Lunchbox

A perfectly perfect cookie

2011-12-12T17:40:00.009-06:00

Years and years ago, when I was baking at full throttle, I had grand cookie ambitions around Christmas time. I would find pictures of elaborately decorated cookies on the cover of Gourmet magazine, and I would make them. All twelve varieties, each more complicated than the next. And then I would make a batch of puff pastry just for fun.

I'd be lying if I said I don't have the energy to do that anymore. I don't have the desire. I'm not nearly as enamored of trying a million different recipes, but thank God I was once a compulsive recipe tester, because now, thanks to my 16 hour baking marathons, I know definitively what works and what doesn't.

Case in point: Animal Crackers from Nancy Silverton, my pastry idol. I've been making this recipe forever, and I make it whenever cookies are called for at school, or any other event. Even though nothing in the world is perfect, these are. A perfectly balanced, tender sugar cookie, forgiving, easily re-rolled, just lovely and perfect. I sometimes want to hug this recipe. It comforts me like a family member who knows me, and never - not ever - acknowledges my flaws.

Animal Crackers

from "Desserts by Nancy Silverton"

8 oz. unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. cream

1 Tbs. real vanilla extract

4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

(Note: I add a big pinch of salt to the recipe. Don't tell Nancy)

To decorate cookie tops:

2 egg yolks

crystallized sugar

Using the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until it whitens and hold soft peaks, 3 - 5 minutes. Beat in the sugar until well-blended. Whisk together the eggs, cream and vanilla and beat in, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Sift together the flour and baking powder, and add to the butter in three batches, mixing briefly after each addition. After the last addition of flour, beat until just combined. Make sure any flour on the bottom of the bowl is fully incorporated.

Flatten dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least two hours, and as long as several days.

Preheat oven to 325. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/8" thickness. Cut dough with your favorite cookie cutter, using as much of the surface area as you can - this will leave less dough for re-rolling. Place on paper-lined or non-stick cookie sheets. If you have enough sheets, place one empty sheet under your cookie sheet. This keeps the bottom from browning too quickly.

Whisk the egg yolks together, and lightly brush the tops of the cookies, then sprinkle the top with crystallized sugar. This gives them a delightful crunch. If you're going to decorate them with frosting, you can omit this part.

Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the sheets from front to back to ensure even baking. Bake for about 7 - 8 minutes more, checking to make sure they don't brown too much. They should just turn light gold.

A quick one

2011-11-07T20:55:00.003-06:00

When I was a kid, I liked to make concoctions. I would gather ketchup, mustard, salad oil, dried spices, and any other bottled liquids I could find, along with a bowl and start "cooking." Everything would get mixed together and inevitably turn into....vomit. Cooking did not come naturally to me.

But the idea, the desire for the impromptu mixing together of ingredients to create something wonderful, remains. This is why I love making soup. Shoot from the hip. No measuring. With the wild promise that anything could happen. Spontaneity reigns when you make soup.

So the other day, I grabbed some florets from the pumpkin-sized head of cauliflower I had and a red pepper, and something magical happened. I only use the word "magical" when something really is magical, and not as hyperbole. It was magical; trust me on this. An Indian cauliflower soup with curry, turmeric, and a hint of cayenne. I served it with a scoop of basmati rice because I live for carbs, and it seemed authentic that way. The whole thing came together in an hour. Here's the recipe, give or take.

Indian cauliflower soup

For 2 servings:

1 1/2 cups cut-up cauliflower florets

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

1/2 small onion, diced

1/2 shallot, diced

1 Tbs. canola oil

1/2 tsp curry powder, or to taste

1/2 tsp turmeric

pinch cayenne

chicken stock to cover (about 2 1/2 cups)

1/2 cup chopped frozen spinach

salt and pepper to taste

a squeeze of lime

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottom pan, like a Le Creuset or a heavy pot. Saute the onion and shallot until translucent and soft, about 8 minutes. Add the red pepper and cauliflower, and sauté 5 minutes more. Add the spices, salt and pepper to taste, and sauté another couple of minutes, until everything is well-coated and starting to soften. Add the chicken stock and enough water to cover the vegetables by an inch or so. Bring to a boil, then reduce and partially cover. Simmer for about 25 minutes. The cauliflower will break up into little bits and become very soft. Remove from heat, let cool a couple of minutes, then puree in a blender. You may want to do this in two batches to keep the lid from blowing off the blender and exploding all over the kitchen. You can use a food processor as well. When fully pureed, thin with stock if necessary. The soup will be very creamy. Add the frozen spinach (the soup must still be hot for this to work), and stir well.

Ladle the soup into wide soup bowls and put a scoop of basmati rice right in the middle. I added a squeeze of lime, and it was magical.

A completely unbiased take on chocolate

2011-09-29T10:12:00.003-05:00

My friend, Bob, and I have this ongoing argument about chocolate.

Bob: Milk chocolate is the best.

Me: If you think that, you must be a pussy.

Chocolate lovers love bittersweet chocolate. End of story. They can also like milk chocolate, but they know that bittersweet is far superior, and that milk chocolate is a poor man's semi-sweet, which is a poor man's bittersweet. Milk chocolate is for those who don't like cilantro, olives, and Indian food. You know, people with immature palates. White chocolate won't even be discussed here.

The real argument is this: just how bitter should bittersweet be? Some people, like myself, favor a mellower bittersweet, while others like it so bitter, it borders on unpleasant, even punitive. In any event, bittersweet rules.

The best bittersweet is Callebaut, a Belgian brand that produces some of the most balanced chocolate around. I am in love with Callebaut and will defend it to my death. I know some people love Valrhona, and I will admit that its exotic names and wine-like complexity make it sexier, but give me the frank directness of Callebaut any day of the week.

When I worked in the kitchen, Callebaut came in whopping 11 pound blocks. Chopping large blocks of chocolate is about as fun as plucking one's nose hairs, one by one. After a day of chopping, I would go home and soak my wrists in ice cold water and try not to weep. But there is one extremely satisfying part of the process. To get it going, the chopper would lift the block over head, still wrapped in paper, and fling it to the ground, resulting in a resonant THUD! Sometimes, you might even get a THWAP! if it hit the ground just so. If you did this with vigor, or even better, in a murderous rage, the chocolate might break into ten or so pieces. But if you were tentative in your flinging - a tentative flinger - you'd be lucky to end up with two or three still barely manageable pieces. If someone was particularly pissed off that day, they automatically got the job.

Chocolate is moody, like my eight year old daughter, and that's why, when you prepare chocolate for coating (a melting process used in making candies and truffles), it's called tempering. Because it's like giving a child a bath. The chocolate may decide it's not in the mood to be tempered that day, and have a tantrum. I think this is why the French like chocolate so much - because chocolate is a challenge, like a beautiful, enigmatic woman who offers glimpses of availability and then just as quickly withdraws, enjoying the pursuer's misery.

Here are some good chocolate sources, in case you feel like getting in the ring with the beast.

Callebaut - available in smaller 12 - 16 ounce chunks at Whole Foods. Or through the website Chocosphere.com, which has every brand and product you'll ever need.

Valrhona - perhaps a sexier chocolate than Callebaut, but I still like my workhorse. Valrhona also makes an amazing cocoa powder (available at Chocospere.com) and a variety of bittersweet bars with varying degrees of bitterness for tasting.

La Maison du Chocolat - Makes the best plain chocolate truffles I have ever had, and they'll gladly ship them to you. I haven't been to their shop in New York, but have been to the one in Paris, and it was miraculous. The entire shop is cloaked in chocolate brown, from the walls to the carpeting. They have everything chocolate - cakes, candies, amazing macarons - and the taste level is exquisite.

