Category: Random Food For Thought

A busy weekend and a delicious, if reheated, recipe: Crispy Chicken Schnitzel

A house favorite from the archives: Panko breadcrumbs give chicken breast schnitzels an assertively crispy outside. Recipe, eventually, below.

Women's March 2018, Chicago

There really should be a new recipe here. We have a few ideas we’re working on and a new cooking memoir awaiting our review. Didn’t get to any of it. This post isn’t an excuse for that—it’s a recounting of things we found more interesting than cooking this weekend. But if you make it to the end, you’ll find a simple dish we like to cook fairly often. Continue reading “A busy weekend and a delicious, if reheated, recipe: Crispy Chicken Schnitzel” →

A grudging appreciation of Christmas music

Electric Christmas

The holidays are upon us, and we are once again beset by Christmas music. Everywhere you turn, it is there—grocery stores, building lobbies, fast food places, leaking out of retail storefronts, invading my various radio stations and streaming services… even being hummed or whistled by colleagues. All of which brings out my curmudgeonly side. Continue reading “A grudging appreciation of Christmas music” →

Sweet home Chicago

odometer_10-24

We are home again after having driven precisely 2,200 miles in 11 days. An amazing trip through Pittsburgh; Washington, DC; various points in Virginia; Charleston, West Virginia; and Cleveland (with an art stop in Toledo this afternoon). Tuesday nights are when we write our posts that go up on Wednesday, but we’ve seriously been home an hour and a half now. See you next week with a recipe and a travel story or two.

What can you do?

like-this-post

This week’s post was either going to be a cocktail or maybe a compound butter with fish. I had the ingredients for both, more or less, and some basic ideas on how I was going to make them. Only I didn’t. So instead, you’re being treated to an image I nabbed off the Internet. There was no name listed with it, so I can’t even give credit where photo credit is due. Please come back next week. I’ll try to have one of these two recipes or something completely different.

Detroit’s Eastern Market: A visual feast

Detroit is internationally known for its street art. And a major center for it is the neighborhood surrounding its farmers market.

Detroit's Eastern Market

EASTERN MARKET IS BUSTLING ON SATURDAYS. Thousands of shoppers crowd the aisles of Detroit’s sprawling historic farmers market, jostling for fresh produce—much of it locally grown—as well as a dazzling array of, well, everything. Spices, jams, baked goods, eggs, cheeses, hot sauces, garden plants, topiaries, candles, T-shirts… even bundles of decorative sticks. Sundays are quieter. Continue reading “Detroit’s Eastern Market: A visual feast” →

Notes, but no recipes, from the road

Dollar-Hamtramck

I’m out of town again, working long hours and away from my familiar kitchen. What little cooking I’m doing is on the perfunctory side, so no recipe this week. But because of where I am—Hamtramck, Michigan, a small, independent, working class municipality inside the city of Detroit—I’m thinking a lot about immigrants. Continue reading “Notes, but no recipes, from the road” →

Borrowing from the immigrant kitchen: seven globally-inspired recipes

Seven recipes from the Blue Kitchen archives celebrate the flavors immigrants have brought to our shores and tables.

Patatas Riojas

Need proof that America is a land of immigrants? Take a stroll through any supermarket worth the name. You’ll find pasta and pasta sauce makings. You’ll find cumin in the spice aisle; jalapeño peppers and fresh ginger in the produce department; sauerkraut, kielbasa (or certainly, brats). You’ll find miso paste. You’ll find hummus. These foods—once exotic, but now kitchen go-tos for most of us—didn’t get here on their own. Continue reading “Borrowing from the immigrant kitchen: seven globally-inspired recipes” →