Grumpy Old Man

I went out this morning in search of something good to eat. I was already in a bit of a dour mood after noticing a glaring typo in the New York Times; the eighth word of the most prominent article, front page, upper left hand corner, was missing several important letters. If it happens in such an obvious place in a paper like the New York Times, with who-knows-how-many-eyes reading it before it goes to print, what does that say about where our standards are going? Does it matter that the word surprisingly was spelled surpringly, even though we can all figure out what the intended meaning was? You know; the whole "a rose by any other name" thing. To quote a reluctant William Safire, the late writer and authority on language, most notably for his On Language column in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper in question, “At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning."

Sigh.

So, anyway, I had a supring moment of mood redemption this morning. Again, I was gloomy, which was amplified by my culinary equivalent of the tossing and turning of a privileged, bratty child: I couldn't seem to find something to eat in my neighborhood. I wanted something other than my usual cheesy eggy salt bomb; I just wanted to sit in peace and trudge, in the day's curmudgeonly fashion, through my New York Times, and drink some coffee and eat a bagel. But the waitress I can't stand was at the one place up here where I can do that at a table-service place (she, in all her 22 years, finds it necessary to call people "hon", and "sugar", and "sweetie"; to me, the charm of that is lost unless the speaker has several more grizzled miles under her life belt; it also doesn't help to sit at a table without silverware for 5 minutes after food has arrived, or to be misremembered as to whose bill is whose in a place with 2 occupied tables), so naturally, I moved my ornery self on, never to find that combination of good coffee and tasty bagel and table in which to spread out the paper and read.

It was in my gloom, then, that I came across a shady looking figure smoking a dirty cigarette on the sidewalk in front of me. I made a move to get around him, when I realized it was my buddy. We exchanged greetings; without knowing my "predicament", he pulled a bagel out of a paper bag he was holding. It was laden with cream cheese and cucumber. "Come up to the roasterie and sit down for a minute," he said. I did. He poured me some of his own coffee, surely roasted within the week; we sat at a table, I ate the bagel, we read the paper, we drank coffee, we talked; someone in the roasterie came over and told a fully-in-character story/joke. I explained the situation I was dealing with before running into my friend. His reply: "Sometimes, things work out."

Indeed they do.

Drinks with a Ploughman, or, This Sure Is A Picky Ghost

I spent a really nice day not too long ago walking around, and ended up walking from my neighborhood (Edgewater/Andersonville) over to Lincoln Square. A good couple of miles or so, and it was a gorgeous fall day. You know the type--blue, blue skies, so crisp; leaves of every color, cold enough to make you know what we're in for but not too cold as to keep us from enjoying it. And somewhere along the way, I ended up in The Book Cellar, reading a magnificent cookbook called Made In Italy by a fellow named Giorgio Locatelli, an Italian chef with a Michelin-starred restaurant in London called Locanda Locatelli. I love cookbooks like this--it's more prose than anything, and it's filled with Locatelli's reminiscences and anecdotes of his life as a boy in Italy through his chefdom in London. You can feel his passion on every page, and his recipes--though a bit cheffy and difficult at some points--come from a quite simple place, and really inspire the same simple passion in the reader.

Naturally, it drove me to eat. The first thing that came to mind was a bottle of prosecco; I love champagne and find it appropriate at any given moment in time, and for those of you saying "Hey, isn't this supposed to be the On The Dole guy?", rest easy knowing that decent bottles of sparkling wine, nay, any wine can be had for around ten clams these days. It's not going to be something you serve the Queen of England when she comes over, but it will serve the purpose and work wonderfully any other time.

So I beat it into the wine shop there on Lincoln. Weirdest window displays ever, but great staff who know their stuff and have a ton of it. And while in there, perusing, my thoughts turned to beer. And a nice big bottle. And I settled on the perfect one--between BIG HUGE beer and delicate champagne. And this was Rodenbach Grand Cru. Light and sour, with deeper flavors emerging soon after these as the first initial mist from opening the champagne-like cork dissipates; a really beautiful beer. And thus the muse carried me further and suggested thoughts of really nice sausages and cheese. You know, that simplest of meals: nice wine, a hunk of meat, a hunk of cheese, a hunk of bread. And I thought, I've got the time, I'm going to head down to Paulina Meat Market. After all, I was about to perform what I would tell myself was a good deed by pushing a stalled car down the road a bit. And never mind that I kind of cut out once the guy told me he was going down to Montrose Avenue (we were roughly at Lawrence, and we're talking like a half mile). I mean, he had some other guys helping him. So I slipped silently into the train station and waited for the brown line to come.

