December 2015

By 9 AM on Saturday, the opening day of the Portland  winter farmers market got off to a rousing start as shoppers filed through the glass doors at 84 Cove St. in East Bayside. With plenty of spaces to park onsite, by 10 AM the place was packed as though farm-to-table was in jeopardy of becoming passé. But fear not, Portland shoppers can continue to source their foods from local purveyors as the winter market carries on the tradition that allows our passion to buy local thrive.

covemarketcollage

The space itself is a bit labyrinthine as the flow of rooms are  tight, but overall  the multi-room layout works, making the space feel more like a charming boutique than a cavernous warehouse.

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What most defines a dive bar?  Is it a place of mean streets where you can drink and dine (I use that word reservedly) with patrons prone to drinking too much too early?  Or where you risk getting hepatitis from questionable food practices?  Or where all the premium liquors are nothing better than the well at finer places?

Enter Tom Minervino, where Sangillo’s—a bonafide dive bar—once stood. He is the steward of Tomaso’s Canteen, the new householder of this legendary space where there were allegedly more gun shots than Jell-O shots.

Contemporary, fairly upscale look at Tomaso's Canteen

Contemporary, fairly upscale look at Tomaso’s Canteen

Nowadays dive bars can have a cult following first before morphing into havens for hipsters.  I’m not sure if that will happen to Tomasso’s, though the clean lines of gun-metal gray tabletops and bright, shiny bar stools give the look of a big order from Design Within Reach.

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No matter how you bake and slice it, this classic yellow cake with fudgy chocolate ganache is a show-stopper cake with homemade goodness and elegance, a particularly apt dessert to serve at holiday dinners. I brought it to the Thanksgiving feast I attended along with pumpkin and pecan pies. Those were hardly touched by the 12 guests who instead made a beeline for the cake.

Yellow cake with chocolate ganache

Yellow cake with chocolate ganache

Standing four  layers high it holds a kitchen sink of ingredients: both cake and all-purpose flours, butter, oil (which gives great moistness to cakes), buttermilk, whole eggs and egg yolks (for deep yellow color),  sugar, vanilla extract  and softly whipped  heavy cream that’s folded into the batter at the end.  It’s iced with a fudge frosting, which is basically a ganache made with semi-sweet chocolate, heavy cream and dark-brown sugar. Instead of chopping the chocolate use chocolate chips.  I used Guittard.  (Sold at Whole Foods.)

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