Vosges - a Chicago success story. Exotic truffles and bars. They have a few shops around town, and also sell in Whole Foods.

As for milk chocolate, well, gee, have you tried Hershey's?

Living in a creamy alfredo world

2011-09-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

During the summer, my family and I traverse the 90 miles from Chicago to southwest Michigan on a fairly regular basis, passing through the soft, moist armpit of Indiana. Indiana is Americana; love of God and country come before just about everything else except maybe alfredo sauce.

I noticed this on our last visit, as we decided on a restaurant for dinner. We always seem to stop in Michigan City, Indiana, the land of outlet malls, and home to every chain restaurant in existence. If you look around the main drag, there's Steak n Shake, Chili's, The Olive Garden, Baker's Square, Denny's, Culver's, and the fast food Big Three: McDonald's, BK, and Wendy's. You can add to that Quizno's, Subway, Pizza Hut/WingStop......you get the picture.

My pick is always The Olive Garden (even though canned olives in my salad are a disgusting folly, they're also sort of delightful), which is overridden by the other members of the family, who inevitably pick Chili's. It's really all the same, now that alfredo sauce has infiltrated pretty much every fast food menu (At Chili's, it's Cajun Pasta with garlic alfredo sauce).

You won't really get an argument from me regarding alfredo sauce. Screw my arteries; it's a wantonly self-indulgent cloak on bland food, and besides, the heart wants what it wants. And mine wants alfredo sauce. Like, a big plate of it, with a side of fettucine, a big grind of pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. And yes, please pass the parmesan and the grater. I love the creaminess of the sauce mixed with the salty grit of the cheese, and the slithery slipperiness of the noodles. I don't know if there's a more sensorially pleasing food.

In Italy, there is no cream in the sauce, which is to say, we've taken something perfect and Americanized it. In Italy, it's all butter and cheese, and some pasta cooking water to emulsify those two perfect ingredients into something even more compelling. The Italians, who know a thing or two about pasta, know that the cream is superfluous, and perhaps even detrimental.

But try telling that to the Americans. I grew up with cream in my alfredo. I'm used to it, although once you taste the real version, it gives you pause. Oh, so that's what it's supposed to taste like. But I suppose once you start mixing alfredo with the likes of jalapeño and cajun spices, you're not much concerned with authenticity anyway.

Viva la frita!

2011-08-19T18:31:00.005-05:00

If there's one thing I fret about, it's a missed opportunity. Take last weekend. I went to Ann Arbor, one of my favorite food places in the world. It's not quite the food holy land, but it's close. One reason is Zingerman's, the world's greatest deli. If $15 sandwiches seem like highway robbery, you've never tasted Zingerman's Bakehouse rye. Or their Georgia Reuben, or Pat & Dick's Honeymooner, or the sublime mushroom barley soup, or the brownies....do I need to go on?

But last weekend, I missed out on Frita Batidos. I had never heard of the place until I stumbled upon a spirited discussion about it on a football blog (my other passion) a few days ago. Its proponents declared it the next coming in Ann Arbor, so I decided to check out the website. I figured with that name, it was a nacho place. You know, refried beans, sour cream, a Latin bandito with a six-shooter in one hand and a margarita in the other, welcoming you inside.

What I found was a revelation, as these things go. A modern Cuban-inspired sandwich place, with beautifully plated food, sides of rum-soaked pineapple, and fruity tropical milkshakes (I'm close to tears).

A frita, I learned, is a Cuban burger made from spicy chorizo. The ones at Frita Batidos are served on an egg bun with chili mayo and shoestring fries on top. But you can also get a fish frita or a black bean frita or one topped with a fried egg or cilantro lime salsa or tropical coleslaw, or all three. And if you don't want shoestring fries on top, that's fine, too, although who would be that foolish?

Other ridiculously great-sounding sandwiches include seared shrimp, cilantro oil, pea shoots, and bermuda onion on brioche, and the Inspired Cuban: aromatic roast pork, tasso ham, thick bacon, gruyere, cornichons and chipotle mayo on Cuban bread. You can also get a bucket of fried smelts, which I might consider here, or the Best Snack Ever, which is beans, rice, salsa, and cheese. Something tells me its simplicity belies its complexity.

Come October, when I return, I will grab a seat in the window and eat my fish frita with tropical coleslaw and drink a perfectly tropical batido (guava maybe?) and be happier than a human has a right to be.

Donut anxiety

2011-06-19T20:39:00.014-05:00

I've always considered donuts a laid back proposition. Not the case at the Donut Vault. The stakes are high, quantities are limited and timing is everything. And with the advent of real time social networking, you know exactly where you stand (in a really, really long line with your smart phone, obsessively checking Donut Vault status updates every two minutes) at all times.

We hit that line on Saturday at 10:00 AM. It was about 50 people long and it wound around the corner of Franklin on to Kinzie into the hot sun. I've stood in lines for food before, but this time, I felt sort of foolish, like a donut novice, which I'm not. I grew up on mother's milk and donuts. It's a genetic certainty, my love of donuts, that was passed down from my mother. Just recently she confessed that when she turned 16 and got her driver's license, she would lie to her parents and tell them she was going to a late mass on Sunday, but instead, she'd head to a bakery on the outskirts of town, where she'd get half dozen glazed donuts and eat them all, unrecognized. Now, she's probably going to hell.

But that sordid foray explains our outings at the grocery store when I was in high school. Before we started to shop, my mother and I would head over to the bakery section and buy a dozen sugared donuts in a white paper sack. By the time we finished our shopping, 4 or 5 would be gone. In the cart was another bag of mini powdered sugar donettes, which my stepfather would eat over the course of the next few days, two here, three there, the telltale white powder lingering on the counter at all times from the constant reaching in and pulling out of donuts. I lived in a donut crack house and we were all addicts.

I know my donuts. I don't like Krispy Kremes. Too sweet. Dunkin Donuts taste like the test tube they grew in. My favorite bakery donuts come from Dinkel's here in Chicago. They're dreamy, especially the apple cider donuts rolled in sugar and spice available in the fall. The best restaurant donuts I've ever had came from Campanile in Los Angeles. Nancy Silverton, my pastry idol, concocted a dream plate of two kinds of donuts - ricotta fritters and beignets - accompanied by homemade vanilla ice cream and warm huckleberries. I had that dessert twenty years ago and I'm still reeling.

So there I was, in line at the Donut Vault on Saturday, slightly scared. It takes balls, and a modicum of arrogance, for a restaurateur to expect people to wait in line for any extended period of time, especially for a $2.00 donut. For the first time during one of my many food pilgrimages (there have been many), I wondered if it was worth it. I considered going across the street to Dunkin and getting the test tube donut and calling it a day. Who wants to wait an hour in the hot sun for a freaking donut?

As I was standing there, getting angry, I was also following Facebook, and getting real time updates on which donuts were selling out, and which were getting low. As this was happening, I watched single people come out of the tiny shop carrying two boxes of donuts. And I was starting to get donut rage.

REALLY? You really need two dozen donuts? You know, there are people in line here who would be happy with just one. Asshole. Asshole with a little dog.

And then before I knew it, I was standing inside the vault. Only it wasn't really a vault, it was a hallway pulsating with hip hop music. My 8 year-old daughter was with me and when the singer sang, "Motherfucker motherfucker mother fucker bitch," she looked up at me, alarmed. I was alarmed. These better be great donuts. Motherfucking great donuts. Bitch.