And I made it to Paulina in short time, basically closing my eyes and floating in on a wave of smoke, that wonderful Paulina smoke, the way Bugs Bunny would float through the air when smelling a roast or something like that. For those of you who don't know, Paulina Meat Market (aside from selling the best meat available in Chicago not sold at markets by the farmers themselves), smokes all kinds of meat and sausages in-house right there in their shop. And this illuminates the neighborhood with unthinkably wonderful smells. And so I floated right in, Bugs Bunny style, and ordered a pepperoni and a linguisa (a heavily spiced pork sausage), added on a hunk of stilton blue cheese, and made it out of there on the cheap. Stopped off at the market and picked up an apple, greens, and a shallot, and threw in a small demi-baguette.
Yes, you read right. I was making the Ploughman's Lunch.

Finally home, I opened that lovely beer and poured a glass; minced a shallot and whisked it with Dijon mustard, champagne vinegar and olive oil; washed my greens, rolled them gently in a dish towel to dry, and then dressed them; sliced my apple, broke off some cheese and cut up my sausages. Bread went in the oven for a quick few minutes and I was set...
...and it was great. It'd been a really long time since I had this; it was an old favorite at the haunted, now being remodeled Red Lion Pub in Lincoln Park. And as I munched and sipped away, I asked myself why it had been so long. Ah well, nevermind, I said, as I poured more beer.

Puff Pastry, or, Isn't It About Time To Get Ready For Hibernation?

A group of friends gathered at my place last Sunday to do the usual: talk about food and eat plenty of it, along with some nice wine, beer and cider. The catalyst for the get-together was to simply talk about a project we are all working on, but when you get these people together, you can't help but put out a big spread. 'Cause you know they're going to be bringing some tasty stuff, too.

So I had a bunch of food in the larder when this thing got planned. And why go drop a lot of cash at the market when I have so much at home? Let's see. I had about a pound of left over beef tenderloin from an event I worked; barely seared, which was in my favor. I also had, in the freezer, a filling I had made from a friend's old chicken. (He had let this chicken run loose on his farm for a long, long time; thus the chicken, when it was given to me, weighed about 10 pounds cleaned and gutted. That's like a turkey, and far heavier than the 3-4 pound fryers one usually finds. This also means the meat was a lot tougher, but also a lot more flavorful. Some might call it gamy. All in all, it tasted like chicken is supposed to taste: like chicken. I remember roasting a heritage turkey at Thanksgiving one year, free range, and so many of the people eating it, who were used to the usual bland Butterball turkey, said it tasted "weird". In fact, it tasted like turkey, and many people haven't been exposed to that in the past 50 years of industrialized meat production. The chicken I used in this meal, however, was deliciously well developed; I ground the legs and mixed the meat with scallions, ginger, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce.) Another friend had brought me some ham steaks, and I had, coincidentally, been stewing some lima beans and kidney beans with some onions and carrots and garlic, and a great big smoked ham hock. And a Miller High Life. And I did pick up some salami and St. Andre cheese and a big loaf of french bread to start things out.

So, people arrived, bearing fresh figs and more cheese (Roquefort and another triple cream, I believe) and a beautiful hard Apple Cider from Michigan which would serve as dessert; a hoppy 3 Floyds beer and the makings for a rich, unctuous "salad" also showed up. Naturally, we popped a bottle of champagne and dug into the cheese and salami.

I had decided, the day before, that I would turn the beef into pot pies, and thus decided to make some puff pastry. It can be daunting to think of making puff pastry at home, and it can border on being one of those things that is better when bought, made by people who make it for a living. But hey, it had been awhile, and I was in the mood to make it. And I had remembered seeing a pretty good looking recipe for it in Saveur at one point. And for those of you not familiar with the process, it is similar to that of croissants: rolling dough out with lots of butter, then making a series of folds that create exponential layers of dough separated by thin layers of butter (81 layers are created when making croissants). Lots of work, but really worth it. And when the dough is baked, moisture in the butter basically separates the layers of dough, and the crust puffs up, making the ever so texturally interesting light, crispy layers that are puff pastry. Just think of apple turnovers.

