Monday night Smelts dinner

Is this becoming a new tradition? Scurry home on a Monday night to have some friends from the team over for a casual meal? It's not at all a bad tradition to have, though we best not let it get out of control. On the other hand, there always seems to be a recipe I either want to try out or return to. Last week was return to: the halibut and the upside down cake both. This week was a new one.

Dave (lane 5 - bloody fast) and Kaleb (lane 4 - pretty fast just the same) came by tonight. I ducked out of practice early, but then, I am getting back into it slowly. 2250 tonight, not too bad. Anyway, it was a dash home. I had a chicken reheating gently in the oven, a salad to make, some lentils de Puy simmering in chicken broth, and a dessert to prepare. I set out some olives, serrano ham, and mimolette cheese for the others when they arrived, and got to work. Conrad was soon home and on table-setting duty. By the time the guests arrived, all was well in hand.

Nice little dinner. Kaleb (left in the photo) and Dave (right) have become friends of ours, thanks to the team, but we've not had too many opportunities to chat with either. So we poured some pink wine and I dished up the food, and chatting ranged all over: swim team gossip, Big Shoulders, travel, Kaleb's fatherly/uncle-y, men, men, men. I exaggerate.

Dinner wasn't bad either for a casual Monday:

• chicken I marinated with lemon and lavender, split down the back and roasted flat
• lentils
• simple salad of various lettuces tossed with cherry tomatoes, dressed with non-fat yogurt, salt, and pepper

I sent the others out into the living room while I got to work on dessert: Mexican chocolate souffles. Four ingredients, and courtesy of my friend epicurious.com. I like my chocolate sweet - scorn me as you will, as If I care! - so this worked for me. It was similar to the bittersweet chocolate budini recipe in one of my Joyce Goldstein books, and that's not at all a bad comparison. I would wager that Conrad, for one, quite liked it.

And then we tortured them with photos of Spain - and believe me, we have lots of them. Ah well. We shan't do that to all our dinner guests, have no fear!

Finally, I have to admit the photography was a little off tonight. It's not the best photo of Dave, so I'm ending with a photo from last month's Gay Games, taken in the showers at the UIC physical education building. Enjoy!

Custom House brunch

A second meal in the space of a week with CG, though this time she wasn't jetlagged. Which was fortunate as we rather enjoy being able to have a good natter with her over good food.

Custom House is the newest of Shawn McClain's Chicago restaurant empire. I've not been to his first, Spring, but I have enjoyed Green Zebra the couple of times I've dined there. This new restaurant is his foray into Printer's Row. The South Loop gentrification proceeds quite nicely, it seems.

Service was a little slow, especially given the modest numbers dining in this hotel restaurant. I hope dinner has more polish. It wasn't bad service, though. The coffee kept coming, a good thing over brunch. I had difficulty deciding between a few appealing possibilites on the menu, and I was pleased with the Swiss chard fritatta I opted for. CG and Conrad each had the omelette with manchego, prosciutto, and hollandaise. And then we split a small cheese course. So, we were a little bad this morning. I made up for it with sushi for dinner. That's my story, I'm sticking to it.

I have a chicken roasting in the oven to serve tomorrow night to a couple of teammates. Ironing calls, as does a passel of data entry. The fun I have. At least we did get to do a big shop for wine and beer at Sam's so that we have beverages for next weekend's Allison party!

Quick items

Yes, it's a compulsion. I admit it.

Moving on then: in other news, CG made it home from 2 weeks in France. In the nick of time to make her birthday dinner at Sapori Trattoria as well! Hooray! As always, she rocks our world.

Nobody notices

I just have to toss in a second quick, short post because I am a vain vain vain vain vain creature sometimes.

Friday night.

Monday night.

Spot the difference. I think all of two people at work noticed.

:-P

Gifts of "porn"

How's that for a title that will ensure this blog turns up in searches?

Jeph takes his NBF duties very seriously, and so it was that some "porn" turned up in the mail today, fresh from Amazon. I perhaps shouldn't jokes so incorrectly. Let me explain: one of my classmates in library school, Rich, made what I thought was an apt comparison between cookbooks and porn. He suggested that in each case, people read (or is that "read"?) them and admire the photos and fantasize about emulating all the things between the covers, but they never do. I think he made a good point, and I've delighted in using his comparison since.

