another gap of time

Let's see, what's the latest excuse?

It occurs to me that I should just post links to my Twitter feed and Flickr photos and cut out the blogging, save myself some time. But then I think about how tough it is to fit commentary into the 140 characters Twitter allows, or how I'm reluctant to put in my snippy comments about my own vanity in Flickr photo descriptions because it's meant to be a joint album with Conrad. So blog it is, and a recommitment through the summer and beyond.

Tonight, though, a quick check in with the latest reason why I was out of touch:

(Jason, Jeff, Susan, Tim, Dianne, Jake)

If you know your large American state universities, you may recognize that structure as the iconic well on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus. And if not, well, I've just told you where I was. A week away at an intense and intensive institute, and though I had Internet in my oh-so-cozy dorm room, I was not up for blogging. Some evenings I lost myself in laps at the Natatorium on campus,
(second shot was at the slightly crazy - I admit - time of 5:30 on the Friday morning) other nights we had group meals for the institute participants (photos to come at a later time, save for this fabulous shot of the magnificent Carolyn). During the day, when we had breaks, we were all trying to digest what we'd heard.

I don't care to share work-related things on this blog - I'm fairly careful not to - so I won't go into detail on my days spent learning. I'll post a few other UNC photos another evening (Conrad is out of town tomorrow night, so perhaps then?) and otherwise catch up on some meals at home and elsewhere.

Night!

grilled squid

A new appetizer graces Yoshi's menu. We quickly zeroed in on it last night: grilled squid. Mmmmm. Squid is one of those things (like radicchio or scallops) that takes the smoky char of grilling and transforms into almost a whole new food. Too rhapsodic? Ah well.



I liked it muchly. I especially liked the tentacles in crisp tempura batter - nice touch Yoshi!

And Conrad? How did you like it?



Ah, raspberries have distracted you. I should have known.

;-)

Dinner Like No Other

Is it really the 7th Annual one of these? How many have we been to over the years? Hard to recall, but gladly we go back year after year. Sunday night past, friends, was the Frontera Farmer Foundation Festival Dinner Like No Other.

And it was good.

OK, a warning: I've been using my iPhone (LOVE IT) for taking a lot of food photos lately because I can quickly, conveniently post them to various social sites like Flickr or Twitpic or Facebook. The shots, however, are not very good. Blurry (I shake a lot) and in poor light. Next year we bring a proper camera, provided our tablemates don't throttle us in annoyance with our photography!

Onward, though. RAD
assembled a terrific group this year. There were familiar faces like Linda (beside RAD) and her husband Tim, as well as Jim (whose wife, Dianne, could not make it). New to us were Sue and Glen
and Katie and Robert. Curiously, Katie visited my blog earlier today (it's Tuesday night as I write this) and realized that Conrad and I had shared a table with Robert and her mother at a wine tasting dinner. I thought he looked a little familiar.

Engaging conversation aside, what was great about the group this year was how quickly we marshaled our resources and committed to Linda's idea for us to bid as a group on one of the really super silent auction items. So it is that I now find myself in an e-mail thread with the others as we figure out a convenient date for us all to enjoy cocktails at the Bayless home late this summer. Really, how cool is that? Rick Bayless has such remarkable knowledge of the cuisine, and his restaurants have longevity and accolades to show for it. Amazing to me, and well worth the cost once we divided it 11 ways.

So thanks RAD, for organizing a great evening. And thanks Frontera family for fine dining. Again, we single out our Jill, the sommelier, because we think she's super. Good wines with good food. We came home feeling quite happy on Sunday night.

The food (and more blurry shots, again I apologize):

Pecan-crusted goat cheese with organic microgreens, maple syrup-sherry vinegar dressing, and dehydrated bacon. An amuse-bouche that wasn't too sweet and yet would have made a fine dessert course. To use a cliche, we hit the ground running with that one. Very good, and the strawberry margarita (no, not a frozen slushy kind) was equally enjoyed.

