secret ingredient (salmon)

Fine, not so secret. I'll tell you: I marinated some salmon to bake up for dinner, and the key ingredient that threw Conrad for a loop when I told him was Crown Royal scotch.

I know, weird, right?

It's an idea sort of borrowed from a Joyce Goldstein cookbook and sort of dimly remembered from evening grilling salmon at the restaurant. I mixed some scotch, soy sauce, light brown sugar, garlic, and ginger, added oil, and left the salmon to sit a couple of hours. It might have been more interesting to have it sit longer, but oh well.

While the salmon baked, I heated some vegetable oil and sesame oil, then gently sauteed some big pieces of garlic, just to flavour the oil. After I removed the garlic I tossed in slices of white onion and zucchini, plus some chile flakes. Once they'd browned slightly, I added some bok choy to the pan, stirred it to wilt it a bit, then some soy sauce and a cover. This went underneath the salmon on the serving plate, though I served it atop the salmon ultimately.

Nice dinner, though. Pretty simple to do. We had a bottle of a Mission Hill Pinot Noir we'd enjoyed on our last trip to Vancouver, and some fresh cherries to munch on as twilight drew over the neighbourhood. Conrad took photos of me hamming it up for his delight. I'm shameless, I know.

7 miles in the AM. Woo-hoo!

coconut blondies

More baking.

An addendum to yesterday's post: Conrad had a site visit this morning, so he didn't take the Breton cake in with him. Instead, I shared it with people in my department and elsewhere in the Library. I had half a slice, and it seemed quite nice. I'll make that one again, I think.

I spent time tonight looking for something interesting to do with egg whites that I hadn't done before. No luck finding a simple recipe that appealed to me, so I hunted down a blondies recipe and went from there.

The blondies use dark brown sugar, hence the not-so-blondeness. The bittersweet chocolate pieces also make them look more like conventional brownies. Our kitchen isE marvellously scented from them, thanks in large part to the toasted sweetened coconut in the recipe. I'm tempted to have a before-bed snack, but I'll behave. We'll see what Conrad's colleagues think of them tomorrow instead.

Gâteau Breton aux noix

Did I mention this recently? I'm on a few food kicks lately. Walnuts. Feta. Radishes. Rose wine. I can't explain why; I'm just going with it.

After dinner tonight I decided to look for a quick recipe to use some walnuts, something Conrad could bring in to his office for their weekly Tuesday morning snack fix. Having heard from them a bunch of them on Saturday night about how they loved the cookies and all the other baking, the pressure was on. But I really wanted to use walnuts, and I was not in a mood to be rolling out lots of things or frosting or filling or glazing.

The Gâteau Breton aux noix recipe I found on epicurious.com fit the bill. Breton cake, as we'd say in English - a simple French butter cake, but this time flavoured with ground toasted walnuts. Egg yolks, butter, sugar, walnuts, flour. That's it. Easy. A long bake gave me time to tidy up some laundry and write some cards. I'm up a little late, but the cake smells wonderful and looks like something I'd want with coffee in the morning. I leave you with photos. Sleep well all!

The Festival of the One True Taste

Looking back, it's kind of funny that I've never really blogged one of my favourite restaurants in Chicago: Topolobampo/Frontera Grill. Yes, yes, yes, I know. Two restaurants. The fine dining room, the casual side. It's two sides of the same coin to me, and both are excellent. I know that some people feel it doesn't live up to its reputation, but what does? The Bayless' restaurants are two of the best I've been to in Chicago, and in seven years I've not been disappointed.

Tonight, though, was outstanding.

Each year, the restaurant holds a benefit dinner for its Frontera Farmer Foundation, providing grant money to small organic local farmers. An admirable cause, especially given how well we eat as result. No, not cheap. The price you gotta pay.

We dined again with RAD, and an intriguing mix of others that totalled ten of us in all. Lots of conversation flying across the table, and though Conrad and I couldn't chat because we were at separate ends of the table, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The dinner pairs several courses involving fresh, seasonal produce with good wines, and tonight may have been the best of the handful I've attended. Here's the rundown (I'm pretty much typing these verbatim from the menuat hand):

Mojito Super Fresca (muddled strawberries, cucumber, lime, and hoja santa, spiked with Hornitos blanco tequila, sparked with soda) (no photo, sorry)

Herby homemade goat cheese (Bayless garden hoja santa, toasted sesame, and salsa negra) (again, no photo, but rest assured that Conrad was quite pleased with this!)

Tallgrass Grassfed Ribsteak (carpaccio style, with savory rhubarb shaved ice, three chile slasa, and Bayless garden microgreens)(paired with 2006 Knappstein Riesling, Claire Valley, Australia) (pleasant, nice, not outstanding, but a good warm-up)

Klug Farm asparagus soup (wood-roasted poblano chiles, quail egg, cucumber, thick cream, dill)(2006 St Hallett Poacher's Blend, Barossa Valley, Australia - a Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc blend) (my FAVOURITE course of the night. WOW!. Some kick to it, and I would love to have some for leftovers in my lunch tomorrow!)

