A Very Special Pig

Really big pig image courtesy of Jonny Hunter of UFC.

All across America the ding of the microwave has just sounded the completion of a Lean Cuisine. We scarf it right out of the plastic tray in front of our computers, barely tasting the flash-frozen peas and dry chicken. But that’s OK, because in this fast-paced, pre-packaged world, food is just fuel to keep the machine running.

Eating is a solitary, harried event; it is seldom the basis for a leisurely expanse of time with friends and loved ones. It’s the rare family that eats a home-cooked meal together every night at the kitchen table with the television turned off. And it’s even less common for a group of families and friends to cook and eat together, turning a meal into an evening-long event for which good food is integral to the enjoyment of good company.

The Underground Food Collective (UFC) does this every night. Composed of a group of friends and families (including little ones and babes-in-arms), the UFC cooks and eats every meal together on a farm in Madison, Wisconsin. This group—composed of professional chefs, experienced home cooks, and farmers—has started a catering company featuring Pre-Industrial Pig Dinners throughout the country, bringing people together under one roof to enjoy a full meal composed of one very special pig.

So on the very day the swine flu was announced F and I braved death and attended Chicago’s first Pre-Industrial Pig Dinner.

We drove through a torrential downpour to West Town and found the nondescript apartment building belonging to a certain James. As we sloshed up the steps bearing wine and umbrellas, I noted the drab hallway and the worn carpet, leery of what we would find beyond the battered front door. But I needn’t have worried. Upon entering, I beheld the most gorgeous apartment I have ever seen in Chicago—including some of the half-million-dollar brownstones that F and I have toured as “Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Smith, attorneys and prospective home-owners.”

We found ourselves in the midst of a bustling throng of chefs, farmers, and waiters, whirling through a professional kitchen with an island that stretched as far as the eye could see. The kitchen was every home-cook’s dream: stainless steel shelving, hanging pot racks, acres of cabinets, and gleaming pots and pans.

Awe-struck and awkward, F and I dodged chefs carrying chopping boards and pig parts, and shuffled to the side of the room. A waiter greeted us, “Two this evening?” and led us to the back of the spacious brick front room to a table set for six. We were among the first to arrive, and by the number of tables scattered through the room, James looked to be expecting around 60 people.

We took our seats against the far wall in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows lined with flower boxes and surveyed the room. Long pine tables were set with mismatched china and flickering candles. There was a stone fireplace to the left, and a canoe hung from the ceiling to the right. The bookcase behind me held Ulysses, a Spanish dictionary, and a smattering of philosophers. Carved wooden ducks perched on various ledges and rested on shelves that held more candles, pieces of driftwood and a set of antlers. A colonial iron chandelier with still more flickering candles hung above the next table. As the thunderstorm raged outside, F and I relaxed in James’s warm, rustic apartment, anticipating our pig.

The meal was very good. Not extraordinary, but definitely very good. I’m sure that you could find a gourmet porcine meal of finer quality at one of the many lauded restaurants throughout the Windy City, but F and I had not signed up for a restaurant experience. What made this evening special was the expectation of a long, leisurely meal among new friends. The family-style courses were paced throughout three and a half hours, so we had plenty of time to digest and get to know our dining companions.

Lisa and Chuck were a few years older than us and at first I found them aloof and a little intimidating. She wore a gray turtleneck sweater and pearl earrings and was well put-together with a sophisticated style that I have never quite been able to master. He was a little rumpled with square-framed glasses and wayward hair. But as the night progressed and we shared plate after plate of pig and glass after glass of wine, we found that Lisa was endearingly silly and Chuck was a rumpled intellect. The other places at our table were occupied in time by Kurt and Rory, both startlingly beautiful college students from Madison. He wore stonewashed jeans and a cowboy-chic button-down shirt; his blond hair fell to his shoulders over the starched collar. She dressed simply in a black tee-shirt, her only adornment a small silver cross. She had a perfect, tiny face with big, earnest eyes. They looked like they had just arrived from a JCrew photo shoot set in Wyoming. As with Chuck and Lisa, my first impressions faded as the evening progressed and Kurt and Rory stepped off the JCrew page. Kurt had a disarming, puppy-like tendency toward long-windedness unhampered by a lisp, and Rory was quick with a shy smile revealing petite, childlike teeth. Kurt was the beer distributor for the event and described in lengthy detail the process of brewing mead on his tiny stove top.