And then it was our turn. I stepped up to the very hip hip hop counter and ordered one of each: old-fashioned buttermilk, chocolate glazed, vanilla glazed, and pistachio. Score. The only one that was sold out was the gingerbread stack and that didn't even sound like a donut, so who cares?

One hour and fifteen minutes after we first stepped in line, I had a Donut Vault bag in hand. We found a spot right in front of the Moody Bible Institute (I knew God would somehow find his way back into this), sat down on a bench and started eating (pictures below, beginning with pistachio, then chocolate, followed by vanilla glazed then buttermilk).

These are good donuts. Good, big, squishy, and very sweet donuts. The chocolate one needs more chocolate glaze. The pistachio wasn't pistachio enough. The vanilla glazed had little flecks of real vanilla bean - a nice touch on what was probably my favorite. And the old-fashioned buttermilk was delightful - I think. I don't remember it very well, but I'm pretty sure it was good.

I still prefer Dinkel's, where there might be one or two people in line in front of me. And where the donut anxiety is at a minimum.

Meat palace

2011-06-13T06:04:00.000-05:00

"Too much of anything is too much for me." Pete Townshend

It's been two days since my unapologetic meatfest at Fogo de Chao and I'm still not right. We went to celebrate my son's entrance into manhood, otherwise known as his 11th birthday. He is a carnivore first class, the kind that would have meat (and by this, I mean beef, pork or lamb, or preferably all three) for dessert.

Fogo de Chao is a Brazilian churrascaria/circus that's more of an event than a restaurant. I hate these kind of places. They charge $8 for a bowl of ice cream. And that's not even what you come for.

You come for the meat. Fifteen different kinds, mostly beef, all brought to the table by swarthy Brazilians in white blousy pirate shirts, knickers, and the male equivalent of tough leather bitch boots. The meat is speared on a sword, and the aformentioned gauchos slice it off at your discretion with giant machetes. Sirloin, garlic sirloin, bacon-wrapped sirloin, pork ribs, leg of lamb, lamb chops - it's obscene.

The meal starts with a visit to a vast salad bar. The waiter tells you to save room for the meat, but it's nearly impossible to act with restraint. There are marinated vegetables like asparagus, artichokes and beets. Cheeses, salumi, roasted potatoes, Brazilian slaw, bread, Spanish olive oils, olives and roasted peppers. Who needs meat with all this?

Then the sides come. Cheese biscuits, garlic mashed potatoes, fried polenta dusted with grated cheese and fried bananas. I was already feeling somewhat sick at that point, so when the first cut of meat came (plain sirloin), I wasn't nearly as excited as I had hoped. I felt more obligated than anything. We're paying good money for all this flesh, so I had better eat a lot of it.

The sirloin was followed by garlic sirloin, then lamb, then I lost track. I know there were sausages, because I had one. They refilled our mashed potatoes and polenta several times, so we must have cleaned those plates, too.

It was Henry the VIII gluttony, and I didn't feel good about it. I'm trying to downsize across the board, you know, use less of everything, and this didn't fit into my plan at all. And so, when the kids wanted dessert, we said yes, have the $9 slab of cheesecake and the $8 bowl of chocolate ice cream that they probably picked up down the street at Walgreen's. A birthday is a birthday.

Post script: In the middle of the night, my 8 year old daughter appeared in our bedroom to inform us she was going to throw up. And she promptly did.

The simplest of potages

2011-06-12T18:27:00.009-05:00

Try as I might, I could not find a gorgeous picture of Italian parsley, or of parsley soup, the recipe I'm offering up here. A friend of mine is embarking on a vegan adventure and she, and now I, feel compelled to make it exciting. Well, ok, when there's no braised short ribs or lobster tacos or marinated skirt steak, it's tough to be exciting. But this soup is hauntingly magical, and that has to count for something.

I found it in Jean-George Vongerichten's book, cleverly titled Jean-Georges. Like Shakira, he doesn't really need a last name. He's a preternaturally ambitious French superstar chef who initially made his name in New York, where they all do, but then unleashed a vast cooking empire across the globe. His restaurants, Vong, Jean-Georges, and Jojo, have been cloned and sent to Las Vegas and elsewhere, and he now has many others, too. His cuisine could be described as adventurous French with lots of southeast Asian influences.

From this very eclectic chef, I give you a really simple French potage. I normally only make it in the winter, but it's so freaking cold where I live, soup seems appropriate now. Plus, my friend loves soup, so this a great addition to her repertoire. Enjoy!

Parsley soup with mixed mushrooms

From Jean-Georges by Jean-Georges Vongerichten

4 - 5 servings

1 bunch of parsley (I use Italian)

3 Tbs. olive oil

1/4 cup minced onion

1 medium leek, trimmed of hard green parts, split in half, washed and roughly chopped

1 medium-to-large parsnip, chopped (you may substitute potato, but it's not as good)

2 1/2 cups vegetable stock or water (or chicken stock if you still welcome animals on your plate)

4 oz. mixed mushrooms, trimmed of tough stems and roughly chopped

1 Tbs. minced shallot

Wash the parsley in a bowl. Separate the leaves from the stems (yes, this is laborious but it must be done). Tie the stems in a bundle with kitchen twine.

In a large saucepan or soup pot, melt 1 1/2 Tbs. oil over medium heat. Stir in the onion, leek and parsnip. Add a healthy pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables become translucent. If they start to brown, lower the heat.

Add the parsley stems and a good grind of pepper, and stir again.

Add the 2 1/2 cups of water plus the vegetable stock (or use all water). Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce the heat to medium, and cook, stirring now and then, until the vegetables are very tender, 30 - 45 minutes.

When the vegetables are soft, remove the parsley stems, add the remaining parsley leaves, and cook for another minute. Let the soup cool slightly, and then place the soup, in batches to avoid a parsley explosion, in a blender or food processor, and blend as smooth as possible. Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning. If you're looking for a finely textured soup, pass it through a food mill. I have never bothered doing this.

As soon as the soup is done, heat a skillet with the remaining 1 1/2 Tbs. oil. Saute the shallots for a minute or two and then add the mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally until the mushrooms are tender, about 10 minutes.

Divide the mushrooms between the soup bowls and ladle the soup over the mushrooms.

This makes an amazing start to a Thanksgiving meal. As long as you add the parsley leaves at the last minute, the soup stays bright green. Sometimes I'll make the base of it, through cooking the stems in the stock, and put that in the fridge overnight. Then I bring it back up to a simmer right before serving, and add the parsley leaves, then proceed with the rest of the recipe.

If you're looking for a more substantial soup, the addition of cooked white beans (yes, you can use the canned ones) is darn near magical.

Vegetable love

2011-06-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

I don't know if you've heard but the government just came out with a brand new set of dietary guidelines. In a hideously art-directed graphic, the government has submitted My Plate for our perusal, a paint-by-numbers directive for the obvious impaired. Apparently, the Food Pyramid was confusing.

Whatever. I'm not going to make a judgment on the intelligence of our society as a whole. Rather, I'm going to pull out my well-worn copy of Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka, and every other vegetable-loving cookbook I have, and get to work. Because vegetables are now getting top billing.

Surprisingly, I'm ok with this. I, like Barbara Kafka, love vegetables. It's surprising because I didn't eat a vegetable until I was safely into my 20's. When I questioned my mother about this recently, not only did she agree with the vegetable assertion, she also added that I probably didn't eat anything healthy - anything - until I was in my 20's. But, she added, you were happy.