Jeph sent me what looks like a very useful book that I'll delight in skimming while I eat breakfast. I will, however, attempt a variety of the sauces it offers. And I'll photograph them and post them here, you will no doubt know by now. Aside from the cookbook, he sent along a graphic novel, a classic storyline from my comic book days of the 80's. I can read and re-read these things many times, so that, too, was greatly appreciated.

Jeph, in other words, a public thank you!

An otherwise mild day. Conrad was busy with work when I got home at about six. I would have started on dinner, but the ground turkey meat wasn't thawed yet. Rather than use the microwave, we opted to go to Yoshi's. I first baked two more of the apple buttermilk tortes and got some basic sweet buttermilk pastry dough into the fridge. Yes, I have to use up more buttermilk. Scones are likely tomorrow, I think.

Dinner was a pleasant time sitting outside, enjoying the evening watching the Halsted Street foot traffic, enjoying our salmon and grilled chicken breast. The photo of me is a little fuzzy, sorry. I had hoped Yoshi would have something on the menu to mark the last hurrah of foie gras in Chicago. What an idiotic undertaking by the City Council, banning the sale or serving of foie gras in Chicago! Doubtless someone will flame me for that in the comments. I still think it's a slippery slope, and they may as well ban carbonated soft drinks from the city because of how they contribute to obesity. Protect the ducks or geese, but let our children get obese? Madness! Feh!


And on that note, time to search for some potential travel ideas and get to bed....

Dinner after practice

The mean coach segued into the happy homemaker tonight.

Pre-appendix issues, we'd enjoyed occasionally having teammates or other friends over for casual little dinners around the peninsula in the kichen; warmer weather means moving those dinners outside now that we've sufficiently restored our daily lives to normal. Tonight's victi-- guests were lane 1 Daniel (pink shirt)and lane 2 Christopher (dark t-shirt). Both men, I should add in the spirit of pimping out my friends, are single. Take the hint, people!


But this is not a blog about them, not tonight. This is about what I whipped up after I got home from work, before coaching swim practice and right after I got back from the pool. I shan't bore you with details of how I cooked things. Cookbooks were involved, I stayed on top of my clean up. That's how it all got done. Nope, this is just to show (or perhaps to show off) what I did with my evening. Happily, things turned out well:

The meal's centerpiece, halibut marinated in chermoula and baked.

A simple salad garnished with toasted pumpkin seeds and a garlic and sherry vinegar vinaigrette.

A chickpea and wild rice salad stood in for the starch portion of the meal.

We sat outside and dined, gossiping about our teammates, enjoying another cool late summer evening. Conrad and Daniel sipped a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that stood up to the various vinegary and lemony tones in the food. Christopher and I stuck to sparkling water. We had a speaker outside to listen to music. The evening grew into night.


Dessert came out.

I rock. Just a little. Come on, give it to me. Okay, now you can gently mock me for the immensely gay pose. Still, it was a lovely cake, a plum upside-down cake scented with cardamom. I had a second extra sliver - that's my extra treat for a few days, I guess, but sooooo worth it!

What is funny to me is that the halibut and the cake are both recipes that we used to do at the restaurant back home. The old stand-by recipes do work! And let it never be said that the 6 or so years spent in a kitchen after getting my BA were years wasted!

Pork! Yes!

We're not long home from dinner out. Opentable.com points whores that we are, we went for a 1000 point offer to diner early (6:00) at Cafe Spiaggia. Good choice Conrad and Peter!

I've been having a less than perfect week. I have a monkey on my back at work that I can't shake. No, let's use a more apt metaphor for this posting: I have a task that I keep playing with like a child pushing undesirable food to different parts of an otherwise empty plate. I'm getting used to eating most of the time in a manner that supports Conrad's dietary needs, and that's not easy for someone with a sweet tooth like mine. I also am not in the water or getting any other really good working out in. I will look forward to the surgeon telling me next week to go ahead and get back in the pool. I really hope it will be so. And those darn cookies from the other night just pick at my compulsive nature - I really hate that they didn't turn out at all well.

Conrad, of course, has been magnificent toward me. I am constantly glad to be able to talk with him, really talk with him. And I'm glad we can have moments like tonight where we dine oh-so-very well.