The six of us ate a lot of pig—the seven-course dinner included bacon, pork belly, pulled pork, pork fat, pork broth, pork sausages, and other bits and pieces of swine (plus dessert, which was not pig). Among our favorites: pulled pork with golden raisins and white radishes, pork sausage and micro-greens, white beans in pork broth, and my new weakness—fried pork fat with toasted black walnuts. This dish was crispy and strangely sweet, almost like candied orange peel. It was utterly surprising and delicious, and I could have eaten a heaping plate of fat, against my better judgment. Luckily, the family-style plate was small and I limited myself to a sensible portion. The dishes were augmented with products from local suppliers: Red Hen baguettes, fresh Wisconsin goat cheese, and Kurt's lemongrass beer. Unfortunately, the menu was taped to the far wall and written on brown paper, so without my glasses, I couldn’t decipher the finer points of what I was eating. I will be sure to print the menu below, if the UFC posts it online. In the meantime, here are some visual highlights:

Those are all of my photos. I’m getting braver, but I’m still a little shy about taking pictures—especially when it means making my dining companions wait while I snap photos of the food. But when the UFC posts their pictures online, I’ll add more below.

After three and a half hours of pig plates and scintillating conversation with our new friends, F and I were reluctant to leave James’s beautiful apartment. As we gathered our coats and opened our umbrellas, I wondered why we considered getting together with nice people to eat good food a “Special Event.” The concept is pretty simple, really, and it would be simple to put into practice in our every-day lives, if we were so inclined. But are we inclined?

When I posed these questions to F on the way home, he replied with a pithy flash of wisdom,

“Eating is private.”

And it’s true. In many European countries, mealtime is a celebration of togetherness, of letting go of the day’s frustrations, and of enjoying the company of friends and neighbors over food and wine. But here in America, creating and eating a meal is often just another task to cross off our busy schedules. We eat in private—at our desks, on the couch, at the counter—without real enjoyment. Without company.

I will admit that I am a private person. When reading about the UFC’s collective meals, my first thought was that you’d have to really love these people to eat your every meal with them. While I long for more dinners with my friends and family, I wouldn’t want to make them nightly events. I would miss my dinners alone on the couch with F. It’s difficult, but it must be possible to find a fulfilling balance between privacy and community.

The UFC has a good thing going here and, while I definitely think the evening was worth the price, I can recreate the same experience in my own apartment for free. I may not have access to a fresh hog, but I do have my own collective of friends and family to celebrate with from time to time.

Our Saturday Plans Include Red Wattles

F and I will be venturing out on the town once again this Saturday night. Stay tuned for a post featuring Red Wattles!


For more info about the Underground Food Collective, CLICK HERE.

Check out reviews of pig dinners served earlier this winter in Madison, WI and New York, NY. The NY Times Bittman Blog, Slow Food USA, and Gourmet Magazine covered the delicious -- and sold-out -- UFC dinners served last month in New York. For links to articles and photos: CLICK HERE

The Onion covered the Nov. 14 dinner in Madison, WI: CLICK HERE

Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!

In an episode of my new favorite show 30Rock, Tracy Jordan compares Liz Lemon to the Cathy cartoon above. This reference might not mean anything to you, but Cathy’s exclamation “Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!” is probably universally understood by all women. And my sister B and I shouted the line all weekend in anticipation of our chocolate-making course at Delightful Pastries bakery in Jefferson Park’s Polish neighborhood. For two relatively health-conscious girls who are unable to resist sweets, a chocolate-making course is an occasion met with mingled excitement and apprehension. But on Sunday, we did not plan to resist the chocolate or to feel remorse for eating it.

In the midst of a snow storm, B and I entered the warm bakery that smelled of rising dough, sugar cookies and chocolate. On our way back to the kitchen, we stopped to admire rows upon rows of colorful pastries and truffles and fresh breads, feeling the snow melt away and the cold leaving our limbs. I am convinced that baking is one of the noblest professions there is. Nothing imparts as immediate a sense of well-being as a warm loaf of bread or cookies with bunny faces.

The kitchen was taken up by a long, wide table flanked by glass-fronted refrigerators filled with stacks of chilled dough. Utensils and cutting boards dangled from the walls and bowls and baking sheets and pots and pans were jammed this way and that into high shelves. Sixteen people crowded around the table and each of us had a baking sheet with two pastry shells and a sheaf of recipes. B and I took our places at the end of the table to watch our instructor Dobra plop truffles from a pastry bag onto a baking sheet with an expert flick of the wrist.

Dobra opened Delightful Pastries in 1998 with her mother Stasia. Dressed in a white chef’s apron with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, Dobra is a tough-looking woman in her late 30s with large hands rough from mixing and lifting and kneading. She speaks with a gruff Polish accent, inflected with a dry sense of humor. Dobra led us into the back of the kitchen, past a giant mixer with giant attachments that put F’s pink mixer to shame and made me weak in the knees.

We crowded around a little furnace to watch Dobra mix chocolate into a battered pot. B and I stood on our tiptoes to see into the pot as she described the desired temperature and consistency of the chocolate-caramel sauce sputtering over the stove. The scent of hot caramel filled the back room and made me very hungry, even though we had just eaten lunch at the Irish pub down the street.

All memory of lunch evaporated as B and I were caught up in the flurry of tastings that followed. Caramel sauce, truffles, ganache, whipped cream, chocolate mousse, cream cookies, chocolates, caramels and pie crust—we tasted everything without a trace of guilt.

