No new recipe this week. I wanted to concentrate on our coverage of this year’s International Home + Housewares Show. But I also wanted to remind you that Passover begins Monday evening, March 25. If you’re looking for a dessert idea, you absolutely cannot do better than Marion’s Matzoh Crack, made with white chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate and spicy rose sugar. As the name suggests, it is addictive.
Pork and beef meatloaf is flavored with basil, scallions, garlic and Chinese five-spice powder, topped with pickled carrots and daikon, then served with baguette slices for this American take on Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches. Recipes below.
We love border-crossing cooking. When ingredients and techniques travel across boundaries and cultures, food gets interesting. Vietnamese cuisine is a perfect example. Not only does it share herbs and spices with its Asian neighbors, but it borrows from its culinary past as a French colony.
A family favorite here at Blue Kitchen is Marion’s Vietnamese Beef Stew. The slow cooked, meaty, multi-spiced dish is served with a French baguette instead of rice and eaten with forks and spoons, not chopsticks. Similarly, bánh mì—in the West, delicious, usually meaty Vietnamese sandwiches—are served on baguettes. In Vietnam, the term bánh mì actually means bread or, more specifically, French bread. Continue reading “Bánh Meatloaf: Classic Vietnamese sandwich gets American comfort food treatment”
Sustainably farmed tilapia is simply steamed with wine and lemon juice on a bed of sautéed leeks and garlic for this weeknight-quick seafood recipe.
Eating seafood keeps getting trickier. For years now, we’ve been urged to eat more of it for our health. Fish is a low-fat source of protein. And instead of the artery-clogging, cholesterol-raising saturated fats found in meats, even fatty fish such as salmon contain heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids that do all sorts of good things for us.
But also for years, we’ve been warned about mercury and other harmful pollutants in some fish. We’ve been told that certain species are being overfished to the verge of extinction, and that fish farming often takes a heavy toll on the environment. And now a study on seafood fraud says that even when we try to choose the right seafood, chances are good we’re not getting what we think we are. Continue reading “Steamed Fish with Leeks and the challenges of seafood fraud”
Mango filling adds a lively twist to this traditional Purim cookie. Recipe below.
An interesting thing about Mad Men to me is that the producers chose to depict Sterling Cooper as a status quo, advertising-as-usual ad agency. Three-martini lunches and solid, but don’t-rock-the-boat creative. That was the norm then, but a handful of brilliant agencies were indeed rocking the boat with smart, funny, engaging creative. One such agency was Doyle Dane Bernbach. They created the legendary “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen in 1959. Ten years before that, they introduced this charming campaign for a Jewish bakery in Brooklyn:
Continue reading “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Mango Hamantaschen”
Elements of two classic comfort foods combine in meaty, satisfying Braised Veal Shanks with White Beans. Recipe below.
Don’t get me wrong. I love osso buco. I’ve even made the time-honored Italian dish. But when I recently got my hands on some nice looking veal shanks, I wanted to try something different. Apparently, I’m not alone in that. Nestled among a bazillion osso buco recipes that a quick search for veal shanks recipes brought up was this plaintive cry on Chowhound: “Need veal shank recipe—Not Osso Buco.”
In my head, I traveled the culinary globe off and on for a couple of days. I spent a lot of virtual time in Mexico and Latin America, conjuring up tangy, spicy, chipotle-smoky dishes. Morocco called to me, with cumin, paprika, cinnamon and golden raisins. In the end, though, I landed right next door to Italy, in France. And the resulting recipe borrowed from classic dishes of both. Continue reading “Osso Buco, meet Cassoulet: Braised Veal Shanks with White Beans”
A cumin/coriander spice rub adds big flavor without heat to pan-seared pork chops; this lively, vinegary, fiery (or not) giardiniera aioli is great with pork, fish, chicken, tofu… Recipes below.
We went to an underground dinner last week hosted by Tuesday Night DInner. The TND crew creates pop-up dining events throughout the year, each in a different location and each with a different theme. This one was held at No Sandbox Studios, just west of Chicago’s Loop, and the theme was ”Off the Boat, Into the Kitchen,” an interpretation of immigrant fare reimagined by the TND chefs.
