Celebrating an American holiday with Grilled Moroccan Flank Steak

Cumin, chili powder, cinnamon, turmeric, garlic and fresh ginger all add to the big, exotic flavor of these quickly grilled, tender steaks. Recipe below.

MEMORIAL DAY IS A PARTICULARLY AMERICAN HOLIDAY, honoring the men and women who have fallen in the service of their country. There are parades in towns and cities all over America. Classical radio stations heavy up on pieces by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and John Philip Sousa. And barbecue grills send up heavenly scents of smoke and meat in yard after yard after yard. Continue reading “Celebrating an American holiday with Grilled Moroccan Flank Steak” →

For The Greenhouse Tavern, green isn’t just on the plate, it’s in the building

For chefs and restaurateurs, green continues to be the new black. Organically raised, locally sourced ingredients grace plates, menus and servers’ nightly recitals of specials. Nose-to-tail cooking ensures that little of any humanely raised animal is wasted. When Jonathon Sawyer and his wife Amelia returned to Cleveland to open a restaurant, Sawyer decided to take green a step further. The Greenhouse Tavern is Ohio’s first nationally certified green restaurant.

Sustainable food is one part of green restaurant certification, but only one. Sustainable furnishings and building materials, waste reduction and recycling, water and energy efficiency and pollution reduction all are measured. And all represented big challenges. Continue reading “For The Greenhouse Tavern, green isn’t just on the plate, it’s in the building” →

Big flavor in a hurry: Asian Turkey Burgers with Sriracha Mayonnaise

Weeknight quick to make, turkey burgers get a flavor boost from hoisin sauce, green onions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and a topping of Sriracha mayonnaise. Recipe below.

There are Sundays that lend themselves to giving in to indolence, lounging about and doing nothing more ambitious than occasionally stirring a pot that cooks for hours. This past Sunday was not one of those. We spent much of the day hiking around the National Restaurant Association Show in the cavernous McCormick Place (motto: “You’ll love our 2.6 million square feet of hard concrete floors”). Then, because we apparently hadn’t walked enough, we did a little more hiking along Chicago’s lakefront.

After a day of walking and grazing on various delicious, mostly fatty foods (more about the restaurant show next week), we wanted a dinner that wasn’t a fat bomb, but still delivered big taste. And personally, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on my feet in front of the stove. These Asian turkey burgers were just what we needed. Continue reading “Big flavor in a hurry: Asian Turkey Burgers with Sriracha Mayonnaise” →

Small Bites: Women invade the butcher shop and I was a Top Chef: The Tour judge

L.A.’s woman-owned Lindy & Grundy butcher shop is just the latest example of women breaking into this macho field. And yes, I was a guest judge when Top Chef: The Tour breezed through Chicago.

For some time now, butchers have been sharing the food rock star status first bestowed upon chefs and later on farmers. When one of our favorite chefs, Rob Levitt, hung up his toque (which in his case was a Yankees cap) to open his own butcher shop, The Butcher & Larder, the local press proclaimed that Chicago finally had a rock star butcher of its own. (And truth be told, Rob still wears the Yankees cap.)

Increasingly, though, women have been invading this former boys club, turning up in butchery classes and behind the counters of butcher shops from Brooklyn to San Francisco. Amelia Posada and Erika Nakamura have taken the trend a step further, opening their own shop. Continue reading “Small Bites: Women invade the butcher shop and I was a Top Chef: The Tour judge” →

Small bites: Organic farming on a Chicago roof and wild-caught fish from the wilds of Minnesota

The nation’s first certified organic rooftop farm and a sustainable fishing success story are subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

The last two weekends have found us at garden centers. We don’t do a lot of gardening (and by we, I of course mean Marion—I mostly just carry the occasional bag of cow manure), but garden centers are always inspiring. They instill hope for the spring that continues to merely flirt with us. Standing in the checkout line with our half dozen tomato plants and about as many herbs got me thinking about the resurgence of urban farming in the last few years. One of the most exciting places urban farming is happening right now is on the roof of a Chicago restaurant. Continue reading “Small bites: Organic farming on a Chicago roof and wild-caught fish from the wilds of Minnesota” →

The delicious taste of sustainable success: Sautéed Walleye Fillets with Tarragon

Incredibly fresh, sustainably caught walleye fillets from the Red Lake Chippewa reservation require little more than salt, pepper and tarragon, then a quick sauté in butter to be delicious. Recipe below.