My mother's idea of vegetables was canned peas. She put those army green pellets in everything, from creamed tuna fish on toast to my Stouffer's Chicken a la King, for some extra vegetable oomph. This was the same mother who regularly took us to White Castle for dinner, and gave me Wonder bread sandwiches filled with bologna and mayonnaise for lunch. And the same one who bought boxes of Hostess treats and counted them as more than adequate after-school snacks.

So here I am, pulling out my Greens cookbooks, from the eponymous restaurant in San Francisco, two tomes by Deborah Madison, the former Greens founding chef, and a delightful softback I found at the Ferry Building in San Francisco on market cooking. The one by Barbara Kafka, Vegetable Love, has a lot of recipes for stuff no one eats anymore (like carrot raisin salad from the 7th grade cafeteria), and soups made with three ingredients (celery, salt and water - from her lunch with Gandhi?). I like her because she bears a resemblance to Bea Arthur. Every time I open her cookbook, I imagine standing in Maude's Tuckahoe kitchen, making Feminist Salad with Adrienne Barbeau. The likeness, at least in my mind, is that striking.

Vegetable Love is encyclopedic in its breadth, with chapters on everything from broccoli to fennel to the wide world of lettuce. It even has an entire chapter devoted to Odd Roots, like scorzonera, which I've never heard of, and burdock root, which looks like a hairy stick. I'm not going to eat these things, but it's nice to know that if the world ends tomorrow and we all have to forage for our food, everyone will come to my mud hut for burdock tempura.

Excuses, excuses

2011-05-27T21:07:00.006-05:00

I haven't written much lately, and I have to chalk it up to one thing: I'm just not that excited about food these days. There are a couple of reasons.

1) I have kids. Kids are excited about brownies and not much else. So cooking in my house is not an exercise in creativity and inspiration. It usually involves opening a box. Maybe not for the whole meal, but for part of it, and nothing sucks the life out of me like opening a box. Sometimes it's macaroni and cheese, other times it's rice pilaf or frozen pizza. I've lowered myself so far that I am now giving my kids ramen noodles, the kind with the little foil flavor packet that has more harmful ingredients than Drano. I blame the kids.

2) Cooking is a bit like writing in that one has to feed one's self constantly for inspiration. With writing, one reads, goes to movies, eavesdrops on conversations complete strangers are having on the bus, etc, etc....With cooking, it's literal. I need to go out to eat more, and at more interesting places. So I'm making a list and welcome any suggestions you have in the comment section. Keep in mind I live in the Chicago area. I might fly somewhere exotic, as long as it's in the midwest and I can get there by car.

My next tentative venture is Manghal, a Kosher grill in Evanston. When you drive by, it looks vaguely Mongolian, like the servers might be right out of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Karen Allen drinks a gender-challenged Mongol under the table. But it's actually an Israeli restaurant that serves grilled kosher meats, breads baked in the in-house taboun (a type of clay oven), and other middle eastern delights. If you go to the website, you'll notice this place has the much-sought-after stamp of approval from the rabbinical council. I feel like I'm in Jerusalem already. L'chaim!

3) There is no 3. I have no more excuses. Lunchbox resumes now.

Cookies only a mother could love

2010-12-22T19:47:00.004-06:00

Several weeks ago, I attended an organized cookie decorating event for fifteen 7 year-olds. This may sound harsh, but being with fifteen 7 year-olds is not my idea of a good time. I once taught a gingerbread house class to a bunch of 8 to 10 year-olds and the fact that I had kids after that experience is a small miracle.

I stayed the hell away from all of them and hid at my cookie rolling station for most of the night. I put my head down and rolled dough while other parents told their children how beautiful their cookies looked.

This brought up the whole self-esteem issue, and the real reason why I retreated. I think kids know when their cookies, and drawings and clay figurines, are ugly. And so, when an adult says, "That is so beautiful!" the kid is thinking, what the fuck? It's ugly and misshapen and not at all pleasing to the eye, so why are you telling me it's fabulous? Confusion ensues, children learn not to trust themselves, and also never learn how to deal with the disappointment of not being perfect all the time.

So when my daughter proudly showed me her work of art cookies, I did what I always do when something she does is frankly ugly: I told her that I liked the color she picked, which I did. She chose twinkly blue sugar (as well as 27 other colors). The rest of the cookie was a wretched mess, an overfrosted blob. In fact, the picture above looks like it was created by Picasso compared to what my offspring produced.

As for the cookies, they were delicious - Nancy Silverton's butter cookie recipe, which I must share. It's in her first dessert book from 1986. This is the kind of dough you become infatuated with, like when you were 13 and you thought Leif Garrett was hot, hot, hot. Decorate them any way you want. I like Nancy's idea of an egg glaze and crystallized sugar - very safe.

Nancy calls them Animal Crackers and that's fine with me.

Animal Crackers

8 oz unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbs. cream

1 Tbs. vanilla extract (use the real stuff, not imitation)

4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

pinch salt

For basic decoration:

2 egg yolks

crystallized sugar (you can get this at King Arthur's Flour website)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sift the flour and baking powder together and set aside. In an electric mixer, cream the butter until it holds soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar until it's completely incorporated. Whisk together the eggs, cream, and vanilla and add them to the butter mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and then continue beating until combined.

Add the flour mixture in about three additions to avoid the flour flying all over the place. You can even add it by hand if you want with the spatula. Beat until completely combined, but no more.

Form two disks, and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Roll out the dough one disk at a time, keeping the other one refrigerated. It should be about 1/4 inch thick. Use whatever cutters you want, but if Nancy had her way, they'd be animal cutters. For added crunch, beat the egg yolks in a small bowl, then brush the tops with the yolks. Sprinkle the top with crystallized sugar.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, rotating the pans in the middle of the bake. The cookies should not color too much. They're done when they've lost their sheen and are completely dry. The bottoms of the cookie will be lightly browned. Cool on a rack and then eat more than one,

Umami redux

2010-11-23T16:50:00.001-06:00

About a year and a half ago, I salivated profusely as I wrote this post. And then I sank into a period of depression that lasted nearly ten minutes because the prospect of actually tasting an Umami burger seemed almost impossible. Most restaurants only stay open a few years, and LA was a distant memory from my advertising past.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have been to the mountain, and the mountain has house-made American cheese and roasted green chilies and is one of the most decadently juicy, umamiest burgers I have ever had the pleasure to ingest. Umami, if you don't remember, is the fifth taste - the savory taste - alongside sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. It's responsible for us craving meat, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, and anchovies for reasons both physiological and evolutionary.

Umami Burger is a burger place in LA devoted entirely to satiation on another, more primitive umami level. When I first heard about it a year and a half ago, Umami was a lone wolf on LaBrea. They offered burger after burger with topping combinations that were meant to up the umami ante. One, with beer cheddar cheese, onion strings, smoked salt, and bacon lardons, was called the Manly. The thought of something so testosterone-laden was almost too much to bear and yet so thrilling at the same time. I knew Umami needed to move to the top of my list.

Umami Burger now numbers four. Over the weekend, while in LA for a wedding, I went to the one at Fred Segal in Santa Monica. Fred Segal is a pretentiously hip and laughably overpriced fashionista department store. A friend once spotted Michelle Pfeiffer there trying on $300 jeans and declared her to be a size -2. But now Fred Segal has an Umami Burger, so they're ok by me.