Ancho-infused duck sausage, duck fat mashed potatoes, homemade ancho sauerkraut, rooftop salad. Paired with the 2008 Miguel Torres Santa Digna Gewurztraminer (Chile). Duck fat mashed potatoes? Rich. Good. Yum!

Chilled nettle and peppercress soup with homemade crema, pea shoot leaves, roasted poblano, squid ink caviar. Best course of the night - and that is saying something. Paired with a marvelously fragrant 2008 Torres 'Vina Esmeralda" (Spain). A cool soup that left a little burn. Had I bread in front of me, that bowl would have been spotless from my mopping it all up. Shots of before the soup was added to the bowl and after.


Alaskan king salmon, licoricey pasilla chile sauce, grilled asparagus, grapefruit, "forbidden" black rice. We had to ask for more corn tortillas to have with this sauce. Deep flavours, and more appealing heat. We switched to red at this point, a 2006 Torres "Salmos" (Spain). My belief, by the way, is that Frontera Grill/Topolobampo do fish better than almost anyone else in Chicago. Given my Friday night dinner and this one, I'm sticking with that claim.

Frontera pork cassoulet of slow-braised pork belly and shoulder, long green beans, achiote-flavoured white beans, sunflower shoot salad. Cassoulet? Are you kidding me? My eyes popped when I saw that one on the menu - I love cassoulet mightily. This was another high point, in my opinion. I'm also a fan of achiote - we used to marinate halibut with it back home - and the orange-y scent came through, subtly, with the beans. I also loved the wine with this one, the 2006 Torres "Celeste 7PM" (Spain).

Dessert. OK, I confess, it looks a little, well, weirdly presented. Almost like an accident. No matter. I think it was a deliberate presentation: broken into pieces to look like coral. Hence the name: pistachio coral cake with Cabot strawberries, Mexican vanilla cream, and pistachio polvorone. Truly, could they have hit on any other of my favourite things that night? Well, yes, of course - I have a long list - but pistachio-flavoured baking is something that always catches my eye on menus.

After that it was coffee (decaf), and we did ask nicely enough to get another glass of red wine (I should add that the wine flowed very generously that evening - no one went thirsty). They did a smart thing this year, too: much as I like the idea of the trio of tequilas tasting at the end of the night, I thought it better they doled out a single glass of an aged tequila. Not too overwhelming or intimidating, and I rather liked it as an after dinner drink. Like a fine scotch, though that is doubtless heresy in the view of some friends.

All that for a decent price (the staff donate their time, so thank you all, Frontera family) which I won't disclose but I will say that we got more than our money's worth. 8th Annual, I look forward to you already.

gay figure skating shirt

My vanity knows no bounds. No, really. If you know me at all by now, you will know that much about me. I am a vain creature, and I cop to it. Gladly.




Because really, is that not a fabulous shirt? My gay figure skating shirt, as I call it. Bought at a shop in Ponsonby, Auckland earlier this year - and on sale. Go ahead and mock me if you will, but y'all know that I am one hot bitch in that finery.

;-)

dinner failure: trout

I'm more than a little miffed right now. Not at anyone - Conrad is safe from my ire, assuredly (he so rarely does anything that gets up my nose anyway) - just kind of at myself and Whole Foods and the evening and ...

[deep breath]

I bought a couple of rainbow trout yesterday at the gaybourhood Whole Foods. I've had good success baking them before. I figured I'd make them for tonight's dinner somehow. Great. Through the day today I pondered idea on and off and decided to pull in some nuts and fennel. Excellent. I love it when a cooking idea comes together.

