatoes

Brussels sprouts with smoked bacon

Green beans almandine

Waldorf salad

Roasted squash and celeriac salad with grape mustard vinaigrette

Fresh cranberry orange relish

Traditional cooked cranberry relish

 

Choose one dessert from this list for each six-person meal (so if you are ordering for 12, for example, you can choose two different pies)

Pumpkin pie

Dutch apple pie

Flourless bourbon chocolate cake

Thanksgiving on your mind yet?

If it is, we’ve got a great option: a take-out and re-heat complete dinner from Nora’s Table. You can eat what our families will be enjoying! (The restaurant is closed on Thanksgiving so we can be with the ones we love.)

Take this brief two-question survey here to let us know if you’re interested.

Things we’d like to say, but then think better of it

Couple of weeks ago, we had a delightful group of doctors in, who were really specific about when they wanted to eat, where they wanted to sit and how long they had to dine with us. Really.

We ever so much wanted to approach the table and say, “We can’t take your order for 45 minutes, but here as some tattered three-year old Family Circle magazines to keep you occupied until then.”

But we restrained ourselves. And lest any of our many doctor friends get the hrumpphs from our little joke: we know, we know. Health care in America isn’t that much fun for anybody, including sometimes, our docs.

On a completely different “things we’d like to say” topic, last Sunday afternoon, Stu and Kathy went down to Snap Fitness and found they had the place entirely to themselves. Stu ran around gleefully changing the four television channels (we don’t have cable at home): two to football, two to food channels.

And in between sets, we discovered we’re exactly like that high-end high-rise Singapore restaurant that opened recently. On opening night, a server brought a plate back to the kitchen. “They say it’s too salty.”  The chef replied cheerily, “Let’s send them out something special. How about a complimentary kick in the ass?”

If only Kathy had thought of that a few weeks back when some guests sent our wonderful seared scallops back with the same complaint. Kathy, Stu, Sam, Justin and Heather huddled around the scallops, tasting away. We all shook our heads. Nope, not too salty. Just like we send out every other time, for rave reviews. But everyone tastes things differently, and there’s the rub. Kathy didn’t send out a complimentary kick in the ass. She sent out a new plate of scallops, with absolutely NO salt. And they were thrilled: “Perfect!” Should we cut back on the salt in the scallop dish? Nope. We hew to the middle road, and know some they will want more salt and  others  will want less. You can’t always get what you want.

Hey, guess what? You CAN always get what you want!

Contrary to our own lamentation above, we have figured out a way you can get what you want each and every Cheap Date Night, from October 5 through April 1.

In last week’s newsletter, we included a survey asking what you wanted to eat for Cheap Date Night this year. Do you want fish tacos every single Wednesday (like we did two years ago) or do you want something different each Wednesday (like we did last year). Well, 75% of you wanted something different each Wednesday. But about 22% are stuck on those darn fish tacos in the same way you can’t get “It’s a Small World After All” out of your head.

So, we’ll make BOTH groups happy. Every Wednesday night beginning October 5, you can choose between fish tacos, OR something else (no mixing and matching), at a ridiculously low two-for-one price. Could be gumbo or tamales or soup & salad or mussel and clam steamers, or who knows. How’s that? Reservations recommended; no takeout.

And now, for what’s on our plates this week

A farmer lamented to us the other day that since harvest was so late, it didn’t synch up with the crush of the tourist season. Most of the tourists were here in July and August; must of the harvest this year is late August and September.

