Weddings, anniversaries and food memories

Food plays a major role in one of life’s biggest celebratory events. What wedding food do you remember—either from your own wedding or one you’ve attended? Share your story in the comments below.

The night before our wedding anniversary last weekend, we ended up having dinner in a restaurant right next door to the one where we’d dined on the eve of our wedding. In fact, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe, where we’d taken out-of-town friends on Friday, and its venerable sibling, Café Bernard [where we’d enjoyed a lovely, lively meal with family members and friends years before], share a kitchen and a chef/owner, Bernard LeCoq.

Marion and I discovered the wonderfully bohemian, wonderfully French Café Bernard when we were dating. It quickly became our go-to for romantic evenings out. So when Marion’s father asked us to choose a restaurant for dinner the night before our wedding, no other place even came to mind. I can’t remember a single thing we ate that night—the conversation and wine flowed quite freely—but it was a memorable, convivial evening.

To call our wedding small and informal is an understatement of heroic proportions. We were married in Chicago’s City Hall. Besides us and the judge, the entire wedding party consisted of Marion’s mother, father and sister, my mother, Marion’s best friend from junior high and his date. The flowers—a bouquet for Marion, corsages for the other women and boutonnieres for the men—came from our neighborhood florist.

Marion’s sister Lena was our wedding photographer. To make sure she got into at least one picture, we handed the camera to a passing police officer as we stood outside City Hall. The result was a beautiful shot of the brass plaque identifying the building as City Hall with a row of smiling faces along the photo’s bottom edge. Continue reading “Weddings, anniversaries and food memories” →

The milder side of garlic: Linguine with green garlic and shrimp

Green garlic adds its subtle touch to a simple, sublime supper. Recipe below.

green-garlic-pasta

A quick note: Green garlic inspired two recipes this week. After you finish this post, be sure to stick around for Pan-grilled Crostini with Green Garlic and Chevre.

This is not at all what I had in mind for this week’s post. But then there we were at the Logan Square Farmers Market on Sunday, looking at beautiful bunches of green garlic at the Videnovich Farms booth. Green garlic is young garlic harvested before the cloves form. They’re similar to scallions and leeks in appearance, and the entire plant is edible. The taste is much more delicate than mature garlic.

I’d never actually cooked with green garlic before, so my first stop was the Internet. And the first thing I found was a New York Times article—“Garlic Defanged”—in which San Francisco chef Daniel Patterson confessed his dislike for garlic [well, actually more of an irrational fear of it], then sang the praises green garlic as “its sweeter, more likable offspring.” This was not a promising start for me. I love garlic. A lot. In fact, I’m sometimes frustrated that the big olfactory rush of garlic hitting a hot pan is usually greatly diminished by the time you’re plating whatever you’ve cooked.

But Patterson goes on to call green garlic “a transformational ingredient, one that can remain in the background while making the elements around it better.” Okay, I was interested again. I studied the recipes he includes in the article, particularly one for Linguine with Green Garlic Clam Sauce. It seemed to have a little too much going on to let the green garlic shine through—to me, it had to play a bigger role, if a subtle one, in whatever I ended up cooking with it. Continue reading “The milder side of garlic: Linguine with green garlic and shrimp” →

Raw but still refined: Pan-grilled crostini with green garlic and chevre

Crisp baguette slices topped with a mix of goat cheese and green garlic create a lively seasonal appetizer. Recipe below.

green-garlic-crostini2

Babies and even toddlers have naturally sweet smelling breath. Baby’s breath, as it were. When older daughter Claire was not quite two years old, we were having dinner at the wonderful Blueberry Hill in St. Louis one evening. Marion’s salad arrived, festooned with a heap of raw red onion, which immediately captivated young Claire. She insisted on eating all of it. Carrying her as we left the restaurant later, I noticed that her breath was an amusing mix of baby’s breath and ONIONNNN!

In a way, that describes the taste of these luscious crostini. Goat cheese has a nice, mild, non-assertive flavor, and the green garlic—even used raw, as it is here—offers a much milder version of mature garlic’s big flavor. The end result is a crunchy, satisfyingly savory appetizer that melds the creamy richness of the cheese with a mild garlicky kick. Continue reading “Raw but still refined: Pan-grilled crostini with green garlic and chevre” →

Cumin and cinnamon add Middle Eastern flavor to grilled goat kebabs

Goat is a mild-mannered stand-in for lamb in these flavorful kebabs marinated in cumin, cinnamon, oregano and pomegranate molasses. Recipe below.

Goat Kebabs

What is it with Americans and goat? Goats were one of the first animals domesticated by humans, 10,000 years ago or so. An amazing 70 percent of the red meat consumed in the world is goat. But while goat is the most widely consumed meat in the world, for some reason, it’s been slow to catch on in the United States. Continue reading “Cumin and cinnamon add Middle Eastern flavor to grilled goat kebabs” →

In season now: French breakfast radishes

french-radishes

It’s funny how you can go your whole life without ever seeing something and then once you see it, it’s everywhere. Take French breakfast radishes [or as the French call them, breakfast radishes—les radis petit déjeuner].

Recipetips.com describes French breakfast radishes as having “a crisp texture and a mild to delicately sweet flavor.” It goes on to say that “This radish is considered to be a spring radish, but may be available throughout the year.” That said, French breakfast radishes grown later in the year, when it has been hot their entire growing season of three to four weeks, tend to be strong in flavor and can turn pithy.

I first made the acquaintance of these crunchy, earthy, slightly spicy little delights several weeks ago at mado, one of our favorite Chicago restaurants. There they were served in classic French style—uncooked, trimmed top and bottom and halved lengthwise with a little salt and a generous dollop of butter alongside.