The menu at Umami is confounding, only because there are so many crazy good options (interestingly, each Umami has a slightly different menu, presumably catering to its different neighborhood clientele). I ended up ordering the Hatch burger: house-made American cheese and four different kinds of roasted green chilies. The burger itself is perfectly formed and uniformly thick. It's delivered medium rare and dripping with juice. My husband got the signature Umami burger: same meaty burger, but with a roasted tomato, a shitake mushroom, and a parmesan crisp, or frico. The combination of these ingredients is supposed to elevate the umami experience even further.

After tasting both, I decided that the Hatch (above) was actually umamier than the Umami burger. It had a depth of flavor I can't recall ever having had in a burger. I will forever be haunted by its creamy cheese, hot, biting chilies, and juicy, beefiness.

We also got an order of fries that came with a side of special Umami ketchup. A word about umami and ketchup: while I thought the umami ketchup at UB was delicious, Heinz is still king. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his New Yorker article on the same subject, Heinz ketchup has achieved a level of umami that few products do. So while I appreciated the extra effort on the ketchup front, it ain't Heinz. But they did offer mexican Coke (as in Coca-Cola) which is made with real sugar and not corn syrup. Plus one, Umami Burger.

You're going to love this place.

Anatomy of a Blimpy Burger

2010-10-28T06:59:00.002-05:00

If you're one of those people who dislikes yelling out your order in front of a bunch of people only to get called out for it by a skanky short order cook who looks like Ted Nugent, do not go to Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger. During our recent visit, a guy about eight people ahead of us in line had his wife order for him. Having your wife order for you at Blimpy Burgers is like admitting you're a big pussy. The cook - a tough, red-headed Ted Nugent lookalike - called him on it.

"I want to hear it from you!" she yelled, laying him open for all of us to see.

This kind of stuff doesn't unnerve me because I know you have to go into Blimpy Burger prepared. You can't waver or be indecisive or God forbid, hide behind your spouse as she orders for you. You go in ready to kick some ass. You start with your deep fryer order (ours: fried zucchini and fries, SIR!), you then move on to your burger size and bun (doubles on kaisers), you then tell them what grilled items and type of cheese you want (mushrooms, onions, swiss), and then you breathe a huge sigh of relief, like you do at the end of a double root canal. The hard part is over.

Blimpy Burger isn't an ordinary burger place and that's thanks to its sort of unconventional burgers (and, yes, its wet-your-pants ordering system). The burgers are more of a loose meat patty, architecturally built with a multitude of toppings. They start out as golf ball size chunks of ground beef that get whacked down hard with a spatula into very thin, irregularly shaped patties. The advantage of this is irregular shaped patty = little bits of crunchiness (thinner meat chars more quickly) which counter the greasiness/juiciness of the meat. I don't know it this was well thought out or intentional, but it certainly is wondrous.

Before the whacking:

After the whacking:

There also has been much discussion about the number of patties one should order and I've concluded that three gives you the perfect ratio of meat to bun. Four, or a quad, is good for Big and Tall Shop patrons. Five, or a quint, is obscene, and best left to marijuana-fueled post-fraternity party forays or trying to impress your girlfriend. Just a note: for fear of too much meat, I would never order a triple anywhere else. But it just works at Blimpy's.

A word about the griddle: grease. A word about the line: long. A word about the burger: one of the best you'll ever have.

The thing about dinner theater

2010-10-22T12:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to lie to you. I've never been to dinner theater in the strictest sense of the word. I haven't experienced the magic of the Chanhassen Dinner Theater in the Twin Cities or laughed til I cried into my baked ham at La Comedia Dinner Theater in Springboro, Ohio (touted as "A Taste of Broadway"). I have, however, been to the kind of restaurant where the servers break out in song in the middle of service and I frankly find it embarrassing.

I'm not sure who I'm more embarrassed for, myself or the servers. When the Fairmont Hotel first opened in Chicago years ago, its flagship restaurant was one of those servers-who-sing kind of places. It was called Pastoral or Symphonie or Chorale or some other music-in-a-country-setting kind of name. The servers all wore dirndls and lederhosen and sang in earnest as they brought out the pasta primavera. Whenever I sensed they were going to break out in song, I would hightail it to the ladies room and stay there until it was over. I was just thankful they weren't wearing roller skates.

I never would have paid to go to a place like Pastoral/Symphonie/Chorale. My sister-in-law's father invited me. If someone else is paying, I'll go just about anywhere once, even Medieval Times, another dinner theater experience, this one with jousting. I might even pay for Medieval Times myself, because the idea of jousting and eating at the same time is just so random, especially when it happens in Schaumburg, that it verges on eccentrically brilliant.

Dinner theater menus and cruise ship menus are apparently written by the same people, with all-you-can-eat Baked Virginia Ham and Roast Beef from the Carving Station playing the starring roles. 'Seasoned' Tilapia is offered on many menus, too, and this likely means a sprinkling of Mrs. Dash. Toby's Dinner Theater in Baltimore serves something called Our Famous Spinach "Phunque" Casserole. "Phunque" has all sorts of unpleasant connotations, starting with aromas that emanate from the nether regions of the body, so I can't even imagine what that might taste like. Toby's also serves Knockwurst with Baked Beans and I have to wonder, is this a wise thing to put on the menu when people are expected to sit still and be quiet for 2 hours?

There was a restaurant in Greenwich Village that took the singing server routine to a whole new place, namely Tuckahoe, New York. Though I can't recall the name, I do remember it catered to a gay clientele. If there was a birthday at the table, the male servers would tartsy out in caftans and turbans, and belt out the theme to the TV show, "Maude." You know, Lady Godiva was a freedom rider, she didn't care if the whole world knew......It came as a complete surprise the first time around and I laughed heartily and thought, this place has mastered it. But by birthday number 9 that night, and the 36th sung chorus of "And then there's Maude!", I had reverted to my former, dinner theater-hating self.

I like music in restaurants. Ambient music is good. A jukebox in the right kind of place is fine, too. Even the Rolling Stones can have a place at the table (like at Mario Batali's Babbo in New York, where Sticky Fingers played in its entirety when we were there a few years ago.) But if I ever see a server wearing a costume again, I'm outta there.

Hail the gods of collegiate dining

2010-10-10T13:18:00.009-05:00

I have a confession to make: I never ate cafeteria food in college. Occasionally, I might make myself a bologna sandwich at the cafeteria sandwich bar (only one of my dorms even had one), but I never once stood in line with my tray, watching as the lady with the shower cap sadly doled out slop on to my plastic plate.

It wasn't as if I was a food snob. I just owned a really good hot pot, and I happened to like spaghetti with Ragu enough to eat it every night for four years.

But now I'm feeling wistful. I think I may have missed out, and here's why:

The chicken broccoli bake at the University of Michigan.

I can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon this nearly legendary staple of the Residential Dining System, but once I started researching, I discovered it has legions of adoring fans. There are internet forums about which dorm offers a more delicious version and which one handles its rice accompaniment better (separate rice or rice underneath as it bakes). There have been a handful of attempts at recreating the recipe, and scathing rebuttals at those attempts for not doing the dish justice.

Apparently, the chicken broccoli bake is to dorm food what Knute Rockne is to college football. I decided I had to try it.

After much digging (ok, a relatively quick Google search), I found the real deal: the sanctioned recipe with the official Residential Dining Service seal. It even feels presidential.

In case the name doesn't paint a detailed enough picture, chicken broccoli bake is a casserole. It involves chicken, a chickeny cream sauce, and broccoli, plus a crispy bread crumb topping. It is industrial-strength Betty Crocker comfort food served on a pile of rice. In the fall, as the wind gets nippier and the sun just never seems to provide enough warmth, this will hit the spot. Ditto, after a few bong hits.

