a basic dinner

What a nice, simple, easy Tuesday at home last night.  Conrad and I continue to work our way through the series Cougar Town, watching it while we eat dinner.  That dinner last night?  A basic corn and zucchini risotto with a few sweet Italian sausages.  I made the risotto, I only cooked the sausages that I bought from the store.  Nothing too fancy, just Tuesday dinner. 

The Duck Inn

Okey dokey, folks, let get caught up.  I am heading out of the country tomorrow for a handful of days, and I won't be taking the laptop along, so I should get some blog entries queued up for while I am gone.  Join me, then, as we go back in time to Chicago...

Conrad and I didn't get a dinner to ourselves at the conference, but we did get to dine out a couple of times with friends who were also in attendance at the event.  Friday night we enjoyed The Gage with Janice and William.  Saturday we headed out of our usual way, down to the Bridgeport neighbourhood, to meet up with Ed at The Duck Inn.

Cute name, right?  I can't recall ever having gone to a restaurant or bar or shop in that neighbourhood in all my years in Chicago, but I'm glad Ed found the place and recommended it.  I still don't get the knife in Conrad's cocktail, but I otherwise rather liked the place.  A nice patio set up out back for a fine summer evening (and before the smoke overtook Chicago).  A clear vibe of locals and regulars.

Conrad and I arrived early, so we enjoyed a cocktail each (mine was the In Bloom: Dandelion - yum!),

and then joined Ed at a table.  We shared duck wings,

a burrata dish, and the duck and octopus sausage. 

Then we each had a Chicago dog. 

It felt silly and right.  Did we have dessert?  I can't recall, but I think we skipped it.

My verdict:  heck yes, I'd go back.  I love it when I look at a menu and think, I would happily order anything from this.  Great options, a nice setting.  Worth a return for sure!

lunch, dinner, brunch (NOLA)

More New Orleans food while I am here (and though this will post later in the week, it's Sunday night, one more night to go!).

Saturday lunch I dined with my friend John.  He's vegetarian, sometimes vegan, and hey, I like vegetables.  Genuinely!  He suggested a place not too far from the convention center, Carmo, and while it had many vegetarian and even vegan options, it also had non-vegetarian options.  A glass of wine each, and we both opted for different versions of the Rico. 

Fried plantains, with pork for me.  Yum!  Really satisfying.

Saturday night I had dinner with Maggie.  I opted for Luke for us in between receptions (we missed the second because dinner was nice and relaxed).  I'd been there in years past, and I remembered it as an oyster bar/French-ish bistro in a hotel.  They still serve oysters, but I didn't see them all on display on ice.  No matter.  Maggie is not a raw bar fan, and the man at the next table was having a super-delicious looking food, so I ordered what he had:  red beans and rice with fried chicken. 

Damn satisfying!

Sunday brunch I skipped out of the conference with some colleagues and we sought brunch.  And oh, look:  hello Luke!  A glass of sparkling rose, but the main event?  A standard-ish breakfast.  That makes it sound boring, but by gosh I wanted some decent grits and a biscuit. 

Locals will surely quibble, but mmmmmm.

More food from New Orleans to come!

this week on the balcony

Readers - all three of you - I am lazy. It has been said before, and I have just restated it. And here: I am lazy.

Summer brings it out in my. That's my excuse this week. OK to stick with it until October and the start of Christmas music season?

How lazy? Monday I prevailed on Conrad to pick up sushi for us. Tuesday? Cornish game hens.




Yesterday was a one pot/one bowl dish: mussels. I made a salty, peppery, saffron-y tomato and fennel broth and cooked the mussels and some vegetables in that. We had a bottle of a Portuguese white wine, and followed it all with mixed nuts for dessert.
Lovely lovely evening outside.

Tonight? Also simple. I sliced up pre-made chicken (turkey? Wow, I really am getting absent-minded) sausage and tossed it with tomato, fennel, shallots, red pepper, seasonings. Baked it all at a high temperature in a parcel of parchment (secured with foil). Served it with a bit of corn and very simple salad.

Martinis to sip. Heaven out on the balcony, though a little cold.

Dessert? Swedish fish that TK sent to Conrad.

;-)

Saturday night will be date night at home, and I will try harder then, I swear. Let's hope the weather holds out well enough for another evening on the balcony!

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.

