Summer soup at Castagna

Justin Woodward has been running the kitchen at Castagna for the past year and is more than filling the shoes left by the sudden departure of the former chef. Justin is a Southern California native — San Diego — and his cuisine at Castagna is imaginative, extraordinarily creative and fun. Working with the best possible ingredients, Justin creates inspired dishes using interesting cooking techniques. We spoke with him about his process of running the kitchen at Castagna.

What are you making in the kitchen today?

Spring salmon has just started so we are going to take local salmon, cure it in a bit of wild licorice that we foraged, cook it briefly and then pair it with spring onions from a local farmer. We like to create dishes using various different methods with the same product. For example, right now, we are playing around with a lot of onions. We’ll dry onions for a crunchy element, make a ripe puree using acid from lime leaves, and then glaze sweet chipolinis with four or five different herbs from our herb garden and finally make caramelized onion jus enriched with vadouvan spice.

What is your process when you are creating these dishes? 

When we get a product in, we decide the best way to showcase the product. For example, cooking the salmon at a precise temperature for a certain amount of time develops a nice velvety texture.  Salmon and onions are both in season right now, so it makes sense to pair them and they work well together.  I wanted to pair the salmon and onions with something that has a really deep flavor, like a really strong umami. Onions naturally have a strong flavor and additionally we are making a Vadouvan, which is basically like a caramelized onion French curry that has a lot of umami in it. That should work well with the salmon. It will be very pretty with the green top and very rich and they work well together.  I wanted to pair the salmon and onions with something that has a really deep flavor, like a really strong umami. Onions naturally have a strong flavor and additionally we are making a Vadouvan, which is basically like a caramelized onion French curry that has a lot of umami in it. That should work well with the salmon. It will be very pretty with the green top and very rich.

How many tries does it take for you to get it right?

That really depends on what it is. It is very rare that things work out well on the first try. Usually there’s a lot of trial and error, which is fine because you learn from those errors and that’s what it’s all about for me. Knowledge is what it’s all about.

Where are you from and how did you get started cooking?

I’m from San Diego. My dad always had a garden. He always cooked. My grandma always cooked and I basically grew up cooking and working in really nice restaurants in San Diego. I worked for Ryan Johnston who is the chef for Whisknladle (in La Jolla). He was great to work with, and does an excellent job. I also worked for Paul McCabe, a James Beard award-winning chef (Delicias in Rancho Santa Fe). I then moved to New York and worked at wd-50, for about a year under Alex Stupak.  I became a stagiaire at numerous restaurants around New York and Europe. I staged at Noma in Copenhagen and Mugaritz Restaurant in San Sebastian, Spain. Then I moved back to California, worked at El Bizcocho in Rancho Bernardo, for a very short amount of time. Finally I came up here to Castagna in Portland. I came to Portland for this job.

And we are certainly glad that he did! Check out Justin at Castagna from Wednesday through Saturday. You can enjoy the prix fixe menu to opt for à la carte if it’s a lighter night.

Cathy Whims started dancing in college. The dance type was jazz infused with modern dance and ballet. The school was Portland State University. This former Latin major gone dance major was smitten with the grace and performance of dance movement. Cathy remembers her last dance class – the focus was African American literature and dance. The goal was to study the story the literature told through the rhythm and syncopation of the writing.

Even as she embarked on a career as a restaurateur and a James Beard award-winning chef, she always maintained a foot in the dance world. Eventually, Cathy found herself a restaurateur and James Beard award-winning chef. Yet she always maintained a foot in the dance world. Today, Cathy dances, specifically hip hop.

Cathy pointed out that there are actually many parallels between dance and the nightly orchestration of a restaurant. This was a fascinating connection – one I had never pondered. “There is a rhythm in the movement of a kitchen and restaurant floor,” Cathy posed.

She continued explaining that the fluidity of one body moving around another, both in the kitchen and on the floor, is crucial. A well run restaurant, at the height of an evening, runs at top speed, like the pinnacle of a dance. It’s exciting and compelling, a time when required syncopation requests bodies to work around each other in a perfectly choreographed dance to greet and seat customers or deliver piping hot plates. It’s this feeling in the body where speed and control balance during self expression which addicts dancers and waiters alike.

As a dancer, one gets addicted to the feeling of speed and control of self-expression. Wait staff are addicted to being slammed, the busy-ness of a dinner rush, and keeping up on orders. When an evening is not syncopated, both dancers and waiters know the night is bound to go badly quickly. And like a dance performance, an evening at a restaurant is not fixed in posterity; each night requires a re-execution of an interactive dance where chefs and waiters perform while customers react.

Who knew dancers and waiters were kindred souls? And then, there’s the passion.

Cathy does everything passionately. As a dancer, she read through hundreds of books on dance at Powell’s, often until close. Nostrana has not been spared this dedication. As much as Cathy wants to read a novel, it is hard for her not to devote time to reading cooking literature – because there is always room to perfect, right? When you’re at the top of an artistic profession the pressure rises and you have to maintain form – a reminder to self of the passion that once lead to the chosen path, project or profession. As Cathy put it, when the alarm goes off, we all have to reinvigorate ourselves with something inspiring to keep us in the game.

I asked Cathy to choose a musical genre best depicting an evening at Nostrana. Her quick answer was “jazz,” improvisation within a structure which always changes and never repeats.

Cathy closed the interview with the statement, “All good dance art is pure,” which she likened to the food served at Nostrana.  Like good dance doesn’t require ornate costuming, nor does good food. Cathy takes pride in removing all the unnecessary fuss so the fresh ingredients speak. What one sees on the plate is integral, a showcase of only what is there, and what needs be there.

For Cathy, cooking is about keeping a dish true to its origins and ingredients. This approach is an unveiling and a stripping away. Paul Bertolli described the process “Cleaning the Fresco,” also the title of a chapter title in his book “Cooking By Hand” [2003]. In his words it means, “food grounded in a tradition yet enlivened by the act of greeting the process and the ingredients anew.” Boiled down, it means honoring yet advancing food traditions at once.

“It’s quite similar to modern dance and modern ballet,” states Cathy. With this comment she was, literally, off to a show.

Welcome, guests, to Teatro Nostrana. Please follow me to your seats. Tonight’s show? Insalata Mista, Squash Ravioli paired with a glass of Rosso di Montepulciano performed by Cathy Whims. Enjoy the performance.