University of Michigan Chicken Broccoli Bake - Serves 6

1 pound broccoli, chopped fresh or frozen

12 oz. diced chicken breast (leftover cooked chicken would be great in this)

2 Tbs. butter or oil

2 Tbs. diced onions

2 Tbs. flour

1 1/4 cup warm water

1 tsp chicken bouillion granules or 1 bouillion cube

1/2 cup sour cream

3/4 cup whipping or heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

3 Tbs. grated parmesan cheese

3 Tbs. bread crumbs (I use panko style for extra crunchiness)

Rice for serving

Steam the broccoli for a few minutes - do not overcook. In a saute pan, cook the diced chicken until no longer pink. You may need a little oil to keep the chicken from sticking. Remove the chicken and set aside. Using the same saute pan, heat the butter or oil and saute the onions until translucent. Stir in the flour and cook constantly for 1 - 2 minutes. Adjust the heat if the mixture is browning too quickly.

Combine the water and bouillion and stir until dissolved. Add that to the pan and stir over heat for a few minutes until it is thickened.

In a separate bowl or large mixing cup, combine the sour cream and heavy cream. Add a little of the hot liquid and stir, to temper the cream mixture. Add cream mixture back to the hot liquid and blend thoroughly.

Salt and pepper to taste. Gently simmer for five minutes. Do not bring to a boil or the mixture will separate. Gently fold in cooked chicken and broccoli.

Place mixture in a buttered casserole dish. Combine bread crumbs with parmesan cheese and sprinkle evenly on top of the chicken mixture. Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven until top is lightly brown and bubbling, about 30 minutes. Do not overbake or it will separate.

Serve over rice. Alternately, and this is how I made it, cook the rice first, and then turn it into the buttered casserole dish. Spoon the chicken broccoli mixture over the rice, then the breadcrumb mixture, then bake as directed.

Hollywood trips up again

2010-09-20T12:43:00.001-05:00

If you're like me, you walk into a movie like Eat, Pray, Love with a healthy amount of suspicion. It's about a woman who throws away her perfect life in search of a more perfect one. Exotic locales? Of course. Beautifully shot? Sure. But try to find one character that you'd want to have a sandwich with and you're pretty much out of luck.

Julia Roberts plays the heroine, Elizabeth Gilbert. She has the kind of hair that I covet. It never gets frizzy, even in the tropics. As long as you have hair like that, you need nothing else in your life, except for pictures of the back of your hair, so you can see how perfect that is, too.

But this isn't about Julia Roberts, who I sort of loathe (except for her hair). It's about a food movie getting its food technically wrong. I wanted to scream to the two other people in the theater, "Did you see that? DID YOU SEE THAT?!?"

The egregious scene plays as follows: Julia, aka Elizabeth Gilbert, finally masters ordering an entire meal in Italian. And so, while she orders, the camera cuts away to the various dishes she's ordering as they're plated in the kitchen. I was actually buying into it - beautiful carciofi (artichokes) and melanzane (eggplant) and then, finally, carbonara. And that's when they showed a big plate of spaghetti with red sauce.

Red sauce.

Carbonara isn't red sauce. It isn't even cream sauce, as many Americans believe. It's eggs and bacon, brought together harmoniously by a bit of the pasta cooking water, parmesan cheese, a bit of butter and lots of pepper. CARBONARA, not MARINARA. Fools.

With the exception of Big Night, I don't like food movies. I never saw Julie and Julia for fear that they would get something wrong, like showing Julia stirring unbeaten egg whites into a souffle base or slicing beef tenderloin against the grain.

Then I remembered something - no one really eats in Hollywood. They go to restaurants to preen, gloat, or exult, not to eat. They order salads with no dressing, hamburgers with no meat, desserts with no chocolate, butter, or cream. They subsist on lowfat air.

So the next time a food movie arrives at the local theater, I will not be in line, getting tickets. I will be at home, watching Freaks and Geeks on IFC while eating pasta carbonara with extra bacon.

It's hard to argue with Lenny Kravitz

2010-09-01T12:47:00.001-05:00

It's pretty clear to all of us that I have been remiss. I haven't written in - ok, fine, I'll say it - five weeks (I'm cowering right now, ashamed). I blame my children and their summertime demands, since it's just so easy to do that. But now I'm back and I'm ready to talk about Paris.

And when you talk about Paris, what you're really talking about are sandwiches. At least that's what I'm talking about, because more than 50% of our meals in Paris were sandwiches. And by sandwiches, I mean ham, cheese, and butter sandwiches. Butter gets top billing because it's slathered on so thickly, you can measure it in centimeters. You'll get no objection from me. I can think of nothing that isn't improved by the addition of butter.

We ate sandwiches, likes the ones above and below, everywhere. In parks, on benches, listening to an orchestra celebrate Chopin's 200th birthday, while fending off bees and aggressive French pigeons which, by the way, are still pigeons.

But we also ate ice cream. Berthillon ice cream, no less, the pinnacle of French ice cream, which is the pinnacle of world ice cream, or so the French will tell you. The shop itself, on the Isle St. Louis, was closed. In late July. The wisdom of this remains disputable. But other shops up and down the streets of the isle gladly carry it, and so we acquiesced.

I ordered the above cone - vanilla ice cream with cherry sorbet. The vanilla was light brown, the color of coffee ice cream, an indication of just how vanilla-y it was, but still somehow subtle and refined. The cherry was like a powerful kick in the teeth. A freak of nature in a cone. I'm still recovering.

But Paris doesn't just have the best ice cream in the world, it also has the best falafel. Just ask The New York Times and Lenny Kravitz, a sometime patron of L'as du Fallafel, in the Marais. It's a scrubby little joint with either a walk-up window or indoor service. I recommend the window. That way, you can see the official Kravitz endorsement.

The guys who run the joint might also be Israeli jewelry salesmen, and I mean that in the best possible way. The falafel is big and messy and flavorful, with lots of condiments that drip out the side and down your arm. I'm betting Lenny asked for everything. That's what I did, and it's the way to go.

And finally, Poilane. I have no idea if Lenny Kravitz has been here, and if he has, it's not the kind of place to advertise the fact. It's the kind of place where the counter staff dress like obedient laboratory assistants with golden tongs to retrieve your requests. My request was a walnut loaf and two apple tarts. The walnut loaf used to be transformative. Now, it's merely delicious. And the apple tarts disappointed me. Too little apple, too much crust. Monsieur Lionel Poilane, the kooky master behind this empire, died in 2002 or thereabouts, and I'm wondering if the sparkle didn't die with him. Not to deter you from going - it is a stunning shop with great bread. But maybe Marcel Proust was right: Remembrance of things past is not necessarily remembrance of things as they were.

Monsieur Mulot is in the building

2010-07-25T14:39:00.009-05:00

I might as well admit to you now that I've always been a groupie. In college, I was a groupie of Robert Palmer. I was addicted to the Addicted to Love guy. After a show at Radio City Music Hall, I managed to sneak backstage for his post-concert party. I sat next to him on a settee for more than half an hour before coming up with something really charming and witty to say ("um, I really liked the show"). I then got up and left. I never said I was a good groupie.

So when I was at Gerard Mulot yesterday, and Gerard Mulot himself emerged from the kitchen, familiar feelings - Robert Palmer feelings - kicked in. Oh my God, there he is! It's him! It's GERARD MULOT!

Gerard Mulot is a very tasteful and expensive patisserie in the 6th. Chocolates cost about $100/kilo (Just for comparison's sake, a pound of Fannie May Mint Meltaways runs you about $22.99). I've had my eye on Mulot for more than 15 years. His is one of about ten standout patisseries in Paris that always get mentioned in New York Times articles about standout patisseries in Paris. And there he was, on a Sunday, tending to things in his shop.