We also learned things. We didn’t so much create chocolate desserts as assemble them from the ingredients that Dobra had already prepared. This was fine with us. It was warm in the kitchen and snowing outside and B and I were content to whisper to each other and do anything that Dobra told us to do.

Dobra gave each pupil five chocolate truffles and we cheerfully dipped them in melted chocolate.

When they had dried, we coated them with cocoa powder and nuts. B and I split a nut-covered truffle, expecting the plastic spoon to bend as it cracked through the lump of chocolate. But the spoon crushed smoothly through the truffle, and we each took half. It was sweet but not too sweet, soft but not mushy. “Chocolate should be bitter,” Dobra said. “And chocolate should not be hard. You know chocolates that are tough when you bite them? That’s no good. Chocolate should be soft when you bite into it. It should be soft trickling down your throat so you think, Aaah, that’s a good truffle.”

Next, we assembled chocolate mousse pies. Dobra passed around a bowl of mousse and we scooped generous portions into our pie shells.

Then she passed out a bowl of heavy whipped cream to top the mousse. “Fancy people buy cakes,” she said. “Cakes can be fancy, but pies should not be fancy. A pie should be a mess. In the pie shell, you put good, simple fillings. Chocolate, apples, anything you want. Then whipped cream. You just put it all together and then it’s done. It goes out on the shelf just like this,” she held up a pie shell filled with a mound of mousse and cream, “And it’s just perfect.”

You can tell a lot about people from the way they decorate desserts. Once we had covered our mousse with cream, we decorated the tops of our pies. The woman next to me carefully painted chocolate into a tribal pattern of thick stripes along the rim and spread a dollop of chocolate in the center. The organizer of the event—K—sprinkled cocoa powder over his, then added nuts, then drizzled chocolate, then a dollop of mousse, followed by a chunk of bitter chocolate. His young daughter carefully arranged nuts over the top of her pie, piece by piece.

I drizzled chocolate over the top of mine, while K watched in amazement. “Look what you’re doing!” he crowed. “That’s great!” He whipped out his camera and snapped photos while I flicked chocolate across the top of the pie. He made me clear my baking sheet so the pie stood out against the white parchment paper, and took another photo. Everyone watched as my face turned red. My fussy nature was clearly written in my chocolate drizzle.

Next, we poured ganache into the smaller of the pie shells and learned how to cut caramel into squares (run the knife under hot water and dry off before cutting).

I could have stayed at Delightful Pastries all day. The kitchen was comfortable. The equipment was well-worn and well-loved, the counters cluttered with recipes and bits of chocolate, the refrigerators filled with cookies and dough and sheets of colored sugar. B and I lingered in the front of the bakery, reluctant to leave behind the warmth and the scent of sugar that clung to our clothes and hair.

Whether it was the sugar, the time with B, or the fact that the blizzard had finally stopped, I left Delightful Pastries feeling delighted. B took her truffles home to NYC and I sent most of the pies and chocolates to work with F on Monday. But we kept half of a chocolate cream pie for ourselves.

Vegetarian for a Day

Green Zebra interior photo courtesy of Mariani's Virtual Gourmet.

F and I are not vegetarians. As is evident in this blog, we like our meat. Most of our dinners consist of 1/3 pork or chicken or fish, 1/3 vegetables, and 1/3 grain, and it’s all I can do to sneak those vegetables into the equation. If it were completely up to me, I would cook a few vegetarian dishes a week. But when I make a ragout or an eggplant lasagna, F eats in silence and when prodded admits, “It’s good. But it would be better with meat.”

As described in the previous post, my sister B is essentially a vegetarian. When ordering a “design your own” sandwich, she will circle the entire vegetable section without prejudice. So when B came to visit, I embraced the opportunity to finally try a restaurant where I knew F would never willingly eat: the vegetarian Green Zebra. We made our reservations and invited F to join us, if he was so inclined. “There’s no meat at all?” he asked. Assured that there would, in fact, be no meat on the menu, F stocked up on a pulled-pork sandwich a few hours before dinner and agreed to accompany us “if only for the dessert.”

We arrived at Green Zebra in the midst of a raging downpour, complete with sleet and howling winds. The hostess led us to a table near the window, with a lovely view of the gray sky and rain-streaked street. The room was painted in muted greens and browns and dotted with pots of towering bamboo. We were in a little rainforest all our own.

The waiter provided a quick lesson on the menu. The dishes were relatively small and meant to be shared; he recommended three to four plates per person. The menu started with light, leafy dishes and soups and worked its way down to heaver plates of mushrooms, lentils, and creams. There were four distinct sections, and we decided to order one dish from each, forgoing the suggested three to four plates per person. To start, we ordered Honey Crisp Apples, Fresh Horseradish, Tarragon, Hazelnuts and both soups because we couldn’t decide between them: Thai Spiced Carrot Soup, Crispy Rice Noodles and Sweet Onion and Garlic Soup, Truffle Cream.

