New Years' Eve

I'm finally doing it: shelling out for a prix-fixe dinner on December 31. I've never tried Avec, and after their run-in with bad luck, this year seemed like the perfect time to do it.

Good news: skatewing's on the menu.

Essay Contest

Anthony Bourdain's new book, Medium Raw, is being published in paperback, and he's decided to publish a short essay by an unpublished author in it, as a sort of way to pay forward the surprise success he enjoyed ten years ago.

My submission can be found here: The Deer and La Lengua. Read it, vote for it if so moved, and please above all leave an honest comment.

Matthew

In Memory of an Artisan

I only met Daniel once, about six weeks ago. I had gone down to Prairie Fruits Farm for the weekend for reasons that now seem cloudy, although I think the idea had been to talk to Leslie and her husband Wes about getting involved with the Chicago farmer's markets. Almost as soon as I arrived, I was told of a new vendor next to them at the market, a young man who'd followed his passion for bean-to-bar chocolate to starting his own business - Flatlander Chocolate. They were, believe me, absolutely incredible.

He also made caramels, and I'd tried to buy a salted one from him when I was there. Unfortunately, I'd waited too long, and he'd sold out. "Next week," he assured me with a smile. Of course, I couldn't make it to the market the next week, but I'd hoped to go down to the farm again, sometime this summer, and get one then.

Daniel was 24, and had been a graduate student in computer science (or maybe it was mathematics) at UIUC when he'd started playing around in the kitchen with cocoa nibs. Eventually, the hobby became an all-consuming passion, and he left school to pursue his chocolate-making full-time. When I was a the market, his zeal bubbled out from under his awning. He was a very charismatic young man, tall and thin, with a hipster edge. I both related to him and admired him for taking the leap and pursuing his passion full-time.

Daniel died Tuesday morning, an apparent suicide. The news out of Urbana is sketchy at best, but I have to admit, I find it hard to understand how someone who took such glee in his work could also be desperate enough to kill himself. But, of course, I only met him once, briefly, and our conversation never turned to matters of the heart or mind.

Caliente Doug's

I had an epic day of sexploration yesterday, by which I mean I ate a lot of really good food. The first stop was the always disappointing Hot Doug's. Seriously, could there be a place - anywhere on the planet - more overrated? Above is a picture of the entranceway, a picture that took two hours to get. That's right, two hours of standing in line to get a couple decent sausages.

I ordered the Keira Knightley and the infamous (and rather heroic) foie gras and Sauternes duck sausage (with truffle oil sauce). Those are pictured below, along with the pommes frites en gras de canard, i.e. duck fat fries. I'll let you in on a little secret: Pied de Cochon's fries were cooked in only 50% duck fat and theirs were a lot better. I'll let you in on another little secret: Pdc's fries are only about as good as Nightwood's.



This sausage, however, was a work of art. It was a rib-eye sausage with black garlic aïoli and a double cream Brie. Not worth the wait, but definitely worth eating.



Following a few hours' cooling off in front of HGTV (I was the only guy, that's my excuse), we headed to get some dinner. Xoco was our destination, a place that I have been eager to try since last summer, despite a slightly blah review from a trusted source. Those in the know will be aware that Xoco is Rick Bayless' sandwich shop, serving tortas and soups for lunch and dinner, but also serving coffee, churros, and the most amazing hot chocolate on this side of the Atlantic. It's at Illinois and Clark, right next to Frontera Grill, and words and images really don't do it justice. Just go there.



The tortas we shared were a Yucatecan-style pork offering, called cochinita pibil, with the ubiquitous pickled onions on the side and a fiery (but sooooo delicoius) roasted habanero salso. This one is on the left in the picture. The other was a daily special of shrimp and bacalao (it being Friday), and it was simply good. The bacalao hadn't been oversoaked, neither had it (crucially) been undersoaked. Just two very well-conceived tortas. The chocolate, their Barcelona offering, was just bittersweet chocolate heaven.

All in all, an amazing day. Now I get to get up at 4:30 tomorrow and cook my own amazing food. Cheers.

Happy Food Independence Day!

Here's a picture of an organic-egg-in-the-whole-wheat-basket. (The bread is from the Great Harvest in Evanston. So good!)

Pasta con pomodoro

What an exciting time of the year! I love the summer solstice. The excitement of the coming growing season reaches its fever pitch right now, at least for me, just as the days reach their longest. Today, I took perhaps the last chance I'll have for a while to spend a few hours in the kitchen making dinner. I've been working on homemade pasta for a while, and it finally came out the way I wanted it.

Fresh pasta's a wonder to make, super simple: a cup of flour, two eggs, mix into a dough and then knead for ten minutes until it becomes like silk. Let it rest for ten, and then roll it thin (I mean THIN). Cut it into strips, then cook in salted boiling water for a few minutes. The pasta comes out delicate, with just enough bite. For this, i cut very wide strips, more than an inch. In the future, I'd probably cut it a little narrower, but the wide noodles worked well for this sauce.