But for you, dear diners, that means we have lots of wonderful fresh stuff still on our plates, and here’s some of what we’re doing with it:

• Wildwood Farm Eden’s Gem melon salad, chaat masala, mint, cilantro and ginger yogurt
• Crispy wedge of pork belly, Gravenstein apple and fennel salad with honey walnuts, salted caramel
• Grilled fresh gulf prawns, grilled salsa, heirloom tomatoes, masa sopas
• Pumpkin samosas, red onion date chutney
• Fresh ono in escabeche with house-pickled peppers, beans and carrots, windflower baby squash and roasted tomatoes, onions,  summer savory
• ·        Grilled tandoori-spice-rubbed Mountain Shadow lamb chops, coconut masoor dahl, green beans, curried pear gastrique
• ·        Seared duck breast, Oaxacan tomato and fruit sauce, Quercus Farm chili rellanos with goat cheese and golden raisins

 

Rainbow still has wonderful fresh fruit for desserts, incorporated with a few other dessert essentials such as chocolate, caramel, and uh, more chocolate:

• Pistachio Panna Cotta, Parkdale cherries, chocolate sauce, chocolate tuile
• Chocolate blackout cake, carmel and chocolate sauce, Dancing Moon strawberries
• Warm Hood River Organic nectarine Rustic Tart, ginger maple ice cream

 

What ELSE might fall bring?

So, get ready: It’ll be October 5 and time to launch into Cheap Date Night before you know it. But we’ll also be bringing back our simply dirt-cheap Five Course Chef’s Tasting Menu in October, too. That’s five courses for $30; and pair wines with all five courses for an additional $20.

 

See you around Nora’s Table.

 

 

Of printers, mystery desserts and power outages

The printer: One night in July, Kathy streaks from the kitchen into the office at 4:30 to print the night’s menu. Behind schedule, but what else is new? The catering crew has just packed the van and headed out to a wedding. The dining room crew is scurrying through the opening list. Cuate is mopping the dining room. Justin is loading six loaves of bread into the convection oven.

And the printer dies. Kathy goes through every diagnostic. No luck; the thing is a boat anchor. It’s 4:50. She clutches the one menu that printed correctly, a stack of paper, and she runs. She tries both real estate offices just across the way. Closed. She runs up Oak St., sticking her head in several doors. Got a photocopier? Nope. Nope. Try the library. The library is closed. She makes it to Hood River Stationers. Closed. She bangs on the door. They let her in, and initiate a quick print job.

Now don’t run all the way back in this heat, they say. Kathy runs. Run, Kathy, run. It’s 5:15. Guests are already at tables, the servers doing a remarkable stall job. The bread comes out of the oven. The walk-in is cold and agreeable. The menus, a little crooked on their pale yellow paper, are crumpled and spotted with red wine and curry by 10 pm, just like every other night.

The mystery dessert: Nice table of mid-western visitors are intently reading the dessert menu. One has taken out his smart phone and is googling “Rainbow Trosper.”  We just can’t figure out what kind of dessert this is, he asks the server. Once again, with ever so much grace, the server says, that’s not a dish, that’s our pastry chef. (Who actually is quite a dish.)  So on our dessert menu now, we’ve dropped the line, “Rainbow Trosper, Pastry Chef” way down to the bottom and put it in italics. Just to end the confusion. She makes the desserts; she isn’t dessert.

The power outage: It’s 4:30, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend, and we are buzzing, like we do, in that last hectic hour before 5:00, when the power goes out. Thankfully, that new printer is on battery back-up, so we finish printing the menu, and bring battery operated lights into the kitchen. We ice the fish in the walk-in. We wait. Sam washes windows. Sergio and Justin and Kathy chop and mince and stir in the eerily quiet kitchen, their metal spoons pinging loudly on pots, their knives going tap-tap-tap on the boards.  Mike hauls in a generator to the keep the ice cream freezers going at Mike’s Ice Cream next door. Heather wipes down the woodwork in the dining room. We fold napkins and pace and wait. Pacific Power calls with automated cheery messages every fifteen minutes about our prospects for power in the near future. Kathy watches imaginary dollar bills with wings flying out the windows.

And then, at 6:30, the power comes on. Like dancers on a suddenly lit stage, we spring into action. The kitchen fills with the hum of the hood fan and the compressors rumble back to life. We open the walk-in with relief, find the salmon, and lay that glistening pink flesh in a sauté pan.