Thankfully, he didn't look like Thierry Lhermitte,

a French comedic actor with devastating blue eyes, or I might have left my husband on the spot. Monsieur Mulot is more of a Tim Kazurinsky type - slight and spectacled and persnickety. He had a discussion with one of the patrons, a well-to-do woman who was asking about a cake. I tried not to stare, and I certainly wasn't going to take a picture, and risk looking like the groupie that I am. Plus, he was no Thierry Lhermitte.

We got a few jambon sandwiches to go, some pate de fruit (fruit jelly candies rolled in sugar), and two gateaux, a delicieux and an opera.

As we spent the day at the Jardin du Luxembourg, doing things French families do, I thought the cakes were safe in their cute, pink Gerard Mulot box. But when we got home, a different story emerged (see sad photo at the top).

The delicieux and the opera had collided. The opera - a classic French pastry with layers of genoise, coffee buttercream, and chocolate ganache - took the brunt of it. My Mulot masterpieces were Mulot-perfect no more. But even in its devastation, it's quite lovely, don't you think?

ORD->JFK->CDG

2010-07-22T09:20:00.004-05:00

On Friday, I'm heading to the pastry motherland, with a quick 6 hour layover in Queens. I haven't been to Paris in 15 years, so I haven't spoken French in as long. The performance anxiety is setting in, the fear of being an ugly American is palpable, and I hope to God we can figure out the metro map. I have places to go and things to do and gateaux to see.

I love Paris in a fawning, slightly embarrassing kind of way. I love how Parisians, and French people as a whole, revere food, and I don't at all mind how arrogant they are about the fact that they revere it (and we don't). I love how important pastry is to them, and bread, and butter, and croissants. I love that there are no Dunkin Donuts in France. And I love that baguettes are regulated by the government. Take that, Tea Party Movement.

I have a list, but by no means an exhaustive one, of places to go, and by places, I mean restaurants, cafes, boulangeries, patisseries, and marches that house fromageries, charcuteries, and chocolatiers. On this trip, I'll have two kids with me, one of whom only eats five things. It's a good thing three of them - bread, chocolate and cake - can be found on every street corner. Is it possible to get juvenile diabetes in a week?

Someone told me there are a lot of museums in Paris. I guess we'll try to fit a few in, between the trips to Berthillon (the best ice cream in Paris) and L'As du Fallafel (the best falafel in Europe, and maybe the world, according to the New York Times) and E. Dehillerin, a venerable cookware store where the salesmen wear long aprons while they fetch your copper sauteuse. The euros are at the ready.

And then there's La Maison du Chocolat, a Willy Wonka-like wonderland where the carpeting, the walls, the perfectly wrapped boxes of cakes, candies, and those macarons - all of it is suave and chocolatey. It is literally breathtaking. Not to brag or anything, but I'll be there next week. I'll also try to stop into Poilane for some apple tarts and walnut bread. Perhaps a little carb heavy, but the two together make a fine lunch.

I will hopefully be posting from France, assuming the technology Gods don't pull a fast one. Of course, if they're French, they just might.

The case for lard

2010-07-15T14:10:00.004-05:00

When I think of the word "lard," it's virtually impossible for me not to attach the word "ass" to the end. Nothing says sedentary housewife from Iowa like the word "lard-ass" and nothing contributes more to lard-assism than lard. At least that's what my inner judgmental self says.

According to the Urban Dictionary, a lard-ass is a person who is not only useless but who also weighs a ridiculous amount. So it's pretty clear how lard got its unflattering reputation. Lard is the evil fatty substance that gives women, especially those from the plains states, their big, jiggly butts.

Ironically, nothing makes a better pie crust, and I now know this from experience. Exhibit A: my first pie of the season, above. A beauty, with sour cherries from the sour cherry capital of the world, Michigan, and the best crust I have ever made. That's a pretty ambitious statement, considering how many crusts I've made in my life (I'm counting all the tart and puff pastry shells, too, because crust is crust). Hundreds? Maybe thousands. But never with lard. And I have to attribute that to a fear of lard, and the pronounced dimpled ass that goes along with it.

But the nutritional data doesn't support the fear. Butter has more saturated fat and cholesterol than lard, assuming the lard is not hydrogenated (more about that later). Lard, in case you don't know, is pig fat. It's rendered, or melted down, and then strained of the lingering bits. It is then refrigerated to solidify.

When lard is processed, however, evil corporate scientists hydrogenate it (a chemical process that improves shelf life), and this makes it an enemy of your arteries and ostensibly your hiney. But pure, high quality lard is available via mail order. It's generally called leaf lard. If you're at all squeamish, now's the time to skip to the next paragraph. Leaf lard is the fat that accumulates around the kidneys of the pig. Not very appetizing, but surprisingly healthier than its processed cousin. The fat is rendered, strained and then chilled or frozen.

My pie crust was dreamlike in its flakiness with nary a taste of the barn. It stayed flaky for a couple of days, even in the warmer weather. And it was easy to work with. When you have two children, the last thing you need is a pie crust with an attitude.

Lard is also said to reign supreme in the deep fryer, producing a virtually greaseless, crispy crust. I am completely unashamed to admit that I am now lard's number one fan and I will be aggressively pursuing perfect fried chicken in the days ahead, once my $18.00 leaf lard arrives. I'll keep you posted.

Once again, America saves the world

2010-07-02T08:16:00.001-05:00

Gosh, I'm proud to be an American. It isn't just that we're clearly better than everyone else. It's the incredible number of useful contributions we've made to society in the past 234 years. Without our homespun American ingenuity, there would be no all-you-can-eat buffets. No loaded potato skins. No cheese that sprays out of an aluminum can, much like another iconic American invention, Silly String.

But in the past few years, there have been murmurs around the globe that maybe, just maybe, we are losing our competitive edge. Well, people of the doubting persuasion, I have two words for you:

Cheese tessallation.

In geometric parlance, tessellation is a collection of plane figures that fill a space so there are no gaps, much like the correct placement of jigsaw puzzle pieces. So when Subway announced this week it would start tessallating the cheese slices on its sandwiches, I was more than just excited. Now, rather than overlapping, the slices will be placed point up, point down, point up, point down (see photo above - an unfortunate example since there are big gaping holes between the slices. But you get the idea).

I am particularly proud of the R & D people who turned this pie-in-the-sky notion into something real we can all experience every time we order a $5 footlong (are they still $5?). I'm so glad we're using our best and brightest for life's important endeavors. I know there are other matters that need tending, but continuously perfecting the Subway sandwich will keep this country a step ahead of the India's and China's of the world who are noisily knocking on progress' door.

So for all of you doubters, we'd like you to meet the tessallated cheese sandwich. It's big, it's bad, it's red, white, and blue, and it's proof that we, the United States of America, aren't going anywhere.

M is for meh

2010-06-21T11:22:00.004-05:00

Burger disappointment is hard to take. It's like having a bad cupcake or a bad ice cream cone. It just feels morally wrong, like the perpetrators should have to formally apologize and admit their wrongdoing publicly, in the town square, and perhaps in the most egregious cases, submit to a flogging.

That's how I feel about M Burger. It's a dark little crevice on Huron, just east of Michigan Avenue. There are no seats inside, which is a good thing since there's no ventilation in there, either. But you can sit on the benches on the sidewalk, where you'll likely share a table with a pregnant couple who just visited their OB at Northwestern Memorial. You can watch the woman eat a double with bacon and secret sauce and then finish all the fries and the chocolate shake and remember fondly back to those pregnant days, when you use to eat half a dozen Krispy Kremes at one sitting.