Speaking of sauce, it couldn't have been easier. Into a hot pan, I put a few tablespoons of olive oil, chili flakes, salt and three cloves of garlic, sliced thinly. I cooked that for a bit, but before the garlic browned, I added a can of San Marzano tomatoes. For me, the flavor of that tomato was really key for this dish, so while Romas or Beefsteaks, or even fresh tomatoes, would work, they wouldn't work as well. I seeded them, too. The sauce simmered while I made the pasta, probably about half an hour. The tomatoes softened enough that they could be broken up with the side of a spoon, and then I finished the sauce with torn fresh basil.



Finally, because pasta with tomato sauce, as delicious as it may be, does not a full meal make, I made tonno e fagioli. Using canned cannellini beans, I made a dressing with about three tablespoons of very good extra virgin olive oil and a tablespoon of lemon juice, two minced cloves of garlic, salt, and freshly ground pepper. I mixed in the can of beans, and then added a can of tuna. After resting in the fridge for the flavors to meld, it made a perfect accompaniment, although it could have used some parsley (if for nothing else than color) and honestly the lemon juice would maybe have been best replaced with red wine vinegar.



So that was the meal.

Black Bean Chili

Usually, I'm not one to care about the presentation of my food. Well, that's not exactly true, but I usually go for a rustic esthetic, which reflects the flavors of my food: bold dishes, even when they are light (like risotto), the food could be easily found at a restaurant called Peasant Food.

But, Gordon Ramsay made a soup on a show a few weeks ago and it gave me an idea for tonight's dinner. One of my favorite dishes to make, because of its simplicity and almost boundless deliciousness, is black beans. Slowly cooked with onions, a large amount of cumin and an even larger amount of chili powder, I often render fat from bacon to soften the onions in and add it all to the pot. It creates a savory and aromatic dish worthy of a cattle ranch in southern Texas. Seeing the Ramsay bean soup, however, made me wonder: could I turn that bean dish into a delicate soup?

The first step was to cook the beans. Since I wanted a lighter flavor than usual, I softened the onions (about one and a half small yellow onions) in olive oil (instead of the rendered fat of salted pork belly). I added some beans, not a lot as you can see from the finished soup picture below, and then covered them with sufficient water to end with a fairly thick soup. I'm not sure how much of either, but it was probably two and a half cups or three of water, and maybe three handfuls of black beans. They were dry is all I know. I brought the mixture to the boil, dropped it to a light simmer, and then added about a tablespoon of cumin, four teaspoons of chili powder, and a bay leaf, then simmered until the beans were done, which took about the second half of the Mexico-France World Cup match.

When it was done, the beans were soft without any hard bits inside, I spooned out maybe two tablespoons of the beans, trying to make sure they were whole and their skins hadn't ruptured. Then, I pureed the rest, with cooking liquid. I added some salt (since this is a posh dish, I went with Kilauea sea salt, the black one with a deep flavor), and drizzled in high quality olive oil until the mixture was smooth and looked satiny (probably a tablespoon or so). And then I put it back in the pot to await dinner. Below, you can see a picture of the soup base. I should note, I took out the bay leaf before pureeing.




So, on to the garnish. I wanted a contrast of flavors between the soup and the garnish, but not something absurd like strawberries and cream or even fried plantains (although that would be great as a garnish!). Instead, I wanted some flavors that I would normally include in beans and rice, but decided not to include in the soup base to maintain its lightness. I fried some pancetta, and crumbled it, then carefully diced a large shallot (I think the pieces of shallot should be smaller than the black beans, but you don't want a mince). Finally, I mixed in a little lime juice, salt and pepper to taste. Below, you can see the garnish in its little bowl.



However, since this whole preparation, which I've been making for years, was inspired by my mom's vegetarian black bean chili, and that is always served with cornbread, the dish wasn't finished. Anyone who's eaten at a top restaurant knows that there has to be some ridiculous, crunchy accompaniment to a soup, one which is supposed to add a flavor note of nostalgia, bringing the whole dish back to its humble roots, but usually just ends up being a rather flavorless piece of an otherwise brilliant soup. So, I made crispy cornmeal pancakes, which were awesome when I tried them on their own, but probably weren't nearly as awesome with the soup as I wanted them to be. It was fairly simple: I poured hot water over cornmeal to hydrate it, then mixed in salt, some honey, melted butter, then turned it out on a hot griddle and cooked them until they were browned on both sides. It was a brilliant piece of a...oh, whatever. Here's a picture.



And it did taste almost exactly like the cornbread my mom used to make without taking any real amount of cornmeal or time.


To serve, I reheated the soup base, ladled it into a bowl, then topped it with a little mound of the garnish, as you can see above, it came out quite beautiful. Unfortunately, it tasted horrible. (Psych!) Honestly, this is probably the most balanced dish I've made to date. The soup base itself had a rich texture, with a strong foretaste of black beans, accented with cumin and a small taste of chilies. The olive oil left a nice buttery feel on the palate, and there was a lingering bitterness, too. All in all, fabulous!

There isn't much that could improve it, either (well, save the cornbread). Some hot pepper would have been nice in the garnish, and it would also have been nice to have more garnish than I made (read: save more beans before pureeing), but it was still an excellent meal. Of course, it would be easy to make vegetarian (or even vegan), since the only meat in the entire dish was the pancetta in the garnish, and a garnish of onion, pepper, cilantro (or epazote!), and beans would go just as well. The lime juice really brightened it up, too, although I'd probably leave that out on a day colder than about 75.