Bella Culinary Adventures
Food writer, meet food stylist: how our romance grew after loss and survival, and how we learned to savor every moment with food, wine, and travel.
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She's a French-trained chef, recipe developer, and food stylist with culinary roots in the American South. He's a food writer and photographer, a French Wine Scholar, and an in-depth coffee aficionado. Together, we're Bella Culinary Adventures: bringing you the best food, wine, and experiences we've had from out travels around the world and our home on the northern Oregon Coast.
In addition, Scott is an active automotive journalist, with a wide-ranging portfolio of articles on topics from competition and automotive technology to investing in collector cars. If you're thinking this is a great combination for an epic food-based road trip, you're exactly right.
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Kattie and I had an adventurous afternoon picking these delicious blueberries in Garibaldi. I’m making a blueberry tart with a shortbread crust and she’s making pancakes and cobbler. Like mama like daughter.
The Charlie Russell Museum, Great Falls Montana.
WOW!
Release party for the first-ever sparkling rosé from @knudsenvineyards in Dundee! If you know the Oregon wine country license plate, it’s based on a view of these vineyards. Always a beautiful day in the @dundeehills.
A beautiful day to spend at the beach.
Christmas dinner simple and delicious.
Colored lights are on the porch!
Holiday cheer on the front porch.
After being cloned on Facebook and testing positive for COVID, this is the perfect view. jb.
When @lilpinkhouse Met @bellaculinary ! Fourth of July snacks on the beach. Love spending time with you and dear Zio. 🐕❤️
Pan-seared duck breast in a tropical-inspired marinade of pineapple and orange juice with a little lime and some Italian candied cherries (amarena) in their syrup. Deglazing the pan with its drippings kept the sauce savory. And the duck… perfectly medium-rare, incredibly tender, and wonderfully rich in flavor. Best of all, we came up with the marinade after tasting this wine: a 2019 Murto Vineyard Pinot noir from Knudsen Vineyards, where we’re club members. Murto was first planted in 1978, and the wine from this vineyard (just across the access road from the tasting room) have all the richness and complexity we associate with older vines. This Pinot had great depth and structure, with a finish that suggested those Italian cherries. It might have been the most perfect food-and-wine pairing of my career. I decided this merited the Royal Doulton “Harlow” plates (my choice in the early Eighties) and the gold flatware my parents picked out in the late Seventies. Use the good china.
Beautiful local greens from the Rockaway Beach Artisan Farmers Market. Peppery arugula, pungent mint, luscious spinach, and those garlic scapes! They’re going into pesto.
When the #tinybeachcottage met @lilpinkhouse for Easter brunch! Julie brought sliders made with beautiful pork tenderloin, and Mary sent us home with some of her brioche French toast. Dinnertime rolled around, so Scott made croque monsieur sandwiches with the French toast, more of that pork roast, and slices of baby Swiss cheese. He said, “I have to make these on purpose some time!” We daubed them with Scottish orange marmalade (with Champagne) and some Oregon blueberry spread from @drapergirlsciderco in Hood River. And prosecco left over from the morning mimosas, as you do. So wonderful when friends get together!
Scott’s Coffee Diary: what am I drinking today? Our friend Katy White had a question about how the Rockaway Roastery’s Ethiopian beans compared to the Limited Ethiopian I wrote about yesterday. So after meeting with the new Rockaway Writers Rendezvous, I picked up some of those to compare. The roast appears about the same, a lovely medium brown. On grinding, it releases an aroma of warm baking spices and fruit. I brewed this at the Specialty Coffee Association’s “golden ratio,” 55g of coffee for 1 liter of water, after adjusting the grinder 5 clicks finer than yesterday. Huge win in mouth feel and extraction—though the Chemex was responsible for some of that. It’s thicker filter papers (plus the slightly finer grind) result in a fuller flavored cup, yet the proprietary paper helps trap polyphenols, some of the flavor compounds that make coffee bitter. In the cup, the aroma was very fruity, “but not citrusy,” said Julie, “more like kiwi.” It is tropical, but the warm baking spice lingers. On the palate, though, is where this shines. I get much of that lovely hardwood component, which is due to the roasting level, but I also get a flavor like red wine—a lighter varietal like garnacha or Gamay, clean and refreshing. I will have to brew more of the Limited at these same settings, because—well, there’s a reason the Chemex has been my go-to brewer since the 1980s. It just makes better coffee, at least for what I look for in a cup.