The Great Redwall Feast

(early march. number 15.)

"The famous kitchens of Redwall Abbey were abustle with activity that night. Friar Alder, the thin, lanky mouse in charge of it all, added wild plumjuice to an enormous hazlenut crumble he had just pulled from the oven..."

I (Andrew) am a preschool teacher, and in late January our librarian brought one of the classrooms a Redwall picture book called 'A Redwall Winter's Tale,' written by Brian Jacques and illustrated by Christopher Denise. It was written and released long after I "grew out" of reading this series popularized by nerdy 5th grade boys, so I'd never seen it. Neither had a coworker who was also excited by the books' appearance at school. This led me to discover the other two books made with the same illustrator– 'The Great Redwall Feast' and 'The Redwall Cookbook.'

I remember always being particularly enchanted by the descriptions of food in the books; flowery cordials and creamy cheeses and savory pies. I even made a Redwall cookbook around age 11, poorly laid out and haphazardly printed on my families' ink jet color printer in 1997. I'm not sure if I ever tried to make anything out of it. I probably just shoved it under my mother's nose and hoped for the best.

A few days after the wintry picture book had appeared, my coworker shared the news he'd learned of Jacques passing, from a heart attack at the age of 71, a few days earlier. I immediately became determined to pull off a Redwall themed Secret Restaurant, as an homage to Jacques and a celebration of the end of winter.

And yes, that first image is of a mouse hand sculpted out of marzipan by my roommate Kellen.

Southern Pacific

(valentine's weekend. number 14)

We had some guests in town for this one, which was very exciting. Faith Griffiths, who does this thing (The Jubilee Collective) and has this band (Dana & Faith), had been doing an internship down in Eugene. So she came up with the friends she's been living with and our old pal Russell, who has helped with sporadic Secret Restaurant events before. Faith made the cake and Russ made the biscuits & the cookies– they both helped enormously with prep work.

Magyar Vacsora

[mid january. number 13.]

This Hungarian-themed Secret Restaurant was, building upon our New Year's feast, another nostalgia trip, dating all the way back to the first dinner Lucas and I ever cooked together. We had both moved up to Portland, having been relatively out of touch for a while (but we've known each other since we were 11), and decided to cook dinner one night in November. At the grocery store we picked an exotic and inaccessible sounding cuisine to tackle: Hungarian.

I grew up stopping at Novak's Hungarian Restaurant (one of the only things to experience in Albany, OR) on the way to and from Portland and Eugene. Because of this tradition, I've known a lot of this food since I was a toddler. When I got into The Moosewood Cookbook, I noticed that a lot of the recipes were based on Hungarian dishes. I favored those recipes in cooking big dinners at my college co-op house, but had never made a concerted effort to make any all Hungarian dinners, until that night in November of '09. At that first dinner with Lucas something magical happened, which has sparked this entire project.

Anniversary

(new year's eve. number 12.)

This dinner was the 1 year anniversary for Secret Restaurant Portland.

We spent the first part of last year holding practice dinners that were smaller and more frequent than they are today, and we didn't officially "open" until spring (the first dinner documented on this blog). But the first time that Lucas and I ever cooked together for guests was new year's eve 2009/2010.

We made a dinner very close to the one you'll see below. It was a sort of Italian-inspired Northwest winter meal. We had an antipasto with roasted garbanzo beans and chard. We had bread with roasted garlic. We had salmon. We had gnocci with this nutty olive sauce, we had biscotti and coffee for dessert. Some of the guests for the anniversary were there for the original, and it was really fun to hear their reactions to our progress.

Lucas once joked "maybe someday we'll get to the point where you start doing ridiculous shit like letterpress menus." So I took that as a cue and I hand set type and letterpress printed the menus.

Pilgrims in Portland

(late november. number 11.)

We held a gathering of friends to share Thanksgiving food, five days before the actual holiday. We were able to practice some of the dishes, take some pressure off from the usual Secret Restaurant routine, and celebrate the season/each other's company.

We had no dining table at the time (the housemate switch mentioned in the Pizza entry), so the food was served buffet style on all the tables from around the house.

Secret Pizza

(mid november. number 10)

We took an enforced hiatus from Secret Restaurant-ing in October, for a multitude of reasons. We enjoyed making small autumnal dinners like savory pies and soups, and soaking up the odd amount of sun still left in Portland. We also had no dining table, or seating, or kitchen utensils, or glasses, or white china, or silverware, due to a roommate switcheroo.

November came, along with the rain, and we still didn't have a proper table. But we decided create a meal that didn't really require one! PIZZA SLAM. We hit up Portland Farmer's Market one last time before the season concluded, and crafted almost all toppings/sauces from what we found there.

We brought out pies two-at-a-time, every 20 minutes or so, for a couple of hours. There was an ongoing came of Pictionary between the pies.

Harvest Moon

(late september. number 9)

This Secret Restaurant was a simple celebration of the beginning of Fall– the days had been unusually hot again, but the afternoon turned blustery as we started to cook. The moon loomed high, the Neil Young album was slapped into the tape deck, and we all toasted to the harvest time.