Next thing I knew, Laura over at What I Like was singing their praises and calling this simple preparation Continue reading “In season now: French breakfast radishes” →

Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table

A popular treat offered by Los Angeles push cart vendors, fresh fruit sprinkled with salt, chili powder and fresh lime juice makes a quick, healthy snack or a vibrant side for a barbecue. Recipe below.

mexican-fruit-salad

A story in the current Chicago Reader reminds me once again that Los Angeles just gets street food. In “Legalize It,” Claire Bushey reports on the plight of Chicago’s mostly Mexican push cart food vendors, who face fines and other legal problems because the city won’t license them. Even though it already issues licenses to the same kinds of vendors in Chicago’s parks. And even though it would allow the city to regulate sanitation and collect license fees and taxes.

By contrast, LA embraces street food as part of its culture. Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe, for instance, is more than just a charming, welcoming place to enjoy an everchanging menu of regional tamales from all over Mexico and Central America. According to the Institutes for Urban Initiatives that operates Mama’s, it’s a training ground to help low-and-moderate-income residents “begin a career path toward success in the culinary world.” For many, the road to success leads back to the street, operating their own street food business. Significantly, Mama’s is “approved by the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services and the City of Los Angeles Building and Safety Department.”

Street food is everywhere in LA, available in a dazzling array of flavors and cultures. From all stripes of Latin American to fiery curries, tamales, tacos, chicharrones and the latest sensation, Kogi BBQ, Korean fusion tacos sold from a truck that announces its locations via Twitter. And then there’s this fresh, slightly spicy fruit salad that Marion first discovered outside a fabric store in LA’s fashion district. But it is truly ubiquitous, sold on random corners all over Los Angeles County. Continue reading “Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table” →

Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride

Food, Inc. explores where the food we eat really comes from. And the 26th annual Garden Party kicks off Gay Pride Week in New York with celebrity chefs and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl.

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The documentary Food, Inc. opens June 12, and according to Miranda Purves in Elle magazine, it “will have you running from the supermarket for the hills, preferably ones dotted with grass-fed cows.” Let me start with a given here: Feeding the more than 300 million people who call the United States home is a monumental challenge. But as filmmaker Robert Kenner shows, the way America’s industrialized food system goes about it, with the acquiescence if not outright complicity of the federal government, threatens us all.

The issues are many and complex. The Food, Inc. official website spells them out. Factory farms raise animals under inhumane conditions, are dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming. Foodborne illnesses sicken an estimated 76 million Americans and kill an estimated 5,000 each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control Continue reading “Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride” →

Cool summer dinner idea: Chicken Salad with Toasted Coconut and Roasted Cashews

Served over a bed of mixed greens, Chicken Salad with Toasted Coconut and Roasted Cashews is light, lively and mayonnaise-free—a modern Chinese take on a summer classic. Recipe below.

chicken-salad-marion — Chicken Salad with Toasted Coconut and Roasted Cashews

ONE OF MY FAVORITE COOKING RESOURCES IS THE CHINA MOON COOKBOOK, by the wonderful Barbara Tropp, one of the great interpreters of Chinese cooking for the American kitchen. If you’re an American cook who has explored Chinese cuisine, you’ve been affected by Tropp’s amazing work. She is often likened to Julia Child, and the comparison is apt. She, too, came to an intriguing strange land, and through its food learned to understand its culture. And she, too, returned to the United States to teach what she had learned to American cooks. As the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in her obituary, “Freshness, seasonality and authenticity were the hallmark of Ms. Tropp’s cooking at a time when much U.S. Chinese cooking relied on canned staples and hackneyed pseudo-Cantonese dishes.” Continue reading “Cool summer dinner idea: Chicken Salad with Toasted Coconut and Roasted Cashews” →

“Don’t follow me—I’m lost too!” [Blue Kitchen is now on Twitter]

I have to be honest with you. When I first considered using Twitter, I thought “naaaah.” I really didn’t think there’d be anything I’d want to say in 140 characters or less. I mean, on some level, it’s kind of like vanity license plates to me—and there’s nothing I want to broadcast from my car bumper to the world at large in six or seven letters and numbers.

Then I read about Maureen Evans. In her Northern Ireland kitchen, she condenses entire recipes into 140-character tweets. Here’s a recent sample:

Frittata: fry shallot/T oil in iron pan. Lyr w c slice tom&zuke/s+p; +6beaten egg. Don’t stir9m@low; 20m@350F/175C. Flip to srv +parm&basil.

Part of the fun of Maureen’s tweets is imagining the challenges she faces reducing recipes to Twitter’s tight constraints while still making them complete and understandable. Part of the fun is deciphering her necessarily terse shorthand: cvr3m +4c radish leaves means cover for 3 minutes, then add 4 cups of radish leaves, for instance. Continue reading ““Don’t follow me—I’m lost too!” [Blue Kitchen is now on Twitter]” →

Borrowing from Japan, China and Toronto: Maple-Miso Grilled Chicken

Maple-Miso Grilled Chicken raids Asian and North American pantries to produce subtle, satisfying depth while claiming no one nationality. Recipe—and some ingredient substitutions—below.

maple-miso-chicken

I OCCASIONALLY TALK ABOUT THE VARIED PLACES INSPIRATION COMES FROM when I’m cooking. The inspiration for this subtly flavored grilled chicken came from these very pages, sort of. In last week’s Five fresh reasons to check out my blogrolls post, I included Maple and Miso Scallops from Kevin’s Toronto-based Closet Cooking. When Marion saw that recipe, you could almost hear the wheels turning. Soon she was saying, “I bet those flavors would be good with grilled chicken or maybe some pork.” Soon after that, she was emailing me some recipes she’d found. And a dish and a post were born. Continue reading “Borrowing from Japan, China and Toronto: Maple-Miso Grilled Chicken” →