The carrot soup was a vivid orange with electric green foam. At once spicy and tangy, this was B’s favorite dish of the evening, while I was reluctant to share the onion and garlic soup. Its presentation was imaginative—if a little pretentious. The truffle cream arrived first, at the bottom of a white dish. Then the waiter poured the soup into the bowl from a cast-iron tea kettle. The cream spread throughout the soup, while a daub rose to the top, so you could garnish a spoon of soup with a hint of truffle. It was just the soup I wanted on such a damp, cold evening.

And F loved the apple dish. The plate was painted with a light streak of green horseradish, topped with a crispy stack of julienned apples and hazelnuts that appeared to have been lightly fried.

For the next course, we chose Foraged Mushroom Dumplings, Tofu, Thai Basil, Baby Bok Choy, Star Anise Broth and Olive Oil Confit Fingerlings, Dijon Mustard, Parmesan, Truffle, and a side dish of Spiced Edamame.

The edamame was salty and zesty and went very quickly. I could have done without the fingerlings, which were good, but pretty much just fancy potato wedges. B and I both liked the mushroom dumplings, which arrived in a star anise broth with plenty of green vegetables. The dumpling dough was chewy and slightly peppery, and made the dish.

For dessert, we ordered Cream Cheese Beignets, Carrot Cake Ice Cream, Ginger Snaps, Sugared Mandarin Peels and Chocolate Cake, Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, Salted Caramels, as well as the Lemon Pound Cake, Vanilla Gelato, Mandarin Slices from the "sweet bites" section.

The lemon pound cake was very good, but again, it tasted like pound cake should, without being particularly interesting.

But the other two desserts! The chocolate cake was heavy and soft and warm and the ice cream was flaky and sweet. It was accompanied by wrapped caramels that melted as you opened the wrappers. And the beignets! I took one bite and nearly leapt from my seat with joy. The soft, delicate beignet disintegrated as soon as it touched the tongue, leaving sugar crystals in its wake. The subtle cream cheese filling added a hint of tang. The carrot cake ice cream was creamy and tasted of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. It was a little heady for me, but B professed to love it.

We drove home in the rain, full and happy. I thoroughly enjoyed being vegetarian for a day—everything was so green and leafy. B seemed to love the entire Green Zebra experience and even F the meat-and-potatoes man liked this meal. I was nearly convinced that F and I could be vegetarians, if we could eat like this every day. I slept soundly, dreaming of truffles and bamboo—and woke up Sunday morning hankering for bacon.

Mad About Mado

I met my supper club for dinner last night in Bucktown/Wicker Park at Mado, home of the fabled Rolled Pig’s Head from my previous post.

Although the restaurant is relatively new, husband-and-wife chef-owners, Robert and Allison Levitt, are already known around town for their daily seasonal menu of farm-fresh meats and produce.

Mado is an unassuming, even ugly brick building on an otherwise dreary side street populated with shuttered buildings and empty lots. Until recently, it was a pizza joint with bright orange walls and plastic furniture. The windows are still tagged with spray paint, but inside, the orange walls have been stripped to reveal warm brick. The dining room is intimate and unadorned, and the food is outstanding.

We were tucked into the back corner at a long rustic table for eight. Our group arrived slowly, so we opened a bottle of wine and chatted until the last member of our party had arrived. By that time, we were all ravenous. S suggested ordering family style and the rest of us heartily agreed. We started with two plates of the meats, featuring Country Pate, Rolled Pig's Head and Tuscan Chicken Liver Pate accompanied by Freshly Baked Sourdough, Grain Mustard, and Pickled Vegetables. The assorted meats arrived on antique, pig-shaped cutting boards.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was excited about the Rolled Pig’s Head, but was possibly even more excited to be dining with a group of people who were just as enthusiastic about trying something new. For four hours, we talked about food, and less important subjects, like men. It was refreshing to dine with a group of girls who are as passionate about food as I am—most of them more passionate and more educated about the subject I have only recently come to love. When I said that I’m looking for a pasta machine, they each had suggestions about the best one on the market. They agree that a culinary tour of Chinatown or the Korean neighborhood would be an ideal way to spend an afternoon. And without blinking an eye, they ordered Rolled Pig’s Head and critiqued its taste and the merits of its texture.

When the meats arrived, I am ashamed to say that we spent a good amount of time debating which meat was which. We finally puzzled out that the soft, pillowy mound on one end was the Country Pate, the grayish meat in the middle must be the Tuscan Chicken Liver Pate, and the strips that looked like Prosciutto must be the Rolled Pig’s Head. Of them all, the Country Pate was the unanimous favorite—smooth and delicate and addictive.