Pan-seared Alaskan black cod (sweet corn tamales filled with Spence Farm nettles and homemade ricotta, smoky roasted tomato-Oaxacan pasilla sauce and black olives)(2005 Stonier Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, Australia)(close second. I think that Frontera/Topolopbampo is actually the best seafood restaurant in town)

Applewood-smoked Maple Creek Farm pork loin (red guajillo chile sauce, Harmony Valley sunchoke-potato budin, Beck Grove "bread 'n' butter" kumquats, Three Sisters Garden salad of sunflower shoots and pea tendrils)(2005 St Hallett "Faith" Shiraz, Barossa Valley, Australia)(another winner!)


Klug Farm, Sugar Coated: homemade puff pastry napoleon filled with rhubarb cream (scented with Mexican vanilla); strawberry-rhubarb drizzle, strawberry juice jewels, strawberry dipped in Mexican chocolcate (Cockburn's 10 year Tawny Port, Douro Valley, Portugal)

Tasting of Sauza's Tres Geberaciones blanco, reposado, and añejo tequilas

Coffee

So, it's midnight now, and I'm letting things wear off a little before bed. The pours of wine were reasonable, and seconds were available for the easy asking. I asked. A few times. But quite a fine night. We left it up to Bob and Helen to invite people they knew, and complied with Bob's command to split up and sit with people we didn't already know. I still found msyelf across from him and next to Helen, but ah well. Conrad did fine, and I talked with others as well. So, all in all, a very fine evening of exceptional food and good company. On top of that, Topolobampo is a handsome space in and of itself.


Ahhh, for the chance to go back soon.

I'm just glad that I don't have anything early on my schedule for tomorrow!

Photos of the big group RAD assembled:Conrad and Judith


Margaret and RAD


Mark, Conrad, and Judith


Andy and Carmen


Carmen, me, and Helen


Susan, Carmen, and Conrad



Me and Andy


Me and Andy


Susan and Carmen

engineers

Hot on the heels of the Wave cooking demo, we had to get home, shower, make ourselves pretty, and head on down to The Rookery to attend a professional society dinner for engineers.



I shan't blog much on this beyond the photos. Sorry. In short: speeches, Conrad's colleagues, catered dinner(I've had worse - how's that for damning with faint praise?).

The Rookery, however, is lovely. And I will say that the speeches passed far more quickly than Conrad feared.

Oh, I kind of like how I look!
I'm really rocking the ties this week. Dave, don't drool too much, okay?!?!

:-P

Wave demo

This was a fun activity: a cooking demo at the W Hotel.

Dave called us up in the middle of last week. Did we want to go to the W with him as a very early birthday treat for me? Gosh, twist our arms, Dave! He had made the Filipino demo sound so appealing when we had dinenr with him last week that we were quite happy to oblige. So, despite a sunny June Saturday afternoon, we found ourselves in a hotel restaurant oh-so-close to the lakeshore, enjoying a demo of Provençal food.

There was much to like about the afternoon. Dave is already good company alone, but his colleague Annie and her husband Edmade for additional good conversation. The lavender lemonade cocktails got us warmed up, and the demo was fun.

The W and the executive chef Christine Subidohave been doing these sessions for a handful of months now. It's still chramingly loose and a little unpolished. There were occasional mistakes in the typed recipes we all received, for example. But it was a friendly environment, and Christine answered questions happily.

The end result? Some good food on a Saturday afternoon. All was good, with the stuffed zucchini blossoms being most photogenic,
and the tomato gratin being the most tasty, I think.

We'll try to get in on another one of these, I hope. In the menatime, we're grateful to Dave for a good afternoon outing!

chiles rellenos

The first thing to tell you is that the wine we opened was terrible. Just not good at all. It was a Texas wine we'd bought when we were in Austin, a Chenin Blanc called Jacques Lapin (Get it? Huh? Huh? Get it?).It's never a good sign when white wine reminds you of Corona with a twist of lime. We quickly abandoned it and went for a Lang Vineyards Pinot Meunier instead. Not stellar, but far more drinkable. So much so that we killed the bottle while looking for old Chicago books in library catalogues. It's what we do for fun around here.

I've been trying to moderate my dining out, especially since we're committed to a few food events this weekend. Sunday night will be especially good, I think. Faced with that, I very much wanted to cook at home ttonight.

"Mexican" food tonight. I made a quick pan of refried pinto beans and seared some zucchini and onions seasoned with cumin, salt, oregano, and lime juice.

The main thing was the chile relleno we each enjoyed. I cubed up a turkey thigh (those things are huge!) and sauteed it with salt, oregano, and onion. After I turned up the heat, I added some chicken broth to braise the meat and to reduce down. I also coarsely crumbled a bunch of dried porcini mushrooms into the mix. I must have added more chicken broth three or four times, letting it reduce into a thick brown sauce as the meat tenderized.

Meanwhile I had two lovely poblano chiles under the broiler, roasting so that I could peel them. Peeled and seeded, they were stuffed with a bit of some nice creamy sheep's milk feta and a bunch of the turkey. I then dredged the chile in flour, dipped it in an egg and milk mix, then rolled it in coarse cornmeal. Into a pan of hot oil it went. The felicitous result is what you see in the photos.



Conrad found the poblano to be kind of spicy, but he's a bit of a wuss (and he knows it!). A decent dinner, though it grew to be curiously cool outside. Happily, by that point we'd finished our dinner, our wine, and the last of the New Zealand macadamia buter toffee crunch.