Got home - soaking wet, thank you Chicago weather this "summer" - and began work on the fish. I thinly sliced a bulb of fennel and a shallot and set them to caramelize slightly in olive oil with some coarse ground pepper and some coarse salt mixed with fennel seed and saffron. Cleaned and cut up (only a little) some rainbow chard for steaming, set it aside. Made a mixture of walnuts, parsley, fennel fronds, fennel seed, more pepper and the coarse salt and buzzed it down in the food processor until it was a kind-of sticky coating for the fish. Set out a pate of flour and an egg and milk wash for the fish as well. Got a pan ready. Pre-heated the oven. Got the fish out of the fridge.

Hmmm. An off odour. A bit of a concern. I forged ahead. Sometimes the raw fish has a scent but the cooked dish is fine. Really. I hoped. I trimmed it up, coated it, got it into the oven.

And thought to myself that it likely would be off-tasting.

All of the parts done I plated it, photographed it, and called Conrad to the table. And before he could sit down, I took a taste. Yep. Off. Just not right. Under the strong (tasty) nut crust, it was a skanky little bit of fish without much flavour other than, well, off.

But I was biased. I was letting my thoughts take over. Conrad - the love of my life but not as discerning a palate, sorry - would be the final arbiter. He found it bland, but there was a lingering off taste for him, too.

Into the garbage it went. I scrambled to salvage a dinner of the veggies for Conrad and a quickly cooked chicken sausage. I also had a sausage, but there weren't enough veggies. Raw radishes and a bit of feta completed my incredible plate. Sad. Pathetic.

Ah, but no feeling sorry for me. I bought the fish without smelling it first. I should have chucked it earlier and called Ping Pong for delivery. And I've got some German Riesling to make me feel a little better.

But truly, I am miffed to have to waste food and to have put effort into something that I had to toss.

[deep breath] [deep breath]

snout to tail, sort of

There are people out there who dine far more than I do and who keep up on the food lit far better than I do; I, however, am not exactly a slouch. So it is that I've happened upon the "snout to tail" concept of cooking a number of times in the past year. Pigs are the object - snout should give it away - though I imagine that chefs have tried it with other critters, too (horse, anyone?).

Tonight was my basic, simple, easy version using a very different "creature": the humble beet.

Fine, I'm stretching it to call it snout to tail. It's just that I think, I suspect, too many people buy beets (and that number, judging by the scrunched up faces on some of my friends, is not a large number of folk) and use only the root. A pity. Me? I love greens, and beet greens are high on my list. Years back I visited my Mum's family outside of Boston (the original, that is), and I asked if they cooked with the greens from all the sugar beets harvested. The look they gave me told me that they really did think I was a sad, backwater cousin.

Anyway, back to cooking. I decided that I would toss a few cut-up golden beets with some cauliflower and chicken sausage. Flavouring it all would be leek and shallot, plus olive oil, coarse salt, pepper, and whole cumin seed. Wrap it all in parchment (and foil, which helps secure it, I find) and pop into a hot oven until I could smell good things. I trusted the beets would be tender by then, and - happily for me - they were. Just before I opened the package I steamed up the greens, then plated it all simply. A glass of a German Riesling, and I was set for dinner. Dinner alone. Only 4 more hours until Conrad comes home, though, and at least he'll come home to a well-fed husband!

first of two Frontera meals this weekend

My life, in case I haven't mentioned it before, is very far from bad. Very very far. OK, sure, Conrad is in Hawaii until late tomorrow night, and we'll only have a week together before we each have to go to opposite coasts for work. On the other hand, I've had three great evenings with friends this week already: RAS and Yoshi's on Sunday, CG and a kitchen dinner on Wednesday, and Smelts for cocktails at KitKat last night. Fun!

Tonight capped it nicely - my first of two dinners this weekend at Frontera Grill. CG has done us all proud with another degree, and her parents are in town this weekend for the ceremony. Lucky me, I got treated to dinner with the three of them.

A few photos to share. I was trying to get a shot of the butterfly bushes outside the restaurant, but I realized on viewing it that it captured something important: that thanks to their policy of very restricted reservations, you either line up before opening or wait it out in the bar. We opted for the former, and when I got there a handful of minutes before 5:00, already some two-dozen folk were in line. You can get a hint of it in the reflection in the window.