We followed the pig with a selection of appetizers: Roasted Baby Carrots with Gorgonzola; Grilled Calamari Panzanella with Red Onion, Vinegar Peppers, and Capers; Confit Pork Kidneys, Grilled Bread, Hard Cooked Egg and Mustard (first photo below); and Fried Farm Egg Bruscetta with Truffle Butter (second photo below).Absolutely everything was wonderful. We raved over the crispy bruscetta oiled with truffle butter topped with a runny, salty fried egg. The carrots with gorgonzola were a surprising delight—and an aesthetic extravagance, with orange, yellow, and red carrots. I didn’t know that carrots came in yellow and red!

Next, we ordered two bowls of the home-made Rigatoni with Grilled Radicchio, Walnuts and Gorgonzola: Followed by: Rainbow Trout Stuffed with Braised Swiss Chard and Confit Pork Belly (Pictured below with Rosemary-Roasted Potatoes), Hanger Steak with Gorgonzola Polenta , and Casuela of Farm Egg, Braised Pork and White Beans. With sides: Rosemary-Roasted Potatoes (pictured above) and Creamy Polenta. It would be a daunting task to describe each of these marvelous dishes, so I won’t try. I will say, however, that I have never tasted polenta quite like this. The polenta I make at home tends to solidify as soon as it hits the plate, while this was rich and creamy and tangy. I could eat Mado’s polenta with every meal for the rest of my life.

And the desserts: Chocolate Cream Pie with Almond Cornmeal Crust, Caramel Biancomangiare with Crispy Chocolate and Coffee-Chili Syrup, and Migas Bark. The Migas Bark turned out to be chunky sheets of chocolate which, while certainly delicious, did not quite live up to the exotic promise of its name. The Chocolate Cream Pie was stunning, but the Caramel Biancomangiare was something special.

I will admit that I did not know what it was, so I did a little research and discovered that biancomangiare is a Sicilian-style almond custard with almond milk. It is believed that Sicily’s Arab conquerors and four centuries of Spanish domination inspired this distinctive dessert featured in the cookbooks of the Italian Renaissance and served in large troughs of snow at the banquets of the Medici court.

Shaped with a decorative mold, Mado’s biancomangiare was soft and light with a delicate caramel flavor. Tiny balls of chocolate graced the top and rolled down the sides, and the coffee-chili syrup pooled around the bottom. A single spoonful combining the soft biancomangiare with the crispy chocolate balls and the spicy syrup was startling and extraordinary.

Eight girls, 2 bottles of champagne, 7 bottles of wine (BYOB), 2 plates of assorted meats, 4 appetizers, 2 bowls of pasta, 3 entrees, 2 sides, 3 desserts, and 4 hours later, I headed home completely satisfied—and completely enamored with Mado.

(Mado photo courtesy of Menu Pages.)

Newlywed Fogies Out on the Town: Restaurant Week

It’s Restaurant Week in Chicago. One hundred and thirty restaurants have come up with a $22 lunch menu and a $32 dinner menu, throwing wide their doors to the impoverished masses.

This was an opportunity that F and I could not resist. So in our effort to get out more and to explore Chicago’s culinary scene, we chose Bistro 110 for our gastronomic adventure. This decision was not made lightly.

First, I read the reviews for each and every restaurant on Yelp.com and dismissed any restaurants that had received fewer than three-and-a-half out of five stars. Then, I divided the remaining restaurants by cuisine. Our options included French, Italian, American, Steak (evidently a subset of American), Japanese, Vietnamese, Continental, Fusion, Latin, Mediterranean, and one gastro tavern.

Then I visited the website for each restaurant within a given cuisine and reviewed their Restaurant Week menus side-by-side. I whittled down each cuisine category to two restaurants and did away with a few categories all together—like the gastro tavern, The Gage, whose menu featured various foams and a “reconstructed root beer float.”

I narrowed our options to the following four: Bistro 110 (French), Naha (American), David Burke's Primehouse (Steak), and Tizi Melloul (Mediterranean) and printed out the menus for F to review. It was really very close, but we went with Bistro 110, mostly because of the duck and the snails.

The Dinner Menu:

Appetizers
French Onion Soup
Endive and Goat Cheese Salad
Escargots en Croute
Pizza de la Maison

Entrées
Wood-Roasted Half Chicken
Grilled Steak Frites 110
Duck a l’Orange

Dessert
La Fameuse Crème Brûlée du Bistro 110
Gateau Breton

Bistro 110 turned out to be a spacious restaurant tucked onto Pearson Street, off of Michigan Avenue. It stands next to the Ghirardelli chocolate shop in the small square next to the Watertower that has always thrilled me with its fairy lights and horse-drawn carriages. We were seated at a table along the side of the large dining room and were immediately set upon by two waiters and a busboy. We were greeted, our waters were filled, extra place settings were whisked away, and menus appeared before us.

F looked up in near panic, “This is the regular menu!” he whispered. It was, indeed, a full list of $15 appetizers and $30 entrees. When I asked for the Restaurant Week menu, we were presented with a simple 5 x 7 card, and while our waitress remained friendly, the flutter around us ceased. It seemed we were still part of the impoverished masses despite our elegant setting, but we didn’t mind. F ordered the Escargots en Croute and Grilled Steak Frites 110, while I ordered the French Onion Soup and Duck a l’Orange. In the meantime, our waitress presented us with the bread basket and a huge, whole roasted head of garlic, from which we scooped generous lumps, hardly making a dent.

