Back in the Have

So I'm back in New Haven now. I have a new apartment, and a gorgeous new kitchen. I have been going a little nuts with summer farmers market bounty and just enjoying cooking in the big, open, kitchen with two large windows. Also, Mark Bittman's blog, Bitten, has been providing some delightful recipes.

Some of the things I've made:

-Tilapia with cilantro, lime, tomatoes, and crispy garlic (apparently this is Yucatan-style, according to Bittman).

-Scallops stir-fried with green and red pepper and eggplant.

-Cold eggplant salad with sesame dressing.

-A bread salad with cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, and fresh basil.

-pasta with fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil

-A nice simple yellow dal (Indian lentils) with onions and cilantro

- Molaha Mangai- a south Indian mango relish- basically raw mango with asofoetida, chili powder, and a little bit of toasted mustard seeds.

-fresh guac

-fresh peach salsa

-Blueberry/raspberry cheesecake bars (no-bake, no less).

-mango milkshakes

-Sauteed cherries (some of them poured on ice cream, some put in a pie)

Here's a picture of the cherries on top of some blackberry ice cream, and one of the cheesecake bars:

Honey

So, I guess this my own personal fiefdom of a food blog now...

In any case, made 4 recipes featuring honey this weekend- first, Alton Brown's homemade Protein bars and granola bars, which are quite good, and helpful because I'm at least temporarily back on the workout wagon, and they taste a hell of a lot better than their commercial alternatives.

Second, I made a Honey-topped salmon fillet, inspired by my friend Roja. The recipe is from her entertaining cooking blog, Tameshk in Kitchen. I ended up cooking carrots and potatoes in the same pan as the salmon, as well as an onion, and at the end, I threw in some red and yellow peppers. This was very good with a side of salad, some bread, and a glass of white wine.

Finally, I currently have roasting in the oven a leg of lamb, prepared in a Kashmiri style. It's called Raan, and you first rub the lamb (after removing excess fat) with a spice mixture of garlic, ginger, chili powder, cumin powder, tumeric, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt (I didn't have the cardamom, so I didn't use any), then marinating it with yogurt blended with almonds and pistachios and honey. It smells terrific right now, and I also added some cilantro to the marinade. It's roasting with some onions and green peppers, which will hopefully caramelize.

Quiche and Brie

So, I got some bloodwork done recently, mainly because of my family history of cardiac issues, and it showed some lipid factors were elevated- so my doctor has asked me to try to reduce the fat in my diet- in particular, to try and eliminate, for a while at least, cheese, red meat, ice cream, and butter (among other things). Now, I love all of those things, and have (or had) a lot of all of those things in my fridge. Instead of throwing them away, I decided to have a blowout weekend before embarking on the diet. Nicole was in Princeton, and we cooked two superb meals on Saturday: lunch was quiche with bacon, mushrooms, scallions, red and green peppers, jack cheese, and italian parsley, served with a mixed green salad with oil and vinegar and slices of blood orange; and dinner was brie baked in pastry with honey and pecans, served with red pears and green apples. Pictures:

Breakfast at the Taj

Let's not let this space die, boys and girls. It's holiday season- people must be eating and drinking well- so let's post about it.

I'm in Mumbai, India right now, for a conference, and have the amazing good luck to be staying in the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers, one of India's oldest and best known luxury hotels. I'm still a bit jetlagged, so I've been up at 5am the last two day, and have gone down to the gym for a workout. Not really so that I can stay in shape, but more so I can sharpen my appetite for the amazing breakfast buffet here. Now, I'm not usually a huge buffet fan, but this place is cartoonishly good.

Here's what I had for breakfast this morning:

(1) Rava Idli and Sambhar with chutney: a steamed, spiced wheat dumpling with lentil-tamarind stew, served with several different chutneys: coconut, cilantro, tomato, and peanut. Classic South Indian breakfast.

(2) Grilled veggies and cheese: I love grilled cheese, and the grilled veggies went really well with it. Very simple, very tasty.

(3) Smoked Salmon: just amazing to me that I can get this in India, and that it is good smoked salmon at that.

(4) Fruits: papaya, chikku (a sweet brown fruit that looks from the outside a bit like a potato, tastes much better), honeydew melon, watermelon.

(5) French toast with caramelized bananas: perfect dessert to the breakfast, washed down with a mug of hot, milky coffee.

Also a glass of fresh sweetlime juice (sweetlime = a citrus fruit somewhere in between an orange and a lime)...

Of course, for Rs. 1000 (roughly $25), the buffet ought to be good :-)

What I've done

With my farmer's market bounty:

Beets: roasted them in the oven, ate one of them just with salt, delicious. The others are in the fridge (they store well after roasting), may slice them thin and dress them with oil and vinegar.

Beet greens: stir-fried with potatoes, mustard seeds, and green chili. Very tasty, very typical Assamese dish.

Broccoli: steamed, then put into penne with alfredo sauce (made with the romano I got at the market).

Bacon: still got plenty of it. Had a big French toast and bacon breakfast the other day, which also used up the baguette I bought.

Bell peppers (red and green): some were roasted and mixed with pasta, and home-made tomato and garlic sauce. Others were chopped, lightly stir-fried with mustard seeds and asafoetida to mix in with yogurt and rice- a classic South Indian combo.

Eggplant: made Baigan Bharta, a typical North Indian dish. Roast the eggplant in the broiler, then mash the roasted flesh, fry up some tomatoes and onions with cumin powder, coriander powder, and garam masala, maybe a green chili or two, add in the mashed roasted eggplant, mix it all up, turn the heat down a bit, and at the end, add a bunch of cilantro. Delicious.