Here’s what’s on the menu

It’s the luscious, most tempting time of the year, if you like the best a farm garden can throw at you. We only hope we’re doing our farmers justice. Here’s some of what we have on our menu this week:

• Salmon and Dickey Farms corn chowder with applewood smoked bacon
• Hood River Organic beet and fennel carpaccio, orange vinaigrette, crisp beet chips
• Wildwood Farm candied cherry tomatoes,  savory crème fraiche panna cotta, basil vinaigrette
• Crispy wedge of pork belly, Gravenstein apple and fennel salad with honey walnuts, salted caramel
• Fried calamari, napa cabbage salad with celery, peanuts, radish and spring onions, lime chili vinaigrette
• Garden samosas with corn, squash, potatoes and shallots,  red onion date chutney
• Seared divers scallops, sauté of summer squash and summer beans, pesto cream, grape mustard
• ·        Hawaiian tombo tuna, coconut lemon grass risotto rice cakes, Windflower Farm Asian long beans, citrus miso vinaigrette
• ·        Cascade Natural 12-ounce rib eye, gnocchi and mushrooms in crème fraiche horseradish sauce, Windflower arugula and red onion salad
• ·        Grilled tandoori-spice-rubbed Mountain Shadow lamb chops, coconut tor dahl, green beans, curried peach gastrique
• ·        Seared duck breast, Oaxacan tomato and fruit sauce, Quercus Farm chili rellanos with goat cheese and golden raisins
• Cream tomato fenugreek curry with fresh paneer cheese, eggplant, sweet onions, pole beans and patty pan squash, rice and grilled naan

 

Dessert: OK, we’re only going to list one thing, because it just makes us swoon: fried peach pie, cinnamon ice cream. Need we say more?

Other sundry things to tell you about

It’s nearly October, and you know what that means. Wednesday is, once again, “Cheap Date Night.” We really have no idea what it’ll be yet.

We are also planning some really cool themed dinners this fall and winter to keep you occupied while you layer on the fleece. You’ll hear more as time goes by. But how does this sound: take a trip down Route 66, circa 1966. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Scenes from Summer

Scenes from summer                   

While you’ve been out frisking in the sunshine, we’ve been going holy-jumpin’-up-and-down-Martha full tilt, and frankly, we haven’t had time to write.

But here are a few things about summer we’ve loved so far:

Phone conversation with cherry grower and wine maker Brian McCormick:

“Hey, Brian, whatcha up to?”

“Oh, I’m just laying on my back in the grass, looking up into a cherry tree.”

Phone conversation with rancher Jim Hanna of Mountain Shadow Meats during haying season. He has to park the combine before he can take our order.

Dr. Sam Taylor, enjoying dinner at an outside table, sends word through server Jacque Cannon that he’d like the vegetarian enchilada REALLY spicy, please. Justin and Kathy get devious grins. Dr. Taylor gets sweaty eye balls.

The gleam in the eye of Hood River Organic farmer Brian Shaw when he asks casually if we’d like some CHERRY TOMATOES when none of our other farmers have them yet. Duh-uh. Yippee for the hoop house!

Rainbow lining up hotel pans full of pickles: zucchini, cauliflower, beets, carrots, green beans. Winter is really not that far away.

 

 

Waste not, want not

This is how dirt begins: an unsightly bus bin of dining room scraps; buckets of kitchen prep scraps, from corn husks to fish heads.

Compost? All that? Yep, you bet. We are proud to say we are part of a “beta test” with DirtHuggers, your friendly neighborhood dirt makers. In addition to the kitchen fruit and veggies scraps we’ve been composting with them, we are now putting ALL our organic matter, even the gnawed lamb shank bones you leave on your plate, into a big bin that gets picked up twice a week.

The best part? With all the other recycling we do, our trash is now minimal.