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!

shrimp in parchment

Conrad and I have been very very bad lately. So much travel, so much going on, distracting us from exercise and making it all too easy for us to turn to comforting, bad foods.

In short, we're bulking up, and that's not good.

Conrad hit the treadmill tonight while I made up a fairly simple low carb dinner for us. Some big shrimp peeled, a roasted pepper and garlic chicken sausage cubed, some asparagus, a tomato, some onion, some olives. Salt, pepper, oregano, olive oil. Toss it all together and put into parchment. A bit of time in a hot oven, and Bob's your uncle: a fairly light dinner that was filling. Mmmmmm... tasty tasty fiber and vitamins!



Of course, now I'm off to bake some cookies, so intentions have only taken me so far tonight....

Chinatown walking tour

Yes, I'm back.

A couple of, well, busy and not entirely easy weeks behind me. Nevermind, let's get back to food and travel and musings.

We're in Vancouver for the long weekend, and of course it's gorgeous weather. Nary a cloud. Warm without being hot. Conrad must be in town - he is a good luck charm when it comes to west coast weather. Thus we needed sunscreen yesterday, and caps, and water: walking for hours in Chinatown necessitated protection for my pale, pasty, white skin.

We've had the condo for two years now, and it shames us that we've never really explored (or shopped in) Chinatown despite our proximity to that neighbourhood. Yesterday we rectified that by taking part in a walking tour offered by Edible BC. It's a great store we've shopped in and ordered from and even done the Chefs in the Market dinners at. Highly highly recommended. And add the tours to that recommendation.

Conrad, Marie, and I met chef Dora Ho and three other tour participants in front of the Chinese Cultural Center on Pender. From there it was a short stroll up the street to Jade Dynasty for dim sum. Ever had that? Stodgy, lukewarm things served from a cart? This was better - no carts. Things came hot from the kitchen, and any feared stodginess was not in evidence. Instead it was all light and fresh and utterly tasty. We all three (and the others) especially liked the pepper salt squid - spicy, crispy, good.

Dora took us through the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden,

explaining some of the history of the neighbourhood, and then got us to the food stores. And what an array there is to be seen there. This may sound odd to people who know me and food, but I've not shopped much in Chinatown because, not knowing the names of everything let along the preparation methods, I simply didn't have the confidence to shop there. Well, I have some small knowledge now. Expect to see a few things pop up in future blog posts from here.

Up first, veggies. Dora pointed out some things and explained how they might be used (she did give us some recipes) and even whether they were known for heating or cooling properties. I had my eye on the abundance of greens that can be steamed simply, but the winter melon fascinated us all.

Next up, baked goods. This was tough because we were still rather sated from the dim sum. Dora bought some meat and vegetable buns - just made and nicely warm inside - and some sweet buns filled with a coconut, peanut, and sugar mixture. The variety of traditional style things (mochi-like treats, anyone?) and Western adaptations (mini wiener buns) was a delight.

More produce, this time with a focus on fruit The stall had the infamous durian (which we didn't try though we were all jarred to see that within the enormous fruit it was only some custardy yellow segments that get eaten). Dora bought us some rambutan (looks cool, pretty much a fancy lychee, nice) and mangosteen. I'd always wondered how to eat those things. Now I know. Another fruit with edible segments within, and these were very tasty. Dora gave us the great idea to serve some of these fruit quite simply as a dessert - leave them whole in a bowl for how lovely they are and let guests enjoy them unadorned. I think this is a terrific idea.

We didn't linger in the fish shop too long, just long enough to gawk a bit.

Nothing to taste on the fly there! ;-)

There are a number of dried goods stores (and it seems that they also provide herbalist consultations and remedies) Dora explained how much of what we saw would be used for broths and teas. The geckos, too? Yep, the geckos, too.

On to her preferred butcher. Sausages hanging throughout and even pressed ducks. Dora bought us some BBQ pork, some suckling pork, and some sausage. I loved the suckling most of all, but I can assure you that the greedy fingers of all 6 of us on the tour dug in eagerly.

Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was that we had a nice little group with 6 of us willing to try things and all of us liking food greatly. It certainly was a credit to Dora, the tour. We got four hours of wandering a not too huge area, but Conrad and I were thoroughly exhausted at the end of it (and well fed). Home wasn't far away, which meant a well-deserved nap for us both.