So, on the big day I sauteed some carrots, onions, turnips and beets in butter, got 'em nice and soft and added some flour, then some red wine, beef stock, parsley and thyme. This made a nice, unctuous, gooey stew, which I ladled into individual bowls. I rolled my pastry out and laid it over each bowl, brushing it with an egg wash, and into the oven it went. It came out nice and puffed up, a delicately crispy crust over that thick stew. Perfect timing, too--sun was cascading into my place by that point, and as we broke through the pastry into the stew, steam came billowing out for the ultimate in cozy effects. Hearty as an appetizer, wouldn't you say? It's okay, 'cause we had a big Bordeaux to wash it down.

Next came the rich salad my friend made: caramelized onions, roasted mushrooms, roasted radicchio (yes, roasted!), goat cheese and mint.Heavy for a salad, hence the quotes used above. But tasty; freshened and lightened up by the mint. A good second gear in this first fall feast.

Now, for that chicken leg filling I had. I decided to make tortellini with it, and simply serve it in chicken broth. Not having any on hand, I got some broth from the store, and simmered it on the lowest of heat for a couple of hours, fortified with some onion, carrot, and plenty of herbs. I made some fresh pasta and rolled it out, cut it, filled it, and formed the tortellini. It was a nice moment in the kitchen, a couple of us in there, my buddy working on his salad and me forming the torts, champagne flowing. Reminded me of one Thanksgiving where a chef friend of mine came over, and we spent the entire day cooking all kinds of food, drinking all kinds of wine; no one being "cheffy" and stepping on anyone's toes--a perfect day of cooking. Anyway, the tortellini were simmered in that broth, then served in the broth with scallions and parsley on top.
Which brought us to those ham steaks, and those beans. The beans were nice and soft by now, and I slowly cooked the thick (about 1 1/2 inches!) ham in my cast iron skillet 'till it was nice and browned. Sliced it and put it on top of those beans, alongside a sweet potato gratin (thinly sliced sweet potatoes, grana padano cheese, and cream that had been warmed with onions, herbs, and scraps of the sweet potatoes, baked nice and slow until thick and bubbly), and a maple-mustard sauce made of, well, maple syrup and whole grain mustard. It ain't rocket science to see that would go well with ham. We ate this with that beer my friend brought, and finished the meal out with the cheese and figs, and the hard cider. A perfect fall meal.

Naturally, all the excitement got me riled up to go have some more beer at the Hop Leaf (I, for one, can't wait until the fireplace gets lit in there on a daily basis), which we did, where we met some more friends; after awhile, I forced us all back to my place where I insisted on making a plate for my underfed college student friend who I try to feed any chance I get in the hope he won't waste away over the winter.

And the leftovers? Well, I did have some puff pastry left a couple of days later. And some of that tenderloin. And the beans. Tons of beans. So I wrapped the beef in the puff pastry and baked it, and put it on top of the beans. So I'm staying well fed as the winter approaches. This is a time where I eat like mad; some ancient survival technique is what I tell myself. I think we all know better.

And, looking to the weeks ahead, any of you who haven't already expressed interest to me in the lamb dinner (hughamano@yahoo.com), please do so as plans are coming together for that as we speak!

A Couple of Dudes, The Last Tomatoes and A Really Old Lamb

A good friend of mine called the other morning, and he was in the dumps. And it was a place that I could relate to, having inhabited it a few months earlier at the beginning of the summer. So what better to do than to tell him to come over and cook and eat with me?

He arrived bearing 12 big brown eggs from some farm somewhere; I had a ton of produce from another friend's CSA box. Great tomatoes, carrots, onion and basil. Oh, and bacon. I had some bacon laying around. Even better yet, another friend had given me a pound of coffee from his roasterie recently, so I brewed that up. My droopy faced friend (also a chef) smelled the coffee, considered it, remarking that he had had this very roast before, and tried to identify it. I just told him it was decaffeinated Sanka and we set the esoterics aside.

