Cooking Local Portland: An Interview with Danielle Centoni

James Beard award-winning writer Danielle Centoni knows all the ins and outs of Portland food: She’s written everything from a minute-by-minute accounting of “One Night at Kachka” to a crash course on making the most of the city’s famed food fest, Feast Portland. Danielle has worked as a staff writer and editor at The Oregonian, served as editor of Eater Portland, and authored five cookbooks, including Fried Rice: 50 Ways to Stir Up the World’s Favorite Grain, along with Portland Cooks: Recipes from the City’s Best Restaurants and Bars. Recently, the Portland-based writer and editor deployed her Stumptown know-how to write a cookbook honoring the city’s cuisine: The Little Local Portland Cookbook.

We sat down with her to talk about doughnut drop-offs, the salmon dish that makes her heart sing, and the secret behind Huber’s iconic Spanish Coffee.

What defines Portland’s food? What sets it apart?

DC: This isn’t a city bound by tradition—there’s no iconic dish everyone associates Portland with, like Chicago and hot dogs or New Orleans and gumbo. That means there are no boundaries here. Not only that, Portland diners are curious and well-traveled, so they’re very open to new ventures. That attitude gives chefs plenty of freedom to experiment, as they know they’ll have a willing audience. Finally, Portland is ringed by farms, fisheries, and vineyards, so there’s always a steady supply of super-fresh seasonal ingredients.

Speaking of fresh ingredients, how does that local bounty influence Portland’s food?

DC: The city is located in the incredibly fertile Willamette Valley, surrounded by rivers teeming with salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon, and it’s also just a short drive from the coast—and all the seafood it has to offer. In fact, driving just an hour from Portland takes you to forests filled with wild mushrooms, along with farms and orchards growing heirloom produce. With all this fresh food available, Portland chefs and home cooks are always excited to experiment—and never bored.

What are the essential ingredients of Portland cuisine, and how do they show up differently in different dishes?

DC: Wild mushrooms, wild salmon, hazelnuts, and tender berries of all kinds. Salmon will be gently poached—or expertly seared, medium-rare; berries will be served fresh in salads and desserts; and chanterelles will find their way into everything.

You mentioned salmon—what are your three favorite ways to cook it, and why?

DC: If I’m cooking Chinook (a.k.a. King) salmon, it’s so rich and luscious, I want to prepare it simply. I’ll just sear it in butter until it’s still quite pink and soft in the center, then I’m happy. When I’m cooking sockeye—which has a strong flavor—I often coat the flesh in something similarly flavorful, like a lemon-scallion puree, then roast it for 10 minutes. My salmon CSA gives me sushi-grade sockeye, which I often turn into Korean-influenced poke bowls with a soy-gochujang dressing. I could eat those all summer long.

What’s something about Portland food that most people don’t know?

DC: When people think about Portland food, they tend to think of salmon and huckleberries and over-the-top food carts. But they might not realize that there are also tons of great international flavors here, thanks to a growing influx of immigrants and first-generation residents. You can find really exquisite Vietnamese, Eastern European, Salvadoran, Thai, Pakistani, Chinese, Korean, West African, and Ethiopian foods all over town.

What’s the most fascinating fact you learned while working on this book?

DC: When creating my chocolatey version of Huber’s Spanish Coffee, I came across a fun fact. I always knew that Huber’s (established 1879) was Portland’s oldest restaurant. Its flaming Spanish Coffee—prepared tableside—is as iconic as its famous turkey dinner. What I didn’t know was, that coffee cocktail is so popular, little Huber’s goes through more Kahlúa than any other bar in the country.

Of all the recipes in this book, which one has the best origin story?

DC: The baked apple cider doughnuts have become legendary, not just in my family, but among my kids’ friends and classmates, too. The inspiration for the recipe came from a favorite autumn tradition: heading out to the local u-pick farms, and buying a bag of still-warm doughnuts to eat on the way home. I wanted to recreate those doughnuts at home, but spare myself the mess of deep frying. It took many attempts to make a doughnut that was as tender and rich with apple flavor as I wanted. Instead of throwing away the less-than-perfect batches, I would walk down the street and drop them off at my kids’ school at lunchtime, where they were immediately scarfed up. They still talk about the doughnut drop-offs to this day.

Interested in local cooking? Explore the United States through cooking with the Little Local Cookbooks, a series that highlights landmark culinary destinations around the country, including Portland, San Francisco, the Southwest, Texas, New Orleans, Cape Cod, Vermont, and Maine.