Introduction
I feel strongly about local and seasonal food. I truly believe in the benefits it provides to our community and to the environment, and as a cook, I believe it’s my duty to promote local food.
That’s why I built this website. My goal is to create a resource for cooks in the Pacific Northwest - a reference with all of the information that is relevant to our local and regional ingredients and how they fit into the cuisine of the Pacific Northwest.
I started by looking at the geography and climate of our region.
Based on those characteristics, I then defined several culinary regions.
Last, I settled upon a definition of local, which I am centering around Portland, the city I live in.
With this framework in place, I am researching and writing articles about the ingredients that are native, introduced, or possible in the Pacific Northwest. I hope the information I collect can serve to push the Pacific Northwest’s cuisine forward, and I hope it can be useful to other chefs in the region with similar goals.
Northwest cuisine
Cuisines are a combination of ingredients, techniques, and traditions influenced by climate, geography, history, trade and culture.
When I first set out to learn more about Northwest cuisine, the thing that stood out to me most was that it is very difficult to get a clear answer as to what that is. I looked through cookbooks, online forums, and talked to coworkers. Most of the opinions I read and heard from were fairly vague, and didn’t provide a consistent idea of Northwest cuisine. This is unlike, for example, French or Chinese cuisines, which have a slew of easily identifiable dishes and traditions that have been codified and defined over centuries. Although there are some examples, such as cedar-plank salmon and IPAs, I don’t think we have, compared to other cuisines, as clear-cut a tradition of dishes and techniques that can be easily attributed to our region by the average person in the US.
I believe this is mostly due to the history of the Pacific Northwest. Two historical aspects stand out to me. First, indigenous traditions were intentionally erased by colonialism. Second, American settlers arrived in the region much later than in other parts of the country.
Indigenous tribes were heavily affected by European explorers in the 1700s and 1800s. Europeans brought smallpox to the region, and the disease devastated the local populations. On top of that, they were also subjected to colonialism and the accompanying destruction of their culture. Unfortunately, many food traditions have been lost as a result.
Furthermore, the region was colonized by settlers much later than elsewhere on the continent, and much closer to the time when American eating habits turned to industrialized food. Industrialization brought about a homogenization and standardization of food across the country, and regionalism declined as a result. In the Pacific Northwest, there was less time for the cuisine to regionalize before industrial food took over.
Today, with the globalization of the world, we have access to cultures from around the world through the internet and other communications technologies. We can visit other places more quickly and readily than ever before. We can purchase ingredients from thousands of miles away at stores in our cities. Our food options are much more culturally diverse than they ever were before, but I think it also makes it harder to pinpoint what our local cuisine is.
Ingredients
Although it can be difficult to find a clear agreement on what constitutes Northwest cuisine, one theme that stands out across the board is a focus on local ingredients.
It can be difficult to agree on what dishes are most typical of our area because many of the dishes served here are general to the cuisine of the US. On the other hand, this is a region with a long list of locally-produced ingredients that many people associate with the region, such as hops, kale, apples, pears, marrionberries, oysters, and so on. The information I’ve found on indigenous food, too, is highly centered on the ingredients that were used, such as Pacific salmon, quamash bulbs, salal berries, and herring.
Ultimately, that’s what this project is about - ingredients that work for the Pacific Northwest.
