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” →

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” →

Small Bites: Passover-inspired ice creams, sustainable dining for Earth Day and a discount for Blue Kitchen readers

Okay, when we think sweets and Passover, we think Marion’s Matzoh Crack. It’s as addictive as the name implies. But Ronnie Fisher and her daughters Meredith Fisher and Isabelle Krishana came up with a pretty inspired idea one June night in 2010 as they sat around the kitchen table eating homemade rugelach straight from the freezer (a charmingly confessional fact divulged on the home page of their website). What if they could take the flavors of the traditional Jewish treats they’d grown up with and turn them into ice cream? Continue reading “Small Bites: Passover-inspired ice creams, sustainable dining for Earth Day and a discount for Blue Kitchen readers” →

Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone

Two new USA Character Approved Blog posts and a brand new iPhone app that lets you track food trucks in real time.

We’re always on the lookout for the next cool kitchen tool—for our own kitchen and to report here. So it was a refreshing change to stumble upon Jacob Bromwell, the oldest housewares company in America. How old? When they opened their doors in Cincinnati in 1819, our nation’s constitution was a mere 30 years old. Strategically situated on the Ohio River, many of the tools for they made for kitchens, fireplaces and campfires headed west or down the Mississippi. Continue reading “Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone” →

Small bites: “Best chef memoir ever” and serious wine without all the seriousness

Gabrielle Hamilton’s best selling Blood, Bones & Butter and a San Francisco wine bar that makes serious wine, well, fun are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

I first heard about Gabrielle Hamilton when I read about a bacon marmalade sandwich she serves at her New York City restaurant, Prune. Armed with only the vaguest description of the sandwich in a back issue of New York magazine, I made my own version. And I decided if mine was that good, I definitely had to get to Prune to try the real deal. I haven’t, of course. And now, with the huge success of her new memoir, getting in Hamilton’s already wildly popular East Village bistro will be that much harder. Continue reading “Small bites: “Best chef memoir ever” and serious wine without all the seriousness” →

Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011

Okay, I’ll admit it. The first cool thing about attending the world’s biggest marketplace of home and housewares stuff is getting to wander around it with an Internet Media pass slung around your neck. This was the third year Marion and I have done it and it was just as exciting as the first year.

Some 60,000 people attend the show at Chicago’s McCormick Place every year. Many are buyers, running the gamut from boutique owners to lead buyers for major chains. And while some of them are talking price points and delivery times, some, like us, are looking for what’s cool and new. Here are six things that caught our eye this year. Continue reading “Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011” →

Chicago chef Grant Achatz honored at USA Network’s Character Approved Awards

The 2011 Character Approved Awards will recognize 12 cultural trailblazers for innovation and contributions in their fields in a one-hour documentary that premieres Tuesday, March 8, at 11/10c. Grant Achatz will be honored for his groundbreaking molecular gastronomy.

In the space of a week last year, two different friends told me they’d just eaten the best meals of their lives. Both were speaking of dinner at Grant Achatz’s Chicago restaurant, Alinea. So it was no surprise that USA Network chose Achatz as a recipient of one of their Character Approved Awards.

Achatz is at the forefront of molecular gastronomy, a movement that is turning the kitchen into a lab, using scientific tools and techniques and changing the very idea of high-end dining. As USA Network’s Character Approved website reports, “With incredible imagination and whimsy, Grant Achatz re-envisions the way we experience food.” Continue reading “Chicago chef Grant Achatz honored at USA Network’s Character Approved Awards” →

What Happens When: A restaurant experiment with a built-in expiration date

What happens when… That tantalizing question is the basis for an exciting temporary restaurant experiment in New York City. It’s also the name of the restaurant. What Happens When will be open for nine months and will completely transform its menu, its look and even its sound once a month. At the end of nine months, the building housing the SoHo restaurant will be torn down.

Opening even one restaurant is incredibly hard work, with tons of risk involved. What would possess someone to attempt nine restaurants in nine months in the same space? Continue reading “What Happens When: A restaurant experiment with a built-in expiration date” →

Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube

Recycling your wine corks and capturing that elusive fifth taste are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

We recycle as much as possible. We dutifully save aluminum and tin cans, plastic milk jugs, all manner of paper and more wine bottles than I’m comfortable admitting to and haul them all off to a recycling center. But one thing we’d been routinely tossing until Marion figured out they would compost was wine corks. Now it turns out they’re also recyclable. And if that sounds a little trivial, consider this—every year, around 13 billion of them are produced. Continue reading “Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube” →