But the thing is, Krispy Kremes are good. The M Burger is not. There's nothing special about it, and once you've had a truly special burger (like at Edzo's), you immediately know after the first bite whether this thing you're eating is stuck in the bottom half of the burger bell curve, a step above a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and even that is debatable.

My issue is with the meat (some would argue the most important part of a hamburger). Normally, I like my burgers to taste like meat. But the M Burger really didn't taste like anything at all. If it had tasted like pistachios or creamed spinach or something else entirely, I might applaud the attempt at avant garde and maybe give a few points for creativity. But when the goal is a conventional fast food burger, it's all about the meat.

There are different versions of the M Burger. I had a single with everything, which includes lettuce, onion, pickles, ketchup, mayo and cheese. There may have been a tomato on it. If so, I couldn't taste it. A signature M Burger has bacon, cheese and secret sauce. All burgers are available single or double. They have fries and shakes, too, and something called the Nurse Betty, which, according to one Yelp reviewer, is a vegetarian burger sans a burger (a bun burger?). It's also a movie with Renee Zellweger, who is thoroughly annoying, too skinny and probably would prefer having a bun with condiments over one with meat. Both she and M Burger need to go away.

Spring cleaning

2010-06-01T22:16:00.000-05:00

Today, I just might eat a dog biscuit. Frankly, I'm getting sort of tired of people food and I think it's because we as a family eat in a tiny, palate-deadening box. As a result, my taste buds are slowly being asphyxiated. The week's menu is always the same: pizza, flank steak, mac n cheese, occasionally sloppy joe's, and pizza. Sometimes, it's just pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, and pizza. I need to find my appetite for eating again.

I'm not 100% sure if eating dog biscuits will do it, but it's worth a try. I used to eat them when I was a kid, and I can't remember if it was a way to become one with my dog, or a response to an anemic after school snack pantry. I just remember opening the box of Milk-Bones and taking a big, crunchy bite. The crumbs would fall on the floor and the dog would vacuum them up. How's that for symbiotic?

The plain Milk-Bones were surprisingly wholesome, like something you might find in the famous and popular Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen. In that multi-volume granola tome, everything is made with whole wheat, even the salads. The goal is to add as much fiber as is medically safe to every dish. Guacamole? Add eight cups of barley and flax. Tomato soup? Throw in a few handfuls of wheat berries and some lima beans. Is that hay in the fruit crumble topping? Well, it sure is.

Milk-Bones are deliciously bland and toothsome, and I'm hoping they'll not only cleanse my palate, but do a full sweep of my digestive tract as well. I had one of those weekends where everything I ate was either a hamburger or a hot dog, and it's taking its toll. So, bring on the melamine-laced biscuits and let's do some spring cleaning.

Doughy redemption

2010-05-25T12:39:00.010-05:00

As much as I'm opposed to clever names - and rhyming - I don't really mind Wow Bao. Of course it's a Lettuce Entertain You venture and you know this because marketing-wise, it's tight as a Chinese war drum, with a clean, eye-catching logo and that name. It's just so confident. Not many things are Wow these days, and I don't know if Wow Bao really lives up to its name, but hey, LEYE executive types, props to you for trying.

A bao is a Chinese steamed bun with a filling. Pork is probably the most common, and makes the bao into a kind of Chinese slider. A slider is never a bad thing. The dough is like a fine, soft bread dough without the crust. Put peanut butter and jelly inside, and my daughter would eat these for life. The fillings range from thai curry chicken to spicy mongolian beef to whole wheat edamame. They're soft little savory Chinese treats, and with one of their Asian salads or soup, make a respectable lunch.

They also have dessert and breakfast bao, which I haven't tried but fear are a bad mating experiment between Dunkin' Donuts and Chinese takeout. You could put anything inside that dough, but that doesn't mean you should. With that said, I'll keep an open mind and next time, have a coconut custard bao. It sounds gross - all sweet, starchy mush - but I'm willing to take one for the blog.

Wow Bao also has homemade ginger ale, which shot to super stardom years ago at Big Bowl, another Lettuce concept. I've included a rough recipe at the bottom. Not to sound like a second grader but, it's so easy.

If there was a Wow Bao in Evanston, I would go once a week. I would get a Bao combo: two Bao ( I like the Thai curry chicken and spicy Mongolian beef) and a choice of their Asian salads, which are fresh and appropriately Asian-inspired. I would also get the ginger ale. It sort of completes the picture.

Homemade Ginger Ale

1 knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced (about the size of a small finger)

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 1/2 cups water

Seltzer water or Club Soda

First, blanch the ginger by placing it in boiling water for about a minute, then drain. This mellows out the burn of the ginger. Rinse the pot, then put the sugar and cup of water in it along with the drained ginger. Bring to a boil, and boil for a couple of minutes. You're doing this to dissolve the sugar, so only boil it long enough to achieve that. You have now made a ginger simple syrup. Let cool, and store overnight in your fridge, covered.

To make the ginger ale, just add some ginger simple syrup to some seltzer or club soda. Start by adding a Tbs and keep adding until it tastes right to you. Other things you can add to the simple syrup when you add the ginger: citrus zest (just the colored part) or a split vanilla bean. If you want more syrup to make a big batch, just multiply up. The ratio of sugar to water is always 1:1. Assuming your fridge's temp is constant, the syrup should keep for two weeks.

Life, death, and food courts

2010-05-12T20:20:00.002-05:00

I had a weak moment the other day and went to a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant. I've always felt that Lettuce Entertain You has singlehandedly made Chicago a B+ restaurant town by marginalizing the dining experience with cutesy tongue-in-cheek themes and even cuter names (Lawrence of Oregano and Johnathan Livingston Seafood tie for Most Heinous).

Shouldn't the theme of a restaurant be good food? I know that sounds completely crazy, but why not? A small neighborhood restaurant where the chef reports to no one, least of all a board of directors, might actually do well. I know we'd be giving up waitresses disguised as wiseass bobby soxers and menus rife with clever lines from the clever in-house ad agency, but it just might work.

We ended up going to Foodlife which, at its inception a dozen or so years ago, was an interesting idea that took on traditional food courts. It offered a multitude of stations, each with a different type of food. Mexican, Italian, BBQ, two types of Asian.....it was pretty much all there, along with the requisite salad and dessert stations. Foodlife promised to be a United Nations kind of food experience, even if it was dumbed down by corporate culture.

In the beginning, the food was well-prepared. The vegetables were colorful, the meat was fresh, and sometimes, the choices were even a little inspired. But last week, sad, pathetic salmon filets sat in pools of cloudy oil and old pasta curled at the edges waiting to be sauced and plated. I was witnessing the slow death of Foodlife.

It's not as if I feel any outrage. I mean, when was the last time you ate at a Lettuce restaurant that wasn't completely rote? Caesar or bibb lettuce salad to start, plainly prepared meat and a small selection of predictable vegetables for the main, and Boston cream pie for dessert. It's like eating at an expensive nursing home for well-to-do Gold Coasters.

I must confess there was another reason I ate there: I found an eight year-old $100 Lettuce Entertain You gift card in a drawer and it was still valid. I now have $53 left on the card. That's enough for two lobster rolls and two diet cokes at Shaw's, the semi-precious jewel in the LEYE crown. It's no Pearl Oyster Bar, but it'll do.