The Escargots en Croute was OK. It was essentially a gigantic croissant, beneath which were hidden six slightly tough snails. The French Onion Soup was fantastic, but we had to break through a thick cheese seal to get to the soup. Both appetizers suffered from excess; too much pastry, too much butter, too much cheese. But F thoroughly enjoyed his steak and thin, crispy frites. My duck was tender and the sauce was tasty, but the sweet potatoes were the highlight of the dish—small, cubed, and lightly caramelized. Even F liked them, and he claims to hate sweet potatoes. So far, we rated our meal a 3 out of 5 stars. And then the dessert arrived.

F ordered the Gateau Breton and I ordered the La Fameuse Crème Brûlée du Bistro 110. The famous brûlée was a fine dessert, but the Gateau Breton! I have been dreaming of it ever since. It was a very simple, warm, crumbly shortbread cake dusted with sea salt and accompanied by an unnecessary but delicious scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream and a drizzle of caramel. This Gateau Breton was absolutely fantastic. F laughed as I returned again and again to his dessert, forsaking my poor crème brûlée. While as a whole the meal rates 3 out of 5 stars, this dessert was a 4.5 (I reserve the 5 for any dish that can rival a gorgeous dessert named “The Dieter’s Dilemma” at the now-extinct Brush Hill).

As we fought over the last crumb of the Gateau Breton, F and I pondered whether we had ever had a restaurant meal we would rate the nearly unattainable 5 out of 5 stars. Between us, F and I came up with only a very few. Here is my list:

Brush Hill

Once a year, my parents would take my sister and me to Brush Hill for a special dinner. Brush Hill was a restored 18th century post-and-beam barn at the top of a hill in Vermont. I remember the drive up the hill along a winding path through the woods. I remember the dining room with only three tables and a gently roaring fire in the 12-foot-long brick fireplace. I remember ordering perfect, tender, pink lamb chops with mint essence, garlic, and grilled leeks. I remember that the kitchen was directly through an oak door near the fireplace, and the chef would come out to talk with my parents. I remember walking up the creaking stairs to the restroom on the second floor, past two bedrooms furnished with antiques. I remember that at the time, my sister and I were in the habit of rating bathrooms from 1 to 5, and we gave Brush Hill the highest honor. And I remember the reason we came back again and again to this restaurant at the top of a hill deep the woods of Vermont: The Dieter’s Dilemma, a puff pastry shell filled with French vanilla ice cream, topped with chocolate-rum sauce. It was quite simply the best dessert I have ever had, and probably will ever have. Brush Hill is long closed, but the memory of that dessert remains forever imprinted on my taste buds, never to be outdone.

Dot’s

F and I were married at my parents’ house in Connecticut. For our honeymoon, we drove up the East Coast and spent a few days in Vermont, where we had the best breakfast of our lives at Dot’s in Wilmington. Dot’s is not much to look at from the outside—or the inside, for that matter. It’s a small building next to the river that runs through town. The back end of the restaurant hangs over the river. It’s dizzying but also exhilarating to think that were the restaurant to slip into the churning waters, Dot’s homemade bread would be the last thing you’d ever taste. And that would be just fine. My oatmeal and bananas were satisfying on the chilly October morning and F’s eggs and bacon were perfectly prepared. But Dot’s homemade wheat bread is the best bread I have ever tasted. I can’t do it justice with words, so I won’t try to describe it. You will just have to go to Dot’s for yourself.

Mercat a la Planxa

Our Chicago friends took us out for dinner at Mercat a la Planxa to celebrate our engagement. While the atmosphere is a little too trendy for me (Dot’s is really more my style), being with good friends on the eve of my wedding and tasting exotic and delicious dishes that arrived one after another in a dizzying array, made this dining experience one of the best of my life. Our friend E had eaten at Mercat many times with her colleagues and knew the waiter, who was exuberant and generous with suggestions, portion sizes, and little treats from the chef. It was a feast of Bacon-Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Almonds, Garlic Shrimp, Spicy Potatoes with Spicy Paprika Aioli, a selection of cheeses, and the truly wonderful and surprising Langotsa y Vainilla, or Butter Poached Lobster, Roasted Garlic Flan, Basil & Vanilla. And then our friends ordered F a glass of 25-year-old Pappy Van Winkle bourbon. It tasted like a barrel; like pitch and oak and knotted rope. It was unbelievably good, and everyone at our table held the glass to their noses, unwilling to pass it on. I wish I could have kept that glass.

Those are my top three restaurant experiences to date. What are your 5-star restaurant moments?

