All posts filed under: mushrooms

Chinese New Year & Cucumber-Enoki Mushroom Salad

Last weekend marked a Trifecta of Celebratory Celebrations:  Chinese New Year followed by The Husband’s birthday, which landed squarely on top of Superbowl Sunday!  Oh, and Groundhog Day, too!  Shoot. Now it’s a Quadrant? Quadrifecta?  Anyway, there was a lot going on last weekend and all of it was surrounded by delicious things to eat! On Friday, the first day of the Year of the Horse, we ventured into Chinatown (yes, Las Vegas has a Chinatown, and a good one at that!) for Chinese soup dumplings, or Xiao Long Bao.  Now, if you’ve never had them before, let me tell you, they are amazing little feats of culinary engineering!  These little dumplings are traditionally filled with pork and a little gelatinized broth encased in a bun.  When the buns are steamed, the gelatinized broth melts and becomes like soup, so that when you bite into the delicate bun, you are treated to a steaming hot burst of soup and meat!  Delicious!  Actually, I’m not even sure why I’m getting you all excited about soup dumplings …

Sizzling Mushrooms with Sage and Thyme

If you were to ask me to describe a perfect evening, I would describe our first night out with our closest friends on the first day of our vacation.  We spent the evening wandering around Portland, getting caught up on all the events of our year and sharing laughs over some amazing cocktails and nosh.  As the weather cooled and a soft rain began to fall, we ducked into one of our favorite haunts–the Driftwood Room at the Hotel DeLuxe, where we knew we could continue our conversation long after most other restaurants and bars had closed for the night (it was Sunday, after all).  The Driftwood Room is a dimly lit, cozy spot that evokes that sense that you’re about to star in your own Film Noir. The cocktails are so inventive and their “Bar Bites” serve as the perfect accompaniment.  We ordered the “Sizzling Forest Mushrooms” and they were incredible!  They arrived at our table in a little cast iron skillet, still sizzling from the broiler, earthy and fragrant and served with bread …