Food Lover's Guide to Portland - By Liz Crain

When exploring the many unique restaurants of the Portland area, you'll soon discover the exemplary use locally grown foods and beverage in Portland provides a completely unique culture. In the book A Food Lover's Guide to Portland, written by Liz Crain, was released in July 2010. While the book does delve into many of the unique establishments in the totally self-sustained restaurant ecosystem of Portland, it misses the mark of the target audience.

This book, which consists of 256 pages of restaurants in a highly local town. Through a lengthy series of essays, she explores the numerous advantages and lifestyles of those providing the support for this completely unique culture, reviewing the various restaurants that make this town special, and how everything comes together to form one of the best food towns in the United States.

Unfortunately, this is where the good points of the book end. For a unique food culture, like Portland, many of the local favorites have been excluded, opting for more of a tourist focus. This can be viewed as both a blessing and a curse. While smaller eateries have been skipped over for more tourist friendly restaurants, this can help to keep these hidden treasures buried, but also take away needed business to help the community grow and prosper. Some locals may love it, but others would prefer to attend the places they already know and love.

A Food Lover's Guide to Portland could provide a lot more than it did, but it is still currently available in paperback and electronic editions for those who would like what I could best describe as the basic of the Portland restaurant community.

For pure evidence of the extremely local community and culture of the eateries in this town, you can see it in the culinary schools in Portland, the local breweries and wineries, and even in the bistros, bars, and farms of this food town. Still, leave the book at home and just ask a local which restaurant is the best place for what you'd like to eat.

Stan Hundemer is an avid foodie who enjoys many of the unique culinary cultures of the United States.

View the original article here

Harney & Sons Guide To Tea

The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea, by Michael Harney, published by Penguin Press in 2008, is a recent guide to tea. Michael Harney is best known for his tea association with Harney & Sons, a Connecticut-based tea company which sells both loose tea and tea bags. The book is well-written and easy to read, and contains a wealth of infomation. This review includes a few finer points of criticism of this otherwise outstanding book.

Organization of the Book:

The book is organized by varieties of tea, and covers a total of 56 individual teas, with a few pages on each. The book is broken loosely into categories: white tea, Chinese greens, Japanese greens, Oolongs, yellow teas, Chinese black teas, British legacy black teas, and Pu-erh. The book is organized loosely on the basis of strength and darkness/lightness, starting with white teas with delicate aromas and subtle flavors, and moving towards more powerful teas. I found this book to be very well-organized.

Major Omissions in the Book:

My largest criticism of this book is in the area of major omissions: this book limits itself to regions and types of tea which Harney & Sons focuses on, which is not surprising, but there are some surprisingly important teas which are completely omitted. Interestingly, these omissions tend to occur mostly among inexpensive teas. Shou mei, an important and well-known, but inexpensive type of Chinese white tea (incidentally my favorite type of white tea), is not mentioned anywhere in the book. The book also ignores a number of major tea-producing regions, including Turkey and Argentina--and I suspect because they are not as "classy" as the regions mentioned.

There are also a number of smaller or more minor regions, such as Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, and Nepal, which may be less important or influential in the world of tea than China or India, but I think deserve more mention than they receive.

Another criticism of the book is that it does not delve into much depth with respect to sustainability and human rights issues, issues that are of critical importance in many of the regions discussed (especially China, Sri Lanka, India, and Kenya). In particular, sustainability-related issues such as organic agriculture and the fair trade movement are not explored much.

Referencing & Citations:

I also found the references and citations in this book to be lacking. Although the book does contain a bibliography, the citations throughout the text are sparse. The reader is expected to trust in Michael Harney's authority when it comes to most of the information presented. Many of the numerous facts and tidbits of information in the book are given completely without reference, and it's hard to trace what information originates in sources given in the bibliography and what comes from Michael Harney's personal experience. This is not a huge problem when it comes to subjective information such as descriptions of aroma and flavor, but when it comes to legends and stories, history, and discussion of production process, I find it slightly more problematic.

The Bottom Line:

Bottom line, this is a fun and informative read for the casual tea enthusaist, but it's less comprehensive than you might expect, and less authoritative than it presents itself as. People seeking a more balanced discussion of varieties of tea or a deeper discussion of sustainability-related issues will need to search elsewhere.

Alex Zorach has an M.A. in statistics from Yale University, and is an avid tea drinker and the creator of http://RateTea.net/, a website for rating and reviewing teas, with a wealth of information on styles and varieties of tea, brands of tea, and tea-producing regions, including many omitted from the Harney & Sons Guide to Tea. Read about varieties of tea on this website.

