Lisa Hall, Market Manager, Montavilla Farmers Market
Favorite kitchen tool: My cast iron pan, 100%. I love the browning power of the seasoned pan and the flavor it adds to dishes. Plus, not having to clean it after every meal is a huge plus!
Biggest cooking fail: I recently got a pressure cooker and was very excited to cook dried beans quickly. The first time turned out great, but my recent attempt led to very, very burnt beans stuck to the bottom, a smoky kitchen, and our dog getting spooked by the smoke detector.
Beloved cookbook: Nourishing Traditions, it focuses a lot on fermenting foods, raw products, and using quality whole ingredients to make tasty foods.
Dog-eared pages: Cheese cake! Have I made it? No, but someday I will make an awesome birthday cake using homemade fermented cream cheese.
Nikki Guerrero, Owner & Salsera, Hot Mama Salsa
+ Board Member Portland Farmers Market, Mama to Chavela, & Founder Tuesday Night Dinners
Favorite kitchen tool: my grandmother's enameled spoon. I superstitiously always use it to stir my beans. It keeps her close to me when I am in the kitchen which was a space we spent so much time in together.
Biggest cooking fail: One of my biggest cooking fails was probably the time I left a pot of stock on full boil and left the house with my husband to go to Costco. I remembered halfway through our shopping trip, gasped audibly, left the cart in the middle of the store, and ran out to get home. By the time we arrived the entire house was filled with smoke, the fire alarm was blaring, the dog was cowering in the corner of the upstairs bathroom. The stock had boiled to nothing and the metal in the bottom of the pot was burning and oozing out the side. The metallic fumes were so toxic that we had to leave the house and spend the night in a hotel. It took the next month to air everything out and repaint the walls. I keep the hard metal ooze on my shelf in memory.
Beloved cookbook: The Tortilla Book from Diana Kennedy. It was published in 1975. I found it at a thrift store. It has images and quotes about the history of Mexican cooking. It is full of simple and essential recipes, cooking techniques and Mexican ingredients. I love it because I feel a connection with my cultural history through the love and reverence of corn and cooking.
Jana FAY Ragsdale, Writer, Chef, & Creative consultant
Favorite kitchen tool: cast iron skillet
Biggest cooking fail: My worst fails were mostly professional, always from working too fast. The absolute worst was prepping for a dinner for wine professionals, working alongside famed Chef Jacques Pepin. Half-way through stuffing 50 heads of blanched endive, I realized that a bandaid previously on my wrist was missing. I frantically disassembled my work until I found the offending 'garnish' and then frantically tried to catch up, while pretending everything was fine in front of Chef Pepin. It was like a scene from I Love Lucy. I still shudder when I think of what could have happened if it had ended up on someone’s dinner plate.
Beloved cookbook: As a suburban kid learning to cook before the internet and Food Network, the Time Life Foods of the World series at the library was my first exposure to regional cuisines and cultures beyond Julia Child. I slowly collected the entire series, which I still love for their lush photos and inspiration.
Dog-eared pages: I've served the Kulebiaka with salmon or cabbage from the Time Life Russian Cooking for over 30 years: fancy, inexpensive, and easy to make ahead and transport.
Beth Gates, Project & program Manager
+ Slow Food Portland Board Member, mom to Jago, avid home cook, gardener and goat cheese maker
Favorite kitchen tool: a sharp chef’s knife. I think for chefs, a sharp knife is just like an extension of their hands, they expect it is there. Even as a home cook, using a sharp chef’s knife makes prep so much faster and easier. Nothing squashes my desire to cook faster than a dull knife.
Biggest cooking fail: It happened in my mid twenties, in the early days of running an art gallery in Oakland, CA, with my now husband. We had the ambitious idea to invite a group friends over for a dinner of northern Thai style sticky rice and barbecued chicken, with a green papaya salad. After living, working and traveling in South East Asia for two years in the mid 1990s we had fallen in love with the cuisines of the region, but we had not yet actually learned how to cook our favorite dishes. Undeterred by our ignorance, we bought the ingredients and attempted to cook this meal. I don’t recall where we found recipes or guidance, but we gave this dinner our all. Needless-to-say, the sticky rice was underdone–more crunchy than chewy–and to our horror the barbecued chicken was also not fully cooked. The rice was a total loss, while the chicken was rescued by more time on the grill, and although not a bullseye, at least the green papaya salad landed on the target. Luckily our friends were very gracious about how we tried “new-to-us” recipes, for the first time, on them!
Beloved cookbook: Over the years, I have developed a fondness for a wide range of flavors and styles of cooking, as well as a desire to use up what I have in the garden or fridge. I have become a huge fan of the internet to find recipes to match whatever I have on hand. If I like the recipe, then I print it out and it goes in my ever growing "stack o’ recipes in a clip" cookbook. A couple of favorites include Portland’s Sisters of the Road Gather Together at the Table, Sister’s Famous Cornbread, made with blue cornmeal from Sungold Farm, and a Chard Saag Paneer made with chard from our garden and paneer I make from fresh goat milk.
Dog-eared pages: It’s one giant dog-ear!