So, Cafe Spiaggia it was. I've not eaten there, or at its fancier sister, Spiaggia, before tonight. I will be glad to go back. The cafe was certainly a lovely space; better still, we were led to a table right in the window, looking south down Michigan Avenue. Lucky us. When there were natural pauses in the conversation, we had the traffic of all sorts and the rainy early evening to look out on.

One good thing about a modest diet most of the week is that the special dinners are that much more special. There were a number of menu choices tempting us, I should add, and the waiter convinced us to at least share a second course of pasta. Smart man. I hope we tipped him adequately. Conrad enjoyed three glasses of a red wine whose name escapes us while I quaffed San Pelegrino all night.

First up: Tartar di tonno con fagioli nani (Tuna tartar with olives, capers, tomatoes, and marinated rice beans) for Conrad and Insalatina di fagioli verde (Grilled green beans, roasted tomatoes, grilled red onions, basil and shaved pecorino romano in a lemon vinaigrette) for me. Photos follow:



We then shared the special ravioli - they handmake the pastas there, and apparently it was the first night for this one. I wish I'd got the full name, but the ravioli were filled with a light ricotta mixture, while the light sauce had small cubes of beet and poppyseeds. One of the hostesses came by to see how we liked it; it's a winner, we told her.

Dinner. Conrad was very happy with his Halibut in acqua pazza (Oven poached fillet of halibut in a spicy broth with thyme and sautéed spinach). I would have had the same, but they had pork on the menu. It's so bloody hard to get a good pork dish at a restaurant these days. Apparently it's not a meat that sells, but I tell you, pork done right is very hard to beat. Oh sure, barbecue is easier to come by - ribs especially - and I think that all such dishes are very tasty when done well. But I wanted a good chop or a nice bit of roast pork. Thank you Cafe Spiaggia! My dinner, then, was the Maiale al forno (Double cut brined pork chop with creamy buckwheat polenta and grilled apricots). Ahhhhhh, so fine! I would have picked up the bones to gnaw the little meat I couldn't get with knife and fork but for the tables around us.



So yes, a good big dinner, and we would have called it a night there, very happy. But - and I will blame Conrad for this - we decided to linger, Conrad with a third glass of wine, me with some dessert. Bob had recommended the sorbets, and they would be no-fat. But, in for a penny.... I gladly went with the creamy milk custard with figs and honey. And I'd do it again!!

So we're full. And utterly satisfied. We made it home in moderate rain - Chicago is totally socked in tonight. I unloaded my Sur La Table purchases (Brenda, I'm almost done getting a small parcel together!), and now we putter about.

I'm already wondering, though, when we might get back to Cafe Spiaggia....

C is for Compulsion, and that's...

...not very good. Rather like the recipe I tried tonight. Mexican chocolate and pepita shortbread. Cut out into little howling coyote shapes that in retrospect rather resemble cats with heads tipped to one side.

Anyway, awful recipe. Oh, great for pressing into a pan and using as the crust for a cheesecake or similar dessert. Far far too dry and crumbly to make cut out cookies. A shame - the dough tasted fine. Yes, I'm on another cookie dough binge. I will stop, I promise.

I added eggs to the crumbliness, and that bound it some. The result was still difficult to work with, fragile. I made four trays and retired the rest to the freezer for use as a crust one day. Or to discard when I need some room. The latter is more likely.

The kicker is I thought the recipe looked so very good and easy, I doubled the batch.

I think I should get a good night's sleep and keep out of the kitchen for a few days save to make dinner.

Cookies: addendum

I don't usually post recipes; there are two main reasons for this:

1. what I make is the result of haphazardly tossing things into a pan and hoping for the best.

2. I use recipes others have written and published. I have this thing about respecting copyright. Weird librarian thing, I guess.

Having said that, I am offering up a recipe for last night's cookies, sort of. I figure that I'm explicitly crediting the source for one, and I made a small change to the recipe (that anyone with a brain might have conceived, I admit). I seldom have macadamias on hand, but dried cranberries are not too unlikely a presence in my cupboards. So, try these out, and if you go for macadamias, use a cup of chopped nuts for a single recipe, toasting them first.