View the original article here

The Guide to West Coast Cheese by Sasha Davies Is a Winner!

Got a foodie on your gift list this year? If so, your holiday shopping just got a little easier. "The Guide to West Coast Cheese" by Sasha Davies is a perfect gift that helps the caseophile in your life delve deeper into cheeses from the left coast.

The book, published by Portland, OR-based Timber Press, explores more than 300 cheeses handcrafted in California, Oregon, and Washington. It is an indispensable resource, clearly and concisely written with expert authority.

The West coast has been a unique and special incubator for cheese culture, with a deep history of dairy culture and a flourishing renaissance today from north to south.

Father Juniper Serro, who put down roots in missions throughout (southern) California, bringing with him cows, dairy and Spanish style cheeses. In the Bay Area, David Jacks transported his buttery, smooth cheese from Monterrey by boat into San Francisco in crates stamped "Jacks, Monterrey," where locals dubbed it "Monterey Jack," one of the original "American Original" cheeses.

On the Oregon Coast Tillamook, a schooner brought high quality coastal dairy inland, showcasing and launching an enduring brand. Small, local dairies flourished and defined the region into the 50's and 60's.

The 2000's saw a rebirth of artisanal cheese throughout a region stretching from the Bay Area north to Seattle and beyond, as a trifecta for great food emerged: a food-savvy populace, locavore vibe and farmer's market friendly worldview. The recent history is fairly well known, with a flourishing of small, artisanal creameries gaining recognition regionally, nationally and internationally.

This phenomenon hit home for me when I saw the maps of West Coast cheesemakers included in the beginning of the book. Little dots abound with creamery names that are hitting the mark with fine cheese after only a year or two in the business. The sheer volume of talented cheesemakers, both new and veteran, experimenting with original recipes and new and intriguing flavors over such a wide area is simply breathtaking.

Davies' book delves into the study of cheese in a unique and compelling way. From the get-go, she says, "I was interested in putting out reference tool for people to introduce the huge number of cheeses made in three states. It's a guide for anyone who loves to eat cheese and wants to understand what's being made here and understand how they are similar and different."

Like most cheese creatives, Davies did not start out in cheese. Rather, a passion for it evolved and gradually encompassed her professional endeavors. Her cheese adventures began as an apprentice affineur in the cheese caves at Artisanal in New York City. She managed the caves at the venerable Murray's Cheese and, in 2006 Davies and her husband embarked on a four month journey to forty American artisan cheesemakers, producing blogs and podcasts on http://cheesebyhand.com.

A move to Portland in 2008 landed Davies squarely in the middle of the west coast scene. She notes, "I just felt (during the "Cheese by Hand" tour) that this would be the next big region in hand crafted cheese. It felt like this 4 years ago and still does, not in a rivalry sense, but just as an epicenter."

"There are some landscape and geographical aspects to it that make it an interesting region but," she notes, "it's also the fastest growing cheese region in terms of the most new cheesemakers springing up."

The parallels were strong with Vermont, a northeastern cheesemaking mecca. "When we came out to the northwest on our visit, I noticed there was not only a growing number of smaller producers but a large number were turning out high quality cheeses similar to Vermont," she says.

"People here were really focusing on cheeseboard cheeses, some modeled on European cheeses some on fanciful ideas of cheeses people wished existed," she observes. "The density of handcrafted cheese production in this area is simply stunning."

As many authors and cheese experts like to point out, it helps that the west coast, particularly the northwest, has a climate and geography that is conducive to dairy farming in that there are no harsh winters. The high amount of rainfall and temperate climate translates to a longer grazing season, which makes for great grass which leads to great milk and cheese. Combine this with a growing cadre of talented, dedicated cheesemakers and it can only lead to incredible things.

So for the perfect present for the cheese lover in your life, look no further than a copy of "The Guide to West Coast Cheese" paired with a selection of several represented cheeses from your local cheese shop. Happy holidays will be had by all with this memorable gift meant to be savored and celebrated.

Christine has over 10 years experience promoting and celebrating Artisan and Specialty cheese from North America and around the world. She shares her passion and expertise via food writing, photography, video, recipes, in-person guided tastings and via her blog: http://cheesechickchat.com/. Christine serves as the current President of the American Cheese Society ( http://cheesesociety.org/ ), North America's premiere organization supporting and promoting Artisan, Farmstead and Specialty Cheese.

View the original article here