Pork chops with mustard sauce. Photo by Diana Edwards.
Last night’s gastronomic get down was a culinary delight for queers and West Hillians alike. The atmosphere of Ethical Butcher Berlin Reed‘s meat meet-and-greet was the appropriately casual fancy that Portland so enjoys, and local farmers were rock stars and guests of honor. Diana Edwards and I caught the ‘Primal Cuts’ action on camera.
Bloodhound Photography‘s Ally Picard was also there to catch some snaps of food partygoers, but her real triumph was the small exhibition she displayed of photographs of Berlin and local farms.
The images ranged from cute piglets to bloody slaughter, but both were a refreshing change from seeing the horrors of factory farming. It’s good to know about the commercial meat industry so one can truly appreciate these heritage farms and their ethical practices, but seeing the stolen grainy pictures can get depressing. Here, instead, we celebrated the life of the animals while simultaneously enjoying their delicious flesh.
And enjoy it we did. I heard more than one DJ call the meaty macaroons “addictive” and they were hard for me to keep my hands off of too. But my favorites were probably the bacon pastry cream profiteroles and anything with lamb. A controversial crowd favorite were the pickled peppers stuffed with rabbit rilettes that burned your fingers and your tongue. But all was soothed by Intelligensia coffee, which was rich enough for even my coarse coffee palette to drink sans cream and sugar, which to even ask for would have been sacrilegious.