CG and family were great company. We shared some appetizers (quesadillas done in a Mexico City style, rather like turnovers, and some pork flautas). CG and I opted for the Topolo margarita each while her parents enjoyed Rioja. I switched to an Oregon Pinot Gris with my dinner, the Atlantic salmon in a sauce I made sure to mop up as thoroughly as possible with tortillas. CG, meanwhile, has been corrupted by me and Conrad and now can be espied taking photos of her food as well!


;-)

It was lovely conversation and great food, and I was especially gratified that CG's Mom was intrigued by a few of the desserts. I always appreciate someone who lets me get away with my sweet tooth. We ordered three for the table in the end. Two are shown here - I just wasn't happy with my fuzzy iPhone photo of the third, the mango upside down cake. Which is a shame, because while I liked all three desserts, I liked the cake the most. Ah well. The custards were silky, rich, very pretty. The shortcake featured strawberries that tasted like strawberries and a shortcake that was anything but dry. Damning it with faint praise, perhaps, but I sometimes think that strawberry shortcake is a good idea that never ever lives up to what it evokes.

Cafe de olla finished me off, and I was glad for a walk of a handful of blocks.

One fine evening, and here's the beauty of it - I get to go back on Sunday night for a fundraiser dinner. Stoked is what I am, very much so!

beautiful buildings and rooms

Yep, still ticking along here. It's been a quiet week is all. Conrad is in Hawaii until Saturday, and while I had a lovely dinner with RAS at Yoshi's on Sunday, I wanted to catch up with her, not blog. And while I made some delectable halibut with frizzled leeks and red chard for dinner with CG last night, I wanted to catch up with her, not blog. Maybe this weekend fun things will happen. Certainly the weather here hasn't been conducive to peppy postings.

Instead, I'll reach back and simply show a few shots from last Saturday. Conrad's company took part in Employee's Day at the Art Institute, and we took advantage of the free admission to go admire the new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing.

I'm embarrassed at how long it's been since last I was at the Art Institute. Good to go and see the early 20th Century European works especially - I'm rather fond of that sort of thing.

After time spent enjoying (or not - sorry to you, assortment of modern American crap) the galleries, we wandered to the Palmer House Hilton in search of an afternoon cocktail. No luck there - weddings abounded. Onward we pressed and ended up in a luxurious space, the Atwood Cafe at the Hotel Burnham. OK, maybe luxurious is overstating, but the scheme always feels a little wonderfully OTT. A certain luridness (is that a word?) that I like. We sat at the bar and each had a martini plus some seriously kick ass smoked almonds. I'd go back just for those. In fact, I will.

Later Saturday night we attended a professional association banquet that Conrad's company had purchased tables at. The food? Fine enough. The speeches were minimal, the presentations were pleasant. The space? Glorious. Formerly the Chicago Public Library and now the Chicago Cultural Center. Can I get married here? Check out that Tiffany (yes, THE Tiffany) glass dome ceiling, and oooooo, that tilework all over. Stunning.

second home

Oh wait, we have a second home, the condo in Vancouver. Hmmm.

Third home. Yes, third home. Yoshi's of course. Our attendance in recent weeks has been shoddy at best. Negligent is a better way to describe it. Nevermind. We made it in last night and each had the lamb chops we love so much, served with a tempura poblano relleno. Mmmmm. Even better, Yoshi sent out a little bowl of something that was essentially agedashi tofu - tempura fried tofu in a bonito broth. Ever since Medgar introduced me to this dish when I moved to Chicago I've loved it, so it was an especial delight last night.

Plus, at the risk of sounding too much more vain, I really think I looked good. Nice jacket that CG helped me pick out - I don't think it's evident, but I'm smartening up a pair of jeans by putting this jacket and tie on. Spiffy!