Valentine to a Schlub

“I sound like such a schlub!” F said, upon reading Sundays in the Kitchen. “All I do is sit around and eat Cheez-Its while you buzz around the kitchen making all these great dishes.” I assured F that I had intended only to make fun of my own inability to relax on Sundays and in no way meant to imply that he was schlub-like.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m glad you’re doing this blog. I just know your parents are reading it, and I hope they don’t think I’m lazy and terrible.”

I acknowledge that this is a valid concern for a new husband. Looking back through my posts, I realize that while I have not intentionally misrepresented F, I have not given him the credit he deserves in his support of my recent passion for cooking—or what he calls my “new phase.” F often teases me about the fact that when I become interested in something, I devote most of my waking life to its practice instead of enjoying it as a hobby like a normal person. There have been many such “phases,” and I am certain that they cannot all be easy for F to endure.

F is my biggest champion. He reads my every blog post and even comments. He has always been entirely supportive of whatever new, life-changing obsession I have discovered. He was ready to drop everything and start a business with me when I decided to open a coffeeshop-bookstore in Hyde Park. (I later came to believe that since I have no money and we are in the midst of a recession, this plan is best shelved for now.) He bought a bike with me and even agreed to a 40-mile recreational ride with a group of middle-aged strangers when I became a bicycling enthusiast last summer. And he’s supportive now, as I’m becoming increasingly obsessed with cooking.

He encourages my venture into the culinary arts, but he does not share the interest. Which makes him all the more wonderful for reading my blog, trying new foods when he’d rather have pizza, listening to me babble about recipes, and holding the grocery basket when I take forever wandering down every aisle in the store. He even gave me Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas.

He recently visited three grocery stores in a single afternoon in search of cardamom because I needed 1/8 of a teaspoon for a spice cake and he wanted my recipe to come out just right. He has made late-night runs for eggs and driven across town to find just the right size ramekin for a soufflé. And he does the dishes—even when I use all of our pots and pans to make a single meal. F is in no way a schlub.

He even puts up with my subtle attempts to interest him in cooking. Upon request, he mixes sauces and spice rubs and sometimes chops the garlic, and I have been gently insinuating for the last few months that he might like to take a cooking class with me. I have taken a few classes now at Kendall College, which are great in no small part because I get to wear a chef’s apron and paper hat in a huge, gleaming professional kitchen. I think that if F were appropriately garbed and surrounded by meat and knives, bubbling mixes and strange smells, he might just join me in what I’m quickly realizing is more than just a phase.

So on the pretense of Valentine’s Day, I signed us up for a pizza-making and wine-tasting class for couples at Frasca Pizzeria and Wine Bar in Roscoe Village and I didn’t tell him where we were going. F loves pizza and often bemoans the fact that we no longer order it every week as we once did (before I realized I had gained ten pounds). I thought the promise of pizza would be an understated and effective nudge in the direction of the culinary arts. Last night, as we walked into Frasca, F still had no idea what we were doing there.

The hostess led us to the back of the dining room where a row of rustic tables faced a wood-burning oven and a prop table with a bubble-gum pink standing mixer. We joined a few other early couples at the tables, which were set with wine glasses, informational sheets about the tasting wines, and the pizza recipe. F’s eyes lit up.

“Are we making pizza?” he asked.

“Yes, and tasting wine, too!” I said.

“Pizza and wine. I like this!” he exclaimed. I was relieved—and excited. I too love pizza. We can no longer order it once a week because I tend to eat most of it.

Our long table held a wide range of pupils. There were four other young couples, a mother and daughter, and an older couple in fancy dress who took photos as the chef/co-owner of Frasca introduced himself and explained the recipe step-by-step as he poured ingredients into the mixer. When he mentioned that Frasca’s distinctive crust is made with beer instead of water, I whispered to F, “If we make this at home, you can choose the beer.” The chef suggested a hoppy beer microbrew, and F scribbled hoppy beer microbrew on his recipe.

He continued to take notes on the temperature of the ingredients, where to get the right flour, the best way to grease the pizza pan, and the ratio between the quantity of yeast and the thickness of the crust. As though holding my breath at a deer's timid approach, I tried not to watch him make notes and nod in agreement with the chef. I pretended not to notice his intense joy in receiving a little plate with his own personal ball of dough and topping options. He smiled and chatted as he stretched the ball into a disc and carefully spread sauce over the top. He was deliberate in his pepperoni placement and liberal with his cheese. And when he handed his plate to the chef for baking, he said he couldn’t wait to eat the pizza he had made with his bare hands.

“This is great!” he said. “We should do this at home. We can have everyone over and give them each a dough ball and toppings and we can make our own pizzas for dinner.”

“Absolutely,” I replied.

“We should make pizza every month,” said F.

While our pizzas baked in the oven, we sipped our wine, comfortable and warm in our booth as the servers bustled around us with plates of pasta and desserts. When the hot, crusty, bubbling pizza was finally set down in front of him, F inhaled deeply and gave me a big smile—a smile shared by all of our dining companions. It’s amazing how pizza and wine can impart such a profound sense of well-being and unbridled joy. I was happier and cozier in our little booth next to my husband, with my pizza hot from the brick oven, sampling lovely wine, than I had been for weeks. I was totally, completely relaxed, and I thought nothing could make me happier than I was at that moment.