Farmers markets and fishmongers

So, I finally went to the on-campus farmers market here in Princeton. It was quite small, but very nice. I picked up some very nice sheep's milk cheese (one blue and one pecorino), a duck breast, some bacon, beets, red, green, and hot peppers, eggplant, broccoli, tomatoes, apples, cider, honey, and a baguette. So I went a little crazy. But I'm excited to have a fridge full of excellent raw materials to cook with.

Funnily enough, the beets might be what I'm most excited about. I'm planning on roasting them, and serving them with the greens on the side. The greens I'm planning on just wilting with a little bacon and garlic and onion. Other suggestions?

It's also nice that I have a good fishmarket just down the street. I've now twice picked up a piece of fish on my way home from work (opa once, rainbow trout once), marinated it briefly in soy sauce and ginger, and then grilled it and served it with a little pineapple salsa. A nice luxury.

Mmm...dosas

Great article on NYC street food.

Please help me eat good food

So, I bought some clams today. Littlenecks, quite nice looking. And I would like to eat them.

Here's the trouble: clams are really hard to shuck. I've googled around, and somehow the instructions on eHow and the like just aren't doing the trick. (Also, I don't have a clam knife. But I was hoping to maybe do this without one...)

Anyone have any secrets for me? Anyone? Post in the comments if you do. I beg you...

(As a totally random aside, the three biggest entries in eHow's "cloud" at the moment are, in order, "lose weight", "get pregnant", and "get rid of fleas". Really? Okay...)

Chautara Reminds me of Thundercats

Okay, so, I lied about completing my Brussels profile. To be honest, though, the cuisine in Belgium left a little to be desired, and the pizza really was the high point. Seriously, show me another place where you order pie by weight and a pair of cute girls with dangerous-looking shears mangle the prosciutto-pesto flatbread to your exact specifications.

In any case, I'm back in Madison for the time being. What can I say? I was having a coffee in Philly a couple weeks ago, and I was bored, so I got in the car and drove to Wisconsin. What? It's not like you've never taken an impromptu Midwest road trip. You're so judgmental...

Right. Madison. Home sweet home. I had the pleasure of dining with my dear friend Jana, an old college chum (which always makes me think of Jaws, for some reason...the word "chum," not Jana) with whom I spent countless hours studying literature, complaining about studying literature, and drinking heavily to punctuate our complaints about studying literature. I attribute my success in college to our mutual support and copious amounts of Tanqueray. It was my honor, then, to welcome Jana on her first night in Madison.

I opted for a tried-and-true Madison favorite, Chautara. Aside from being my favorite of the two good Nepalese restaurants in Madison, Chautara is also a touch classier than its sister down the street, Himalchuli. I'm pretty sure "Chautara" refers to a city in Nepal, while "Himalchuli" is definitely a mountain in the Himalayas...in case you were wondering.

We sat at a cozy table for two, looking out on State Street, Madison's still-dormant pedestrian mall. Don't get me wrong; there were plenty of people out, but the walkers-only thoroughfare will be flooded with red and white-clad coeds and douchebag frat boys with backwards "W" caps on within a couple weeks. I always love Madison during its down times, when the teeming sea of students has abated and only the charmingly familiar buskers and harmless-compared-to-Philly's-crazy-ass homeless people are out.

Jana and I talked about her imminent matriculation to law school, and it wasn't for twenty-five minutes that we realized nobody had brought us water or greeted us. Finally our server materialized, all apologies and promises of ice water and all kinds of Nepalese culinary delights. Jana went with the lamb korma, and I, in my infinite love for variety, chose the vegetarian thali.

The food appeared in what seemed like a short time, although we had already drunk most of our bottle of wine. Jana's lamb looked and smelled delicious, and I'm assured that it was, in fact, tender and tasty. My thali was a bit overwhelming, if only because of the plethora of chutneys and sauces that accompanied it. Although our server seemed a bit lackadaisical at first, she was very firm as to the application of the yogurt sauce and tamarind chutney to my samosa, and the required pairing of veggie momo and tomato chutney.

As usual, the thali was delicious. The giant, circular silver platter held a flight of meatless Nepalese classics. A perfectly-formed bowl scoop of rice, dusted with paprika, rested in the middle, surrounded by savory potatoes, eggplant, seitan and spinach, and punctuated by one each of the samosa and momo.

Although neither Jana nor I finished our dishes, we agreed that Chautara was an excellent place to begin the Welcome to Madison Pub Crawl 2007. The starchy, delicious Nepalese food was the perfect base upon which to pour dry Tanqueray (or dirty Grey Goose, if you're me) martinis, Spotted Cow beer, 14 year Oban, and something that resembled sewer water but tasted just like one of those chocolate oranges.

Chautara: Highly recommended.

Chautara
334 State St
Madison, WI 53703
(608) 251-3626

Make Your Own

I've been pretty uninspired by food for most of the summer. Not enough time to cook, lack of desire to do the dishes, and other lame excuses have kept me from cooking, and eating out has been for convenience rather than for quality. But this past weekend, I broke out of that, perhaps only temporarily. Friday night, with Flynn in town, we went to Kuma's. Long wait for the food, but good conversation, good beer, good food. Saturday I woke up early, went to the Evanston farmer's market, bought some nice tomatoes, some corn, some carrots, and some zucchini / summer squash. At 1 pm, I started the cooking.

St. Louis cut spare ribs on the smoker.

Homemade fresh mozzarella.


side dishes: Steamed and chilled green beans tossed with Olive Oil

grilled squash

corn on the cobb

fresh tomatoes, including a few from the garden. Those were REALLY good.


dill pickles and pickled green tomatoