This Year's Girl

Esquire recently published a list of annoying food trends. Included: high-end burgers and pizzas, waiters named Todd, and the phrase "farm to table". Gourmet's artfully designed and witty photo slideshow about food and the web manages to document the frenzy of online foodie movement both critically and lovingly. It's hard to articulate my simultaneous participation in and hatred of food on the interweb. I suppose it involves a bit of self-loathing and hypocrisy.

I blog about food. I pause to take pictures of my food at restaurants. I menu scout. I plan all my vacations around meals. I concede. I'm a bougie food snob and now that it's hip to be a bougie food snob, I don't entirely welcome the new company. The trends themselves are slightly less obnoxious than the trend stories and chatter. When the newspaper of record announces that it is cool to cut off your eyebrows or flavor trip, I roll my eyes. Rather than care about food because caring about food is cool, I just care about the food dammit! But when Epicurious announced its plan to predict food trends for 2010, I couldn't help but brainstorm my own list. Most trend stories are full of just silly(peruvian is the new thai) or obvious (green, local) bullet points, so this should be easy.




Food Trend Predictions 2010

1. Granny Chic moves from the fashion and design world into food. Look for beets on restaurant menus (pickled, roasted, pureed) beyond the steakhouse. Home canning and preservation becomes both a financial security measure and a foodie statement. Comfort food is always popular. Your grandma made everything by hand...I hope you were paying attention at her apron strings.

2. Hard Cider isn't a pansy drink and some of you are figuring that out. This guy thinks so too. Ask your favorite bartenders if they've been pouring a lot of Magners recently...mine have.

3. Food and music pairings. Some restaurants here in Chicago are known for playing eccentric and loud music in the dining room. I love to make mixes specific to dinner parties and events I'm catering. In 2010, I hope dj-chefs step it up by pairing courses specifically with songs and artists. I'll get right on that.

4. Cuban food reaches the masses. Hopefully Obama's diplomatic negotiations with Cuba continue in 2010. Hell, maybe the wrongheaded embargo will be lifted.

5. People realize fast food can be good food. Street food, mobile food carts, and non-corporate quick service restaurants offer delicious alternatives to McDonald's. Rick Bayless is doing it. Paul Kahan is getting in on the action.

6. Less is more. A culinary student acquaintance who had a short stage at Tru bragged that he spent 4 hours preparing a sauce with almost fifty ingredients. My favorite chile negro sauce has three ingredients plus salt.

7. The green movement will become less of a happening and more of a norm. I'm frustrated maneuvering the farmer's market when it is filled with waif-like women sinking their towering fashionable shoes into the muddy aisles. Maybe if we had a decent year round market, people would go there to get food rather than be seen. I have many doubts about the new French Market, but here's hoping.

8. Charcuterie, good cheese, cured olives, craft beer, crusty bread, buckets of mussels. I think big communal platters of rustic foods can slow the small plate craze. Tapas are great, but this is what I want when I go to the pub for a pint.

9. Spice trend: cardamom. Keep an eye out for cardamom in ice cream, dusted on doughnuts, and in coffee drinks. I personally love chai-spiced cardamom marshmallows and a friend puts garam masala on his popcorn (genius!). It is used in foods in India, Scandinavia, the Middle East and will soon be in everything.

10. America needs to shut the fuck up about bacon. This coming from a lady with 8 cups of rendered pork fat and 3 lbs of bacon in the fridge. It isn't the bacon I'm tired of, it is the talking about bacon. The endless websites devoted to gross and grosser uses of bacon. I'm bored of reading stories devoted to a trend that could be succinctly explored with a Seinfeldesque "What is the deal with all this bacon?" Awesome bacon recipes, a bacon festival, reviews of bacon products, and bacon of the month clubs are definitely still allowed. I love bacon, just not some of the people who love bacon.

Hard to Handle

48. 102. 59. 37. 70. I wash my hands quite a bit - sometimes a hundred times per day. Last week I averaged 63. I don't have OCD, but I do spend most of my time caring for children or in the kitchen which puts me in contact with a lot of germs, messes, and bacteria. I use two products daily to avoid the chapping, cracking, and bleeding that can occur when washing so often strips your skin of moisture. They are inexpensive (less than $10 for both), small enough to fit into a purse or satchel, work nicely on sensitive skin, and I strongly recommend both.




Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme
I use this when I wake up in the morning and before bed every night. I concentrate on my cuticles, but also rub it all over my hands. If you cringe at the idea of those scary cuticle trimmers at the salon or at the price of a manicure, try this stuff. At $6 for a small tin that lasts a couple of months, it is well worth the investment.




Neutrogena Hand Cream: Norwegian Formula
I use this multiple times per day. It soaks in quickly and doesn't leave hands greasy like other lotions designed for very dry skin. You can buy a 2 ounces for about $4 at most drugstores. I keep one at work, one by bedside table, one in my backpack, and one in the kitchen.

Cooking with Spirits

When I was 15, my family moved into a house full of ghosts. Many of my Stepfather's family members had died in the house over the years, but sharing the space with their past never really spooked me. I liked exploring the stacks of musty books and clothes, the decades-old magazines and 8-tracks. One particularly good find was a weird little cookbook in the basement amongst the National Geographics and motorcycle parts. Cooking With Spirits has traveled with me to 14 different apartments and homes over the years, but I've never once opened it. It sits on a shelf in the kitchen, providing me with enough inspiration just from the title.




My earliest cooking memory is of my mom basting a whole chicken tipsy with white wine and dancing it around the kitchen to the Go Gos. For deglazing pans and making sauces, wine is an obvious choice. I put Grand Marnier in my cranberries at Thanksgiving and good beer in my chili. Last week, I made a peppercorn infused vodka to go in tomato soup. I like to drink while I cook, and cook with whatever I'm drinking...which is usually hard cider. This (paired with a rather frugal period during college) led me to experiment by adding cider to my Thanksgiving cranberries instead of the usual liqueur. Pear cider + orange juice and zest worked out just fine.

Ace is my favorite, but I also enjoy a Magners or a Strongbow. Hornsby's or Woodchuck will do in a pinch. I've used cider for everything from butternut squash soup to salad dressing. When I needed to make an apple-based accompaniment for a pork loin last weekend, cider was on the counter, so it ended up in the chutney.

Apple Shallot Chutney

3/4 cup pickled shallots or onions*, small dice
2 apples, small dice
3/4 bottle hard cider
1/2 cup pickling liquid or red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 cup sugar

Add diced apples and onions to medium saucepan along with the hard cider, pickling liquid and spices. Bring to a boil over high heat and stir in sugar. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally for 20 to 30 minutes. The liquid should reduce and form a light syrup - this may require adding more sugar or cooking for a longer period of time. Can be served warm, cold, or room temperature.

*If you don't already have a jar of pickled shallots or onions in the door of your fridge, you have options. Make a quick pickle (I like Molly Wizenberg's with a teaspoon of pickling spices added) or just cook some onions in equal parts sugar and vinegar with a teaball infuser/sachet filled with a teaspoon of pickling spices (this will prevent chunks of cloves and bay leaves from invading your otherwise smooth chutney).

Fun with Pasta

This weekend I got to try my hand at homemade pasta for the first time in quite a while. Allison and I cooked for a client that bought a four course dinner for six that we had donated for a charity auction last July. I decided that I would be in charge of the pasta course, mostly because I found my pasta machine after moving recently. I have been working in a restaurant where we make pasta quite a bit differently than the last restaurant I worked at, and I was eager to try my hand at the old egg pasta recipe I used to know so well. The recipe is very similar to the one listed in The French Laundry Cookbook, so you might want to try both and see which one you like more. I think the best thing about making this recipe at home was that I had enough time to knead the dough for a full half hour by hand rather than cutting it down to fifteen minutes like I used to have to do at the restaurant. I know, a half hour seems like a long time, but if you don't have a prep list a mile long, the rhythm of moving and pressing the dough becomes quite meditative after a while. You can knead this dough for a full ten minutes and get good results, but its easier to roll out the more you knead it. Pasta dough has few ingredients, but the technique takes a bit of practice. Don't get frustrated if the dough doesn't turn out perfectly the first time. Remember, you can always add more flour as you knead the dough, and the longer you knead it the better your results will be.

Egg Pasta dough

1 lb AP Flour
10 eggs
1 whole egg
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs Extra Virgin Olive Oil

You will need:
a pasta rolling machine
a rolling pin
a spray bottle full of clean water
a pasta cutter, a rolling one that has decorative edges is nice, but you can use a pastry cutter.

Measure the flour into a large mixing bowl. In another bowl whisk the eggs together with a fork. Make a well in the flour and add the salt and the olive oil. Pour the eggs into the well. While turning the bowl counterclockwise, whisk the eggs with a fork clockwise to incorporate the flour a bit at a time into the eggs. There should be leftover flour in the bowl once the eggs are incorporated. If the dough is sticky or too wet to turn out onto a floured surface and knead, add more flour. Eggs are often different sizes so the dough can be a little too wet sometimes. Don't worry, just add more flour and you will get the feel for it. Once the dough has enough flour, turn out onto a floured surface and knead until it is a smooth ball, roughly for 10-30 minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap once it is kneaded, and let it rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours. To roll it out, let it sit out of the fridge for a half and hour. Knead it a couple of times and then let it rest 10 minutes. Roll out the dough according to the instructions on your pasta roller.

I made ravioli this weekend, and for the filling I made a white bean puree but you can use sausage or ricotta cheese or whatever as long as it is firm enough to stand in a little blob, but soft enough so it doesn't tear the pasta. So, for ravioli, take a sheet of pasta, and place little blobs of filling about an inch and a half apart. Take a spray bottle of water and spray the the dough. Carefully lay another sheet of pasta over the first one, starting at one end and slowly laying the top layer over the filling. If you start at one end, you can press the layers of dough as you go so you don't get any air pockets in the ravioli. Once the two sheets are put together, cut squares around the filling with your pastry cutter or pasta cutter. Cook the pasta for about two minutes in boiling salted water. Toss in your favorite pasta sauce!

too legit

Excuses, Excuses. We've been absent this Summer. Not absent from cooking and eating, just absent from writing about it. Andrea's been getting chef's bags delivered straight from the farm to Mado, the amazing restaurant where she cooks and helps with butchering. I've been pilfering those bags and doing less marketing myself. We've both moved into new places and are trying to organize our kitchen cabinets and lives. We are beginning the process of making our catering business legitimate - which entails permits and safety certifications and fees to the city, county, and state... so we're both working overtime trying to pay for it.

We're focusing our business on intimate food gatherings. That doesn't mean we can't handle big crowds, but we don't want to compromise our culinary integrity to do it. Menu planning, endless trips to restaurant depot, standing in long lines at government offices, and sitting down with an accountant are in our very near future. Stay tuned.

I miss your soup and I miss your bread

It is Spring. Officially it was a few weeks ago, but the late season snow and windy weather made April come in like a lion too - or at least a lioness. Food-wise, the end of the season was marked by the Hideout's last Soup and Bread yesterday. It is all ramps and fava beans from here on out. Last week though, Andrea and I whipped up some Khao Tom, a favorite Thai soup usually cobbled together of leftovers and eaten for breakfast. By 6:00 PM our chicken soup was decimated by hungry bar patrons, so none of our friends who made it out got a bowl. But we swear it was delicious.

Khao Tom – Thai Chicken and Rice Soup
2 quarts homemade chicken stock, plus 1 cup for rice
Leg and Breast meat of one 3-4 lb roasted chicken
1 bunch of scallions sliced
1/4 cup picked cilantro leaves
7 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp fish sauce
3 Tbsp rice wine vinegar, divided
4 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili flakes in a teaball infuser (or tied up in cheesecloth)
2 cups cooked basmati or jasmine rice
1 stalk of lemon grass, peeled to center, bottom only
Salt and pepper to taste

Roasted Chicken
3-4 lb roaster chicken
3 cloves garlic
¼ onion, thickly sliced
1 lime, halved (lemon, or orange will substitute)
4 slices bacon
Kosher Salt and pepper
Kitchen twine

Wonton Garnish
Wonton wrappers
Canola/Vegetable oil
Kosher salt
Juice of 1 lime

The chicken:
Preheat oven to 375° F. Remove the giblets. Rinse the chicken in cold water and pat dry inside and out with paper towels. Sprinkle outside of chicken and cavity liberally with salt and pepper. Stuff cavity with garlic, onion and lime. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken. Wrap bacon over the chicken breast and roast on a rack, breast side up, until a thermometer inserted in the thigh reads 165° F. Let the chickens rest and cool for at least a half an hour. Remove the thighs and breasts from the chicken. Remove the meat from the bones, discarding the skin. Cut the cooked breast and leg meat into 1/2 inch squares.

The wontons:
Heat 1 ½ inches of oil in a deep, heavy, pot over moderately high heat until a thermometer registers 360° F. Slice wonton wrappers into strips about 3 in. x ½ in.
Gently lay 10 strips on oil and fry, turning over once, until golden, 15 to 30 seconds total. Transfer with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. Fry the remaining wonton strips 10-15 at a time. Sprinkle with lime juice (do not soak, wontons will become soggy) and season with salt.


The rest:
Cook the rice according to the package’s instructions using chicken stock in place of water (if using water, add 1 tsp salt). Add 1 Tbsp rice wine vinegar when the rice is cooked. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a small sauce-pan over medium low heat. Add sliced garlic and saute slowly, stirring often, until garlic lightly browns but does not burn. Remove the garlic from the oil and set aside. (Save the garlic infused oil for another use!)

Heat up the chicken stock, slowly to 165 degrees F. While heating, add the lemon grass stalks, whole, and the teaball of chili flakes. Once the stock is hot, add the fish sauce, soy sauce, and remaining vinegar, and season with more salt and pepper to taste. Remove the lemon grass stalk and teaball. Add the cooked chicken and sliced garlic.

To serve, put a 1/2 cup of the rice into each soup bowl. Ladle the hot soup on top of the rice and garnish liberally with the scallions, cilantro, and wonton crisps.

Am I Home Yet?

I realize it has been weeks since my last guest blog, but to make up for it, I think I feel a bit more like a Chicagoan now, having secured employment and a sense of humor about the weather and the CTA. A little more than a month ago, while still searching for a job, any job, I ran across two unexpected things, things I feel, if I may be such a bold newcomer, perhaps only Chicago can offer.

The first of these surprises came in the form of a job offer. Oh finally, someone wanted to hire me! I had an interview, which in my industry they call stages. Essentially, these eight hour working interviews are a way for chefs to evaluate whether a person is an idiot or not through observation. I am not sure why all industries to do not practice this custom, because it seems like a much better way of assessing a worker than talking to them for an hour. But, here's the thing, I didn't want the job. Me, worrier extraordinaire, moving to a cold-ass city in a recession, in the hospitality industry in January, didn't want the cooking job I had been trained for and that would look great on my resume. Arrogance, was that it? (If you are thinking stupidity, please keep that to yourself.) If so, Andrea the Arrogant, Andrea the I Want Something Better, was the surprise that Kansas City, home, could not offer, had never offered.

The second surprise, something perhaps a bit more interesting, was the discovery of the Issacson and Stein Fish Market just off Halsted near downtown. In order to get said job I ended up turning down, I felt like I needed to hone my fish butchering skills, as I was applying for the fish cook position. I asked resident food expert Allison where I could get great quality whole fish retail (expecting a "you know you're in the Midwest, even if it is Chicago"), and was directed unblinkingly toward the best fish purveyor I have ever seen, be it wholesale or retail. Retail quality fish for cheap in the Midwest?-huge surprise. Housed in an unassuming warehouse was a veritable ocean explosion of clear-eyed, clean-gilled sea bass, red snapper, live eels, sardines, anchovies, arctic char, rainbow trout, pompano and grouper, not to mention, like, nine kinds of oysters. I would say sixty percent of the fish they had were wild caught. You walk in, you grab gloves and a bag, and walk around overwhelmed. I wanted a mix of small and larger fish for practicing on, so I picked out one red snapper, two wild mullet, and two rainbow trout. My total? $15.65. Most of the fish I looked at were between $3.00 and $4.00 per pound. Oh, yes, you Whole Foods shoppers, look at that one more time. Though I did not request these services, the fish monger offers to clean your fish at no extra charge. I immediately went home, and while drinking a bottle of Gewurztraminer, cleaned, cut up, cooked, and ate all of the the fish I bought. This was, by far, the best part of the interview. Little by little, this big city is beginning to feel like a better version of home.



Issacson and Stein Fish Company

800 W. Fulton Market,

Chicago, Il

Ph: 312.421.2444