Fish are the last wild food. Well, they’re the last wild caught food humans eat on a large scale. And unfortunately, we’ve been eating them on too large a scale—according to the World Health Organization, we’ve doubled our per capita fish consumption in the last 50 years. Many species are in serious decline, and the fishing industry as a whole faces major challenges.

In his book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Paul Greenberg says this growing appetite for fish cannot be sustainably satisfied by wild fish alone and that fish farming or aquaculture will actually overtake wild catch in the next few years. Aquaculture is not without its own problems—efforts must be made to greatly reduce its environmental footprint. That’s why the success of the Red Lake Fishery’s wild caught walleyes is particularly heartening. Continue reading “The delicious taste of sustainable success: Sautéed Walleye Fillets with Tarragon” →

Sweet, tart and savory: Goat Cheese Tarts with Leeks and Apricot Preserves

Frozen puff pastry makes these tarts easy to prepare. Their delicate savory/sweet flavor makes them hard to resist. Recipe below.

The intersection of sweet and savory is a sweet spot for me. I love how the flavors complement each other. And the geek in me loves how they cause different sets of taste buds to fire off at the same time, leaving it to your brain to sort out the sensations colliding in your mouth.

I also love easy, which is among the reasons I tend to shy away from baking. But recently, I saw a recipe for individual tarts using frozen puff pastry. (Yes, I’ve seen—or more likely, tuned out—tons of recipes involving puff pastry in the past, as I’m sure we all have.) For some reason, though, one particular recipe caught my eye recently, and I thought, “I’ve got to remember this. I’ve got to bookmark this.” Of course, I did neither. Continue reading “Sweet, tart and savory: Goat Cheese Tarts with Leeks and Apricot Preserves” →

Small bites: Professional foragers for the home cook and great food for a good cause

A new USA Character Approved Blog post and women chefs raise money for the Greater Chicago Food Depository at the 15th annual Girl Food Dinner.

We occasionally pick up mushrooms at our local farmers market. Often when we do, we learn that they had been growing somewhere in the woods until earlier that very morning. Welcome to the world of professional foraging. As chefs and restaurants get more locavore and more adventurous, ingredients gathered from forests and meadows are turning up on more and more menus. And a whole new job title is springing up on resumes—professional forager.

Well, not so new for some. Connie Green (pictured above), founder of Wine Forest Wild Foods, started gathering wild chanterelles for leading San Francisco Bay Area restaurants back in 1979. And recently, she’s started offering home cooks access to some of her wild bounty. Continue reading “Small bites: Professional foragers for the home cook and great food for a good cause” →

“Go east, young man”: Fragrant, flavorful Chinese Duck Pasta with Mushrooms

Steaming duck legs with ginger, garlic, star anise and Chinese five-spice powder before roasting them infuses the meat with flavor and moisture for this Chinese pasta dish. Recipe below.

“Marco!” “Polo!” Before becoming an annoying swimming pool pastime, Marco Polo was an Italian merchant and explorer who, as popular myth has it, brought pasta back from China in 1295. Unfortunately, pesky facts have long ago proven otherwise. But since the journey for the creation of this dish went in the opposite direction—from Italy to China—for the sake of symmetry, I’m going to pretend that Signor Polo did indeed introduce the noodle to Italy.

The journey began as many of my food adventures do, with an offhand comment. This time it was on Grub Street New York: “…chef Jonathon Sawyer (who, by the way, makes a mean duck pasta)…” Continue reading ““Go east, young man”: Fragrant, flavorful Chinese Duck Pasta with Mushrooms” →

Rocking the dinner party: Brooklyn Slate Company cheese boards

Fine china is refined and elegant. Thrift store trays are retro fun. But for sheer tabletop coolness, Brooklyn Slate Company’s slate cheese boards are hard to beat.

Quarried in upstate New York and hand finished in a small studio in Brooklyn, they’re durable, sustainable and ruggedly handsome. You can write on them with the provided soapstone chalk, so your guests can tell the Abondance from the Wensleydale. And unlike your Royal Limoges, you can toss this cheese board in the dishwasher after the party. Continue reading “Rocking the dinner party: Brooklyn Slate Company cheese boards” →