Spring Blaze 2007: HK in Portland

Spring is essential; you gotta get refreshed, reborn. But because the seasons have been unnaturally fucked in Los Angeles, where the city’s been burning, it’s been hard to do here. So, last weekend we decided to celebrate the rites of spring elsewhere, and the extended Hot Knives family hopped a flight to Portland, Oregon, our homepage away from home — where the season of rebirth still means something.

It just so happened that shit was going down in a major way thanks to Urban Honking co-founder Jona Bechtolt. The multi-media music maker was celebrating his record release last weekend, with the party of the year: Yacht on a Yacht. So we knew that everyone involved in this little web community that we’ve wanted to meet would be in top form.

Originally the plan was to show up to cater the Yacht party, a 120-person vegan extravaganza. But due to some seriously unprofessional shenanigans on the part of the promoter our vegan banquet budget was slashed. We had to cancel. And while the prospect of a weekend party vacation in the City of Roses was still rad, we’d both gotten hyped on the notion of flying up with a mission, to get stressed, cook our hearts out and get drunk. So we were bummed. For a while it looked bleak.

Nevertheless, Hot Knives made it up to Portland for a Bacchanalian whirlwind. Our fast friend Mikey “made it happen” (his radical pet motto and mission in life) and organized a vegan donut tasting, a coffee face-off, a manly beer excursion and a massively successful Urban Honking brunch party, where Hot Knives got to whip up a 4-part plate for 25 hungry, hung-over people.

Early Saturday morning, we took a tour of the infamous downtown Portland farmers market, easily the best we’ve ever been to. Beside running into the master brewer for Hair of the Dog beers, we got to investigate some seriously fresh Oregon produce and come up with an intricate brunch menu on the fly. It was a nice test. There was basket after basket of fresh morels, ramps, curlicue ferns and hedgehog shrooms. But most were outside our budget. We zeroed in on the wild amounts of asparagus, fresh shitake mushrooms, Oregon truffles, spicy arugula and still-muddy baby potatoes.

So after sailing the mighty Willamette River on the Crystal Dolphin and watching Jona do his thing for hundreds of adoring fans, Hot Knives got to work and whipped up a monument to spring in the form of a meal. The asparagus went out as is, just blanched quickly and served alongside a vegan remoulade garnished with thyme flowers. The mushrooms ended up in a tofu forest scramble topped with arugula and white truffle salad. Baby potatoes became mini-baked potatoes dressed up in vegan sour cream, bacon bits and pyramid salt. Loaves of crackly French bread acted as bread bowls for a white bean, soy chorizo chili.

Judging from the aftermath of awesome documentation (always a given when dealing with the Ur-ho crowd), the meal was a success. Later this week we’ll post the recipes concerned, but it goes without saying that the food itself was secondary to the feeling. We saw some old friends, other old friends, and made a shit ton of new ones and generally were reminded what the point of cooking is, to us: to encourage friendship and add to a tangled web of vibe where everyone contributes what they can to a greater good. Thanks Portland!