The four courses were delicious and inventive, but the thing that caught my eye—or more accurately, my taste buds—was an accompaniment for one of the courses, a giardiniera aioli. Usually, aioli is a sauce made of fresh mayonnaise and garlic, but chef Jeremy Leven substituted spicy giardiniera for the garlic. The result was amazing. Continue reading “Fire is optional, flavor isn’t, with Giardiniera Aioli and Cumin Coriander Pork Chops”
Mussels steamed in a broth of wine, butter, fennel, shallots, garlic, tomatoes and star anise are an easy, delicious, sustainable dinner. Recipe below.
A funny thing happened on the way to this recipe, and it illustrates the twists and turns that often occur in our kitchen. The idea to do something with mussels started with a comment on my Black Bean Soup with Ham Hocks post, oddly enough. In passing, reader Dani H. mentioned that she’d finally gotten around to cooking the Moules Marinières recipe I’d posted a couple of years ago. The next day, I came across a recipe for mussels using fresh ginger and lemongrass. Okay, the delicious, easy-to-cook bivalves were back on my radar screen.
Lemongrass, ginger and fresh mussels were acquired. I was busily mapping out how I would make the recipe my own. Then I took a quick look at past Blue Kitchen mussels recipes (and was shocked to find four of them) and realized I had cooked mussels with lemongrass and ginger already. Granted, it was a curried version, but it still seemed like time for a new direction. Continue reading “Mussels with Fennel and Star Anise: wow power that’s weeknight quick”
Brussels sprouts are sautéed with garlic, then tossed with walnuts, bacon and a mustard-maple glaze and topped with Pecorino Romano. Recipe below.
To all of you who think you hate Brussels sprouts, you’re wrong. Well, most of you are anyway. And more than ever, chefs these days are out to prove it. In fact, Brussels sprouts have starred as delicious small plates in two recent meals we’ve had.
Quick cooking is part of what makes them so good. Pan frying until they’re just caramelized or even deep frying, instead of boiling them into the mushy, sulfur-smelling mess you learned to hate. So is pairing them with ingredients that make the most of Brussels sprouts’ pleasantly bitter natural flavor. Continue reading “What’s not to like? Mustard-Maple Glazed Brussels Sprouts with Bacon”
Tuesday Night Dinner celebrates immigration and Chicago’s collective food history with “Off the Boat, Into the Kitchen.” And the documentary In Organic We Trust is now available on iTunes and On Demand.
Underground dining experiences combine lots of our favorite things. Eating great food, meeting new people and doing it all in nontraditional spaces. Tuesday Night Dinner has been creating just such creative dinners for Chicagoans since 2009. TND is an underground dining community committed to creating an environment where guests feel a closer connection to their food and its sources. During the winter, TND hosts a communal dinner the last Tuesday of each month. This month’s dinner, “Off the Boat, Into the Kitchen,” is an interpretation of Old World favorites tweaked through the lens of the Windy City. Continue reading “Small Bites: an underground dinner and a downloadable documentary on organic food”
Lots of big flavors—cumin, garlic, celery, red bell pepper, tomatoes, jalapeño pepper and smoked ham hock—blend into a satisfying soup with a Southwestern kick. Go to recipe.
This is being a strange winter. Last Friday, for instance, the high flirted with 60ºF. In Chicago. Saturday, it dropped all day to the 20s. By Sunday night, it was 15. And on top of everything else, it isn’t snowing. As Marion points out in a post about a 6-inch tall fop on her blog, 9591 Iris, there has been no measurable snow in Chicago for more than 300 days.
But strange or not, it’s still winter, and that had me thinking soup. This soup started with a remembered ham hock not getting any younger in the freezer. My first thought was black-eyed peas, but there was also a bag of dried black beans in the pantry with similar faded youth issues. So black bean soup it was. Continue reading “Southwestern antifreeze: lively, hearty Black Bean Soup with Ham Hocks”