We sliced the onion and caramelized it in some butter and olive oil (which, incidentally, I found a great litre bottle of at this place in Andersonville called Piatta Pronto, a little deli/specialty foods market that also makes some pretty great sandwiches (try the Dulce di Parma) with a super friendly guy who always says "how's it going, boss?" or "that's alotta Mascarpone, boss!" ever present up front. This bottle cost $9.99, yes $9.99, and has some pretty righteous green, grassy aromas to it, totally on-the-dole appropriate. The name? I don't know. Just go in and check it out. And get a sandwich. Good coffee next door at The Coffee Studio, friendlier coffee down the street at Kopi Cafe.). Then we shaved the carrot ever so thin with a vegetable peeler and added it to the pan for about 5 minutes to get these caramelized, too. Cut up a bunch of the multi-colored tomatoes, which were remarkably good (soapbox side note: don't you feel that in recent summers there has been a plague of really bad "heirloom" tomatoes? I think the title of an heirloom tomato has somehow come to mean that it will also be a "good" tomato, and this just isn't the case. To my mind, heirloom does not equal good. And believe me, the marketers will try to push these poor representations of heirloom tomatoes on the unsuspecting public; and, unfortunately, they will be accepted simply because they are claimed to be heirloom. For my money, I would take a normal, ripe, red, juicy Roma tomato over a bland, mushy, white fleshed heirloom as sold far too often. And don't get me wrong. The subtleties in flavor, texture and aroma and the difference in taste of a good heirloom to said Roma tomato is huge, but here's to considering things before we just go charging toward the heirloom label, yes?). We cooked these guys really quickly, and held some back to have on top of this frittata (by the way, that's what we were making, a frittata, and as you are probably coming to realize, I go to the frittata quite often in the morning), along with some torn basil. Added the good eggs and let them cook through for a bit before finishing the whole thing in the oven. The bacon got started in a warming cast iron pan, then put in the oven until done, which for me is preferably not quite crisp, with some meaty texture left to it (I was in heaven for 5 straight mornings when staying at a great tiny hotel in London with a terrier named "Bob" as a guardian--every morning they put out a great big spread which included nice, fat thick cut rashers among so many other things). It gets strained out on a cookie rack set over a plate and the cast iron put back on the stove top; a few hearty slices of French bread then get put in to fry up nice and crisp in the bacon fat. Never waste the bacon fat. Rule #1.

So there we were, a couple of dudes, one of us may or may not have been in a robe still, crying into our breakfast. But hey, it was a good one. And good conversation always get started with this guy. He had finally returned all of my Smiths cd's after several threats of violent leaps from dark alley shadows (note: never give a down in the dumps guy your Smiths cd's if you plan on listening to them anytime soon.), and we talked about music for a bit, but naturally, the conversation turned to food, and, seeing how this was the first really blustery day of autumn, the first really chilly day, I had a bee in my bonnet to roast a leg of lamb. So we started talking about lamb. (And how I am hoping that really full flavored lamb is the next wave of carnivorous fascination, given that the pig thing is everywhere, and the message has gotten out, and while that is wonderful, I think it is time to add something new (while still appreciating the pig), and why not make it lamb? And I don't mean the milky, veal-like flavor of suckling baby lamb we see everywhere in the spring; I mean the older lamb, the hogget and the mutton, that tastes more and more like lamb actually tastes the further it gets in life and the more grass it gets to graze on. Here's to seeing a big old lamb as the picture hanging outside some new restaurant's door!) And then I started roasting beets. And, naturally, it smelled like roasting beets in the house. Then I wanted even more than ever to roast that leg of lamb. To cook some beans down with some of the ham hocks he'd brought over. Or lentils. And cut up all the beets and add them to the beans with some of the good jus we'd get from cooking that sweet lamb leg. Find some rutabaga and turnips and parsnips and carrots and add them to the same. And to reduce all the drippings (jus, red wine, all the essence of a bunch of onions and carrots and maybe some fennel) into a thick sauce for the lamb.

Alas, this couldn't happen that day, sadly. However! Seeing how I dropped the ball on the World's Greatest F.o.t.D. BBQ Exposition and failed to make it happen while it was still summer, I now propose a roasted leg of lamb dinner, to be held at F.o.t.D. headquarters a.k.a. my place. I'll do the leg, participants do the other stuff, like the beans and/or lentils and/or potatoes roasted in duck fat and/or whole roasted lobe of foie gras and/or fall apple dessert concoction. If interested, it will be on a Saturday 2-3 weeks from now. Let me know at hughamano@yahoo.com, and until then, let these kids remind us of fall and heading back to school and everything else wonderful, and here's to making our way through the crispness of autumn.