I got a hankering today.

I craved the spicy mac from Montage. The flagship location sadly shuttered during the pandemic but there are glimpses of hope via satellite food carts around town. I have been fortunate to eat at the BG Food cart location in Beaverton to satiate my longing.

But… it was really early in the day still, no regular person craves Cajun at 10 AM. Needless to say after running errands, hunger pangs followed suit and an early dinner quickly approached.

I work Sundays now and start my wind-down routine around 7. So having an easy, one-pan recipe, especially one I can do in the Lodge skillet in my back pocket is key. When I “develop” a recipe it’s not like in the sense of a trained chef. Because I’m not. There are flavors and textures I haphazardly attain in a short amount of time.

That said, knowing who and what I know about this town it wasn’t hard to throw a rock and find someone who’s worked in many of PDX kitchen trenches to bend their ear a little about a hunch I had about this recipe. I found it online and asked if it was correct. They responded with a shrugging .gif immediately followed by a winky face, so I can only assume much like any of my Portland copy-cat recipes it’s somewhat in the ballpark.

Enough to get by. Which… Funny enough, is a Portland motto.