Multiple personalities, one delicious rustic dish: Eggplant Caponata

Versatile eggplant caponata, flavored with garlic, fresh tomatoes, golden raisins, red onions and parsley, makes a vegetarian meal for two, a side dish for four or an appetizer for a whole party. Recipe below.

Eggplant caponata is often referred to as Italy’s take on ratatouille. And it shares a rustic charm with that classic French stewed vegetable dish—as well as eggplant in a starring role.

But eggplant caponata boasts some real versatility when it comes to serving it. Chances are, if you’ve ever had eggplant caponata, it was served on crostini as an appetizer. But it’s also great served warm or room temperature as a side dish. Or with a nice crusty bread as a vegetarian meal. And it can even be spread on a sandwich, stuffed into a pita…

Recipes for eggplant caponata are just as impressively varied. Fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, no tomatoes… capers, no capers, pine nuts, no… well, you get the idea. Lots of recipes call for olives, but not all Continue reading “Multiple personalities, one delicious rustic dish: Eggplant Caponata” →

Chef Marcus Samuelsson approaches cooking and life without boundaries

The USA Character Approved Blog has now officially launched! For my first post-soft launch post, I’m profiling chef Marcus Samuelsson.

For many of us, Marcus Samuelsson first appeared on our radar screens when he was chosen to cook the Obamas’ first White House state dinner last November. But the accomplished young chef had already made quite a name for himself. At age 24, he was named co-owner and executive chef of New York’s Aquavit, transforming the Swedish restaurant with his willingness to use distinctly non-Swedish ingredients such as curry and lemongrass. And he is the youngest chef ever to receive a three-star restaurant review from The New York Times.

Samuelsson comes by his global approach to cooking naturally. He was born in an Ethiopia village. When he was three, his mother died of tuberculosis, and he and his sister were adopted and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. Continue reading “Chef Marcus Samuelsson approaches cooking and life without boundaries” →

Bastille Day a perfect excuse for sailor’s mussels, frites and all things French

A pair of simple, delicious French recipes this week—Mussels steamed in wine with shallots, garlic and lots of parsley and oven-fried pommes frites flavored with herbes de Provence.

“LAFAYETTE, WE ARE HERE.” Those famous words, marking our returning the favor to France in World War I for their vital assistance in our Revolutionary War, were undoubtedly followed by the less well known, “Now, when do we eat?”

Because in addition to contributing to American independence, the French are rightly far more known for their contributions to food and cooking. And not just for their stellar, elaborate concoctions. It’s more their understanding of how a few well-chosen ingredients perfectly combined can become something wonderful—and their daily celebration of food in even the simplest dishes. So when I saw that this week’s post would go up on Bastille Day, that was all the excuse I needed to feed my inner Francophile in the kitchen. Continue reading “Bastille Day a perfect excuse for sailor’s mussels, frites and all things French” →

Celebrating America’s birthday by eating our way around the world in Michigan

America isn’t a melting pot. It’s a smorgasbord. A road trip over the Fourth of July weekend proves it without even trying.

Yeah, it’s Wednesday. There should be a recipe here. But we had too much fun in too much heat with too much driving over the holiday weekend—more than 800 miles by the time we got home Monday night. Tuesdays are my absolute deadline for my weekly Wednesday posts. If I haven’t cooked my post before then, it’s do or die time. This Tuesday, it was just not in me to cook something, photograph it and tell you how I did it.

So instead, let me tell you a little about our weekend—mainly about what we ate, this being a food blog. You’re not going to get restaurant reviews here and certainly no photos of what we ate. This is more a celebration of the wealth of food experiences available here in America—more specifically, in three Michigan cities not especially known as culinary centers, but all serving up plenty of good, diverse eats. Detroit, Hamtramck and East Lansing.

Whenever we find ourselves in Detroit these days, one required stop is the Detroit Beer Co., a friendly, comfortable microbrewery, Continue reading “Celebrating America’s birthday by eating our way around the world in Michigan” →

Aged balsamic vinegar plays well with others: Vinegar Chicken with Mushrooms

Balsamic vinegar offers a subtle and surprisingly mild twist on cooking chicken in wine. Butter and chicken broth help tame it. Recipe below.

I DON’T DOUBT FOR A MINUTE that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But vinegar is just so much more interesting to me. (Besides, do you really want to catch flies?)

I know honey is enjoying a moment right now, especially with the sudden surge in popularity of beekeeping, but we use a heck of a lot more vinegar in our kitchen—and stock a wider array of them—than we do honey. Right now, for instance, we have three different balsamic vinegars, Japanese rice vinegar, Spanish sherry vinegar, red wine vinegar and, oh yeah, some apple cider vinegar. We have two small containers of honey.

So when I came across the phrase “vinegar chicken” somewhere recently, probably in a restaurant description, I was interested. Continue reading “Aged balsamic vinegar plays well with others: Vinegar Chicken with Mushrooms” →

Food notes from all over: Mobile Indian food with a side of fun, Cajun cooking in the Midwest and bar snacks for wine

Fake brothers from a fake country serve up real treats from a DC food truck, a former construction worker cooks up Cajun food surrounded by Illinois cornfields, and a California winery creates bar snacks to pair with its wines.

Gourmet food trucks have been catching on everywhere (well, except here in Chicago, where draconian health regulations continue to thwart most attempts). In the past couple of years, chefs and wannabe chefs have been rehabbing used postal vans, delivery trucks and even old ice cream trucks and creating rolling restaurants that serve up an amazing range of eats in cities across the country. But few do it with the style and charming back story of the Fojol Bros.

Only two of the four Fojol Bros. are actual brothers, and no one is named Fojol. Wearing turbans and patently false mustaches, they peddle a changing menu of delicious, healthy Indian food with no preservatives from their homeland, “Merlindia.” And they let people know of the whereabouts of their “traveling culinary carnival” on Twitter. The Fojol Bros., back story and all, are the subject of my latest piece on cable station USA Network’s USA Character Approved Blog. The blog is in soft launch mode at the moment—I’ll let you know when it goes into full launch (heck, I’ll probably take out a full-page ad somewhere).

At Ron’s Cajun Connection, a lively roadside place about 80 miles southwest of Chicago, every order comes with a side of sass, from chef/owner Ron McFarlain himself. Continue reading “Food notes from all over: Mobile Indian food with a side of fun, Cajun cooking in the Midwest and bar snacks for wine” →

Give basil the night off: Cilantro-Parsley Pesto takes pasta in a lively new direction

Surprising cilantro-parsley pesto needs only some tomatoes, onion and feta to make a quick, delicious pasta dinner that won’t overheat your kitchen. Recipe below.

I would make a terrible farmer. Once something’s planted in the ground, I want to be harvesting it. Now. This spring, we (and by we, I mean Marion) planted some tomatoes and a few herbs in the yard. The other day, wanting some pesto, I went outside to glare at our tiny basil plants, hoping it might hurry them along. It didn’t. Not sure why I thought it would work—that same impatient fatherly glare has never had much effect on our kids either.

So I tromped back inside, still wanting pesto and not wanting to resort to store-bought. Then I picked up the current issue of Food & Wine. There, tucked into a catchall piece of various chefs giving tips for being frugal, Chicago’s own Rick Bayless was talking about using leftover cilantro and parsley to make a pesto. Ha! Screw you, little weenie basil plants. I just met some cuter, cooler herbs. (Not really—I do love basil. But the idea of a pesto change-up had definitely caught my eye.) Continue reading “Give basil the night off: Cilantro-Parsley Pesto takes pasta in a lively new direction” →

Ten more reasons to follow me on Twitter

Okay, I know this seems shamelessly self-promotional, but it’s not. Well, not totally. Yeah, it may get a few more people to follow me (I hope so), but it’s just as likely to make a few people take umbrage and unfollow me (I hope not). But my real reason for posting this is the reason I’m having so much fun with Twitter. Because of all the cool food-related stuff there is out there.

Regular readers here, especially those who scroll down to my second posts most weeks, know that I have a real magpie eye, always on the lookout for some shiny, interesting thing. Twitter is a great place to share those finds—like the study that shows that women who drink gain less weight. Or the story about how humanely raised meat is turning some vegetarians into meat-eating flexitarians (both links are below, but don’t skip ahead). Continue reading “Ten more reasons to follow me on Twitter” →

Farmers market improvisation: Stir-Fried Chicken, Asparagus, Green Garlic and Tomatoes

Chicken teams up with green garlic and asparagus from the farmers market and ginger, lemongrass and other ingredients gathered from the fridge and pantry to make a quick, delicious stir-fry. Recipe below.

A friend of ours refuses to eat leftovers. She calls them “used food.” Marion and I, on the other hand, feel wonderfully satisfied and even a little smug when every last morsel of something is consumed. Whether it’s a leftover that becomes a lunch or gets repurposed as part of another dinner, or it’s a last lonely shallot that livens up a salad dressing, not wasting food—or at least trying not to waste it—is just part of our working class childhood DNA. That instinct led to the creation of this lovely dish Marion recently cooked. I’ll let her tell you about it.

One of the great joys of late spring is when local farmers markets get back into action, with their ever-changing bounty. That’s also one of the pitfalls of this time of year. Armed with good culinary intentions and eyes bigger than your stomach, it’s easy to get carried away. The other day, our neighborhood farmer’s market opened for the season and we came home all flushed and excited, toting plenty—especially, green garlic and asparagus. Continue reading “Farmers market improvisation: Stir-Fried Chicken, Asparagus, Green Garlic and Tomatoes” →

Serving up farm goodness by the Spoon-ful, in New York City

I mentioned last week that I’m writing weekly pieces for the USA Character Approved blog. The subject of my column this week is New York City chef/caterer/restaurateur Melissa Chlemar, who carefully sources farm fresh ingredients from upstate New York to make all kinds of goodies for her Chelsea shop, Spoon, and her small, charmingly named breakfast/brunch/lunch place next door, tbsp. Continue reading “Serving up farm goodness by the Spoon-ful, in New York City” →