And now, for the line-up

Here’s what’s on our plates the next few days:

• Mountain Shadow big meaty pork spare ribs in Pinot Noir bbq sauce, patty pan and smoked cheddar gratin, lacinato kale and pancetta
• Rogan josh, our very favorite lamb curry
• Columbia River king salmon, creamy sweet corn, Italian salsa verde, cherry tomatoes
• Grilled ratatouille salad
• Chilled Hermiston cantaloupe soup with mint basil crème fraiche
• Pan-seared duck breast, Oregon Jewel organic wild rice and almond pilaf, blackberry sauce, baby squash
• And for dessert? Oh baby: Key Lime Pie with blackberries; Chocolate Raspberry Mousse Cake with raspberries; Peach Pecan Crisp and ginger ice cream

See you around Nora’s Table.

 

 

 

 

 

In the nick of time: the farmer version

When it arrives at the restaurant still warm from the field, you know it’s fresh. That, our dear friends, happened several times yesterday, without a moment to spare.

Kathy was waiting anxiously for mint from Windflower Farm, sunburst squash from Hood River Organic, and cherries from Idiot’s Grace. It was getting close to show time. Every time the back door opened, she looked up expectantly from her station. Nope, job applicant. Nope, wine delivery. No mint, or squash, no cherries.

Kathy called Brian McCormick, the wine maker and vinyardist for the McCormick family labels “Memaloose” and “Idiot’s Grace” wines, as well as cherry grower. “Brian, cherries on the way?” Now, you gotta love the answer: “I just picked them and washed them and the box is in the cooler. I’m on the way.”

“No worries,” Kathy said, “I’ve got a spiffy four-pitter, so it’ll go fast.”

“Really? A four-pitter?”

“If you’re really nice, I’ll show it to you,” Kathy joked.

The cherries arrived, Brian got a demo of the cherry pitter, and within minutes, we had cherries, port, shallots, thyme, lemon and lemon zest on the flame for a nice sauce for our duck confit.

One down, two to go. Kathy finished the menu. Sam printed them up. The doors opened. Still no squash or mint. We sat four tables immediately. Kathy walked past one and heard, “And I’ll have the lamb curry.” Drat! That dish comes with blueberry raita, which is nothing, nothing we say, without fresh mint. Time for evasive action. Kathy headed out the back door to sneak just a little sprig of mint from Six Street Bistro’s herb garden (what are neighbors for?) when around the corner comes Caroline from Windflower with a nice bag of mint and fresh peas to boot.

Kathy raced back to the kitchen, and as she passed through the dining room, heard another guest ordering the potato and squash enchilada. Drat! No squash.

But as promised (just a few minutes late), in walks Brian Shaw, Hood River Organics, with his honey-farmer-squeeze Connie Garrant, and a box of sunburst squash.

Whew. Worth the wait? Oh baby. This is our favorite time of year. Our local farmers make the flavors pop off our plates. We couldn’t make you moan without them. Thank you Brian, Brian, Caroline, Paul, Laurel, Blayney, Silas, Jim, Connie, Dan, Meredith, Ron, Nic, Lori and Gary. Thanks for picking it when it’s ready and not a moment before, and getting it to us as fast as you can.

Here’s where it all goes on our plates

And what are we doing with all that July bounty? Here’s some of what you can get this week in our dining room:

• French Roquefort mousse, Wildwood beet jewels, arugula salad
• Duck confit, herb spaetzle and fava beans, Idiot’s Grace bing cherry sauce
• Open-faced potato and sunburst squash enchilada with red chili mole, Wildwood Farm kale and masa tortilla, peruano beans with Hood River Organic peppers, roma tomatoes and cotija cheese
• Double-thick cut Mountain Shadow pork loin chops with pan roast of Spanish-style mussels, peppers, potatoes, Hood River organic cherry tomatoes, sherry, smoky paprika and saffron
• 12-ounce Cascade Natural rib eye, gnocchi and Hood River organic mushrooms in brown butter, salad of Zion spinach, red onions and smoked ricotta salata cheese
• Sockeye salmon, beet risotto, crispy beet chips

Desserts:

• Chocolate and hazelnut dacquoise with strawberries
• Strawberry, vanilla and pistachio semifreddo with strawberry coulis and pistachio lace cookie
• Maryhill peach pinwheel cobbler, praline caramel ice cream

See you around Nora’s Table.