OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she shares a new episode on Portland’s Produce Row and a recipe for spicy eggplant with red onions and bamboo shoots

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With this week’s episode shining a light on the Italian truck gardens and produce stands that paved the way for Portland’s farm-to-table movement, we wanted to highlight the ingredients of Calabria, whence the majority of Portland’s Italians immigrants came. Oily fishes, dry and spreadable sausages, eggplants, red torpedo onions and chiles are all cornerstones of Calabrian cuisine. But bamboo shoots are also very much in season right now, so we wondered if we could somehow make them work in a dish from thousands of miles outside their natural range. Could bamboo shoots work with polenta instead of rice? Only one way to find out! Like people, ingredients are transitory, and in a rapidly changing climate, we’ll see foods increasingly grown in places well outside their typical growing zones. Besides that, rice, bamboo and corn all have something in common — do you know what it is? Read on to find out!

Last reminder! Don’t forget to join us for a screening of the “Superabundant” episodes Hops and Coffee, playing at 1:30 p.m. this Sunday (June 2) at the Clinton Street Theater. Doors open at 1:00. And newsletter subscribers, be sure to come to the meet-and-greet before the show! Chat with some of the folks behind your favorite episodes at Marigold Coffee (at Buckman Coffee Factory) at noon. Register for free tickets here, and you’ll automatically secure a spot in the theater.

Produce Row, bad milk and mussels, the state of strawberries and good things in markets, gardens and kitchens

New episode: A brief history of Portland’s Produce Row

Produce Row, located along an unassuming stretch of industrial district in Portland’s Central Eastside, is home to a tight-knit network of Italian American families who have been serving farm-to-table for generations — way before it was cool. The latest installment of “Superabundant” peels back the layers of this history and introduces you to some of those families still making Portland a delicious city today.

Watch out for raw milk and local mussels

A couple of food-related health threats made the news this week. First, OPB’s Alejandro Figueroa reports that Oregon officials are warning people of the risks of contracting bird flu from raw milk; the H5N1 virus has recently been documented in cattle herds across nine states. So far, Oregon dairy cows are uninfected but the outbreak has been reported as close as Idaho. Second, 20 cases of paralytic shellfish poisoning have been reported from eating mussels collected from the Oregon coast. The stretch of coastline between Seal Rock State Park and the Washington border has been closed to recreational shellfish harvesting.

The state of Oregon’s strawberry crop

As reported in the Capital Press earlier this week, California-grown strawberries are taking a bigger share of the market every year, forcing some Oregon growers to scale back. On “Think Out Loud,” Dave Miller talked with Oregon Strawberry Commission chairperson Jayson Hoffman for an update on this year’s season.

Good things in markets

We’ve been seeing lots of interesting green things out there this week — bushy chrysanthemum (golden crown daisy) greens for hot pots and salads, erba stella (star grass), and so many different scapes and rapini.

Wild foods are also continuing to impress — not only did sea beans (aka pickleweed, marsh samphire or glasswort; Salicornia spp.) make an appearance, but morels are pouring in. One Instagram account boasted bringing in more than 3 pounds from the Badger Creek wilderness over Memorial Day weekend, and OPB’s Cassandra Profita struck it rich in the Wallowas. Though the fungi are masters of disguise, they are plentiful!

In the “Superabundant” garden this week

The weather has been so up and down, but we’re using it as an opportunity to shuffle things around — we moved pole beans to their trellises and got the bushier Volga German Siberian beans into a warm spot with a cage. We gave the cucumbers some protection from slugs and cool snaps (a milk jug with the bottom cut off has never failed us).

We’re continuing to harvest elderflowers and bamboo shoots, adding blood sorrel and Greek cress to salads and putting parsley and chives (garlic and regular) on pretty much everything.

Also in the “Superabundant” garden this week: troublesome squirrels! A recent story in Portland Monthly Magazine extolled the many benefits of tiny urban forests, but one of the drawbacks not mentioned in the piece is that the more trees you have near your house, the greater the odds those pesky day-rats will set up shop in your roof. Be sure and keep trees and shrubs trimmed away from your roofline to reduce the risk of unwanted guests trying to claim squatter’s rights.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ We made a big batch of elderflower sour mix for bottling and sharing, as well as strawberry-elderflower jam to eat on cream cheese-stuffed French toast. Elderflower all the things!

✨ We processed the first batch of bamboo shoots — some for this week’s recipe, and some for pressure canning. Not only does picking the shoots keep the kitchen well-supplied for the year’s ramens and stir-fries, it helps prevent the bamboo from spreading further.

✨ We started a nukadoko bed for pickling, but used wheat bran from Willamette Valley wheat instead of rice bran, and Oregon dulse along with kombu. It’ll be interesting to see how Pacific Northwest ingredients might translate to Japanese techniques.

Recipe: Polenta with roasted eggplant, red onions, chiles and bamboo shoots

OK, yes, this sounds like a very confusing dish. What is it, Calabrian congee? Chinese polenta? But think about it: Chiles and eggplant are common to both Calabria and Sichuan cuisine, and corn polenta is not that different from rice porridges like congee or jook. Besides, corn and chiles aren’t even from Europe or Asia! (They’re American crops.) Even though they look pretty different, corn, rice and bamboo are all grasses — and fresh bamboo shoots taste as good with one fellow grass as the other. So go ahead, give Calabrian congee a try.

Fresh bamboo shoots are kind of like artichokes, in both flavor and the level of effort required to get anything edible, but if you’ve already got bamboo in your garden you may as well give it a shot!

We find this dish a fine excuse to start a crackling fire (nothing beats the smoky flavor of fire-roasted eggplant and chiles) but the oven is also fine. To save time, peel the bamboo shoots while the fire is getting started. You can feel free to keep it as a vegetarian dish or add grilled swordfish, another typical Calabrian specialty. Serves 4-6.

Ingredients

1 lb fresh bamboo shoots

3 medium-sized Italian or Chinese eggplants or 1 large American eggplant

4 red torpedo onions or shallots (skin on)

8 Calabrian chiles or other red pepper (cayenne or Fresno are a fine substitution)

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp fine sea salt

½ cup olive oil

Couple sprigs of fresh oregano and/or thyme

5 cups salted water

1 cup fine polenta (you don’t want the coarse stone-ground stuff for this)

Instructions

1. Peel the bamboo shoots to remove the outer sheaths. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add the bamboo shoots, then simmer them for an hour to remove any bitterness. Drain and slice into bite-sized pieces on the bias.
2. Start a fire in your grill or fire pit (you can use lump hardwood charcoal instead of wood, but don’t use briquettes or any lighter fluid for this). When the coals are glowing, nestle in the eggplant, onions and chiles (you’ll probably want to wrap the chiles in a piece of foil). Roast, turning the vegetables several times, until everything is charred on the outside and silky on the inside, about 30 minutes. Set aside until cool enough to handle.
3. Slide the charred skins off the roasted vegetables, cut them into bite sized pieces, then transfer them to a heatproof dish. Add the bamboo shoots, sprinkle on the garlic and sea salt, then pour the olive oil over everything. Toss on the herb sprigs, cover the dish in foil, and return it to the hot coals.
4. While the vegetables are staying warm, bring the 5 cups of salted water to a boil and whisk in the polenta. Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer, stirring pretty much constantly, until the polenta is very tender and creamy, about 30 minutes (you might need to add a little more water).
5. Remove the roasted and confited vegetables from the heat and serve spoonfuls of the oily, spicy ragù over the polenta.

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