White Chocolate Chip and Dried Cranberry Cookies

2.5 cups sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ lb (1 cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 cups white chocolate chips
1 cup dried cranberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
3. In a mixer or with handheld beaters, beat together the butter and sugars together at medium speed until light (5 minutes).
4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.
5. At low speed, add the sifted dry ingredients in 3 additions, mixing only until incorporated after each. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula between additions.
6. Add the white chocolate chips and dried cranberries, mixing only until just incorporated. Use a rubber spatula to mix by hand.
7. Drop slightly heaping 2 Tbsp portions of the dough on non-stick, buttered, or foil-lined baking sheets (I don’t butter my sheets – they are fairly well-tempered now – but I will use parchment paper to save me some clean-up bother). Space well apart. Hayot suggests that a sheet can accommodate 12 cookies, and I concur. Well, depends on the size of your sheet.
8. Bake the cookies until golden brown – approximately 12-14 minutes.
9. Cool the cookies on a sheet on a wire rack for a few minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool them.

The cookies will store well in an air-tight container for up to a week. Hayot suggests making a double batch and freezing some. I have done this more than once, with felicitous results. The recipe scales well, I’ve found.


Note:
Recipe is adapted from Dinner at the Authentic Café by Roger Hayot and Sheila Linderman, page 226-7. Original recipe calls for macadamia nuts.

Back to baking

We used to have a cartoon posted near the cash register at the restaurant (well, we used to have a lot of cartoons - I'd really love to find the one of the dog on a chain wound round a tree, the dog thinking to itself something like, "Now if I go in the other direction", captioned "Skippy attempts to dabble in logic") that had the Cookie Monster, drunk, belligerent, complaining in a bar, "Sometimes C is for cookie isn't enough for me!" All of which is my lead up to a posting about me baking again, cookies this time.

Joe's recent post in his blog on chicken sausage (and you should check out his blog - I am stunned by what good stuff he produces, and I'm dying to know if he actually goes to an office job all day and then comes home to whip up such things. If so: DAMN!) hearkened back to my mind a cookbook I like: Roger Hayot's Dinner at the Authentic Cafe. He has some good recipes I've made over and over - the breakfast couscous, the pupusas, the pan de maiz with serrano lime chicken sasuage and chipotle gravy (the linkback to Joe), and - best of all - his white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies (already I can hear Greer's throat constricting from a distance). I had a hankering to bake tonight, so I settled on that recipe. All I needed were the white chocolate chips and the nuts!

The last tray is in the oven - some 4.5 dozen large cookies baked or in process. There will be some happy co-workers tomorrow, I think. I also realized something in this entire process: I'm doing this baking because I'm trying to eat a lot better now that we have to accommodate some changes in Conrad's diet. No more treats, or very few. No scone or cookie or muffin with a morning coffee. Fresh fruit for dessert. Moan moan moan. Like it will kill me. However, it dawned on me that I am doing the baking because I can justify the copious pinches of cookie dough I eat as making sure the dough is okay. See, very rational. Remind me of this when you see photos in weeks to come and I've added back on all the weight I've lost and want to keep lost.



And what of SB? He's busy in the living room knocking out some work he brought home.

chicken and night views

Back to work, back to reality, to borrow from the Beautiful South (who, in turn, lifted a little too liberally from Soul II Soul): Monday means coaching swimming, and that always affects how easily I can get dinner on the table and how late. We all know now that I prefer to dine earlier, but practice ends at 7:30. Compounding it tonight, alas, was Conrad's work keeping him out until 8:15. I ate a plum to hold me until dinner itself.

I started dinner last night, though. Karen Barnaby has a recipe for chicken marinated with lemon, garlic, and fresh lavender leaves in her Screamingly Good Food cookbook. It's a real simple winner, and one I use turn to whenever I find fresh lavender leaves at Whole Foods. An underrated herb, I think. I left the bone-in chicken breasts marinating in a a zip-lock bag overnight. When I got home from work this afternoon, I cranked up the oven to 425 and baked them both up. When they were done, I turned off the oven and removed the pan. After ten minutes, I covered the breasts with a casserole dish, popped them back in the oven, and didn't worry about them.

Once home again, the oven went back on at a low temperature. I also started heating the dinner plates. Meanwhile, I chopped garlic and sauteed it gently. When crispy golden, I mixed the oil and garlic with salt and sherry vinegar to dress a simple salad of lettuce and tomato. The chicken breasts were so large that we hardly needed side dishes!

It was a lovely evening once again for sitting outside and eating. A simple dinner and some sparkling water. I grabbed a couple of minutes of twilight to photograph the eastern (deeper blue) and western skies from our balcony.