And then F gestured to the bubble-gum pink standing mixer on the table before us and said, “So, where can we get one of those?”

Frasca's Drunken Pizza Dough
1 cup beer
3/4 cup water
3 1/2 cup “oo” flour (King Arthur or better)
1 tsp salt
1 cup AP flour
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp yeast

Dough Preparation

1. Add first 4 ingredients to mixing bowl
2. Next add in flour, sugar, and yeast
3. On the lowest speed mix for about 1 minute and 30 seconds
4. Turn off mixer and allow the dough to rest for approximately 30 seconds
5. Mix at speed 2 for 45 seconds
6. Remove dough from mixing bowl, fold in sides 2 to 3 times to create a smooth other skin
7. Place newly formed dough ball into a greased mixing bowl for proofing
8. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and place in a warm (85-100 degree area) with a damp towel over the bowl
9. Check dough after 1 ½ hours. Dough should dimple but not stick
10. Portion dough into 6-oz balls
11. Place dough balls into refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours and cover until ready to use.

Cooking Directions
1. Preheat oven to highest setting with pizza stone in the oven
2. Slide pizza onto stone and cook until crust is golden and cheese is melted
3. Cut, eat, and enjoy!

Newlywed Fogies Out on the Town

F and I have old-people tendencies. Our idea of an ideal evening is eating a home-cooked dinner on the couch and watching Lost. We sit side-by-side under a comforter. Our roly-poly black cat, Barry, sits on F’s lap, and our six-pound gray cat, Pickle, curls up tightly on the back of the couch above my left shoulder. It’s very domestic.

“Honey, I hate to say this, but you’re starting to sound like an old woman,” my mother said last week, when I informed her that F and I had been invited to see a play on Friday night, but that I would really rather go home, have dinner, and get to bed early. She was right. It’s not normal for twenty-something newlyweds in America’s second greatest city to want to stay home on a Friday night. It is time for us to get out and enjoy ourselves—even if we have to force ourselves to go to restaurants and movie theaters and see other people.

In the spirit of change, F met me on the corner as I got off the train last night after work. We had decided to start small and go out for dinner and a movie in our neighborhood, Old Town, and I came up with a short list of the best low- to mid-priced restaurants within ten minutes of our house. Luckily, we live in a popular neighborhood with thriving nightlife and a plethora of boutiques and restaurants. Just within that ten-minute radius, we had our choice of Italian, French, American, New-American, Japanese, Japanese Fusion, Bar/Pub, Diner, Fast-Food, Chinese, Lebanese, and Greek.

We settled on sushi. Last night, we went to Kamehachi, which the Yelp reviewers gave four of out five stars—and for good reason. Kamehachi, which means “eight turtles” in Japanese, has five locations in Chicago and was founded in Old Town in 1967 (although the original building was located down the street). Little did we know that we were eating in Chicago’s first sushi bar.

F is relatively new to sushi, but he’s enthusiastic. I have loved Japanese food ever since I spent a month in Japan when I was seventeen, but I do not pretend to know anything more than the basics of Japanese food. With our rudimentary knowledge of Japanese cuisine and our eagerness to try the exotic and extraordinary, we ordered:

edamame
Boiled soybeans in the pod

F especially loves edamame, which he calls “Japanese French fries.” They are actually a lot like healthy French fries; in Japan, edamame is a popular, salty snack eaten with beer.

hiyashi wakame
Assorted seaweed marinated in a red pepper and sesame dressing

This was beautiful. Centered on a white plate was a delicate bundle of four or five types of seaweed, each with its own distinct texture and shade of green. There were diaphanous, emerald ribbons that crunched. There were deep green seaweed noodles that slid through the chopsticks. There were vibrant, crimped strands that coiled out of the artfully arranged pile. The sesame oil dressing added a nutty flavor to the salty ocean taste of the seaweed. I have never tasted anything like it.

sashimi moriawase
Chef's artistic presentation of today's freshest sashimi assortment (filets of seafood), served with miso soup and rice

We figured that we would trust the chef to choose the most delectable fish of the day, and we were glad we did. Our pristine white plate held two small samples of seven different fish: octopus, shrimp, tuna, salmon, eel, and two white-gray filets that we couldn’t name. My favorite was the briny, chewy octopus, while F declared the tuna his favorite. We agreed that the two unidentifiable white-gray filets were extraordinarily fishy, which is not a bad thing in itself, but was just a little too strong for us.

Full, satisfied, and feeling very young and carefree indeed, F and I decided we had enjoyed our city enough for one night, and postponed the movie for another evening. We stopped at Treasure Island on the way home for Cheez-Its and ice cream, and retired to our couch to have dessert under a blanket with our kitties. It was a perfect evening.