Beef and Pork Ragù: A hearty, meaty meal for yet another chilly weekend

Ground beef and chunks of pork are slow cooked with tomatoes, peppers, carrots, mushrooms and paprika to create a hearty, rustic ragù. Recipe below.

IT IS FLAT-OUT REFUSING TO STAY WARM HERE. We have these occasional days that are, frankly, just hot, where after days of unseasonable cold it suddenly, spitefully, turns 85 for like one day. The warm weather comes on too abruptly to be any fun at all. We are inevitably at the office wearing too much, too thick clothing. We get home and the apartment is stuffy and hot. The cats stagger around, collapsing randomly here and there and glaring at us: I can go no farther—you did this to me. Then within a few hours huge storms wash through and the weather turns crazy cold again and just. stays. that. way. Tomato planting? Forget it. Continue reading “Beef and Pork Ragù: A hearty, meaty meal for yet another chilly weekend” →

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” →

A crisp, lively welcome for reluctant spring: Chinese Sesame Asparagus Salad

This chilled Chinese salad makes the most of minimal preparation and five simple ingredients—asparagus, soy sauce, olive oil, black vinegar and toasted sesame seeds. Recipe below.

It snowed Monday night in Chicago. Still, it’s officially spring, and beautifully thin asparagus is starting to turn up in grocery stores—and along some roadsides. So I’m going to turn the kitchen over to Marion and let her tell you (and me) about her foraging adventures before we met.

Asparagus wasn’t my first experience with gathering food from the wild—that would have been mushroom and berry picking, when I was a kid—but it was my first great breakthrough as an adult, when I had half forgotten the experiences of my childhood. That you could wade into all that mixed weedy stuff by the roadside and come out with a handful of tender! young! asparagus! (and for free, I might add) was a revelation. Continue reading “A crisp, lively welcome for reluctant spring: Chinese Sesame Asparagus Salad” →

What’s “Next” for Grant Achatz? Paris 1906 (for now, that is)

Award-winning Chef Achatz’s new restaurant Next will take on a different cuisine and a different era every three months. This adventurous undertaking is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

Grant Achatz has set himself one tough act to follow. On Monday, his acclaimed molecular gastronomy restaurant Alinea moved from seventh place to sixth on the S. Pellegrino “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list. Gourmet magazine had named the Chicago restaurant the best in America in 2006, the second year it was open. In 2008, the James Beard Foundation called Achatz the “Best Chef in the United States.”

Small wonder that USA Network chose Achatz as their 2011 USA Character Approved Honoree for food. And even smaller wonder that his highly anticipated new restaurant Next is almost completely booked through the end of June, as far out as they’re currently booking. But what exactly is Next? Continue reading “What’s “Next” for Grant Achatz? Paris 1906 (for now, that is)” →

Globe-trotting whole cumin seeds bring a whole lot of flavor to Lamb with Cumin

Whole cumin seeds, jalapeño and red bell peppers, garlic and onions all deliver big taste in this lively Chinese dish. Recipe below.

Cumin gets around. Originally cultivated around the Mediterranean and the Middle East—and in fact found at archeological sites in Babylonia and Egypt—it’s now found in cuisines throughout Asia, Africa, the Americas and parts of Europe.

One of our favorite places to find it is in a lamb with cumin dish served at Lao Beijing, one of Tony Hu’s authentically regional restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown. Lamb with Cumin is a traditional dish of Mongolia and the neighboring Xinjiang region of western China, but variations have made their way across much of China. Continue reading “Globe-trotting whole cumin seeds bring a whole lot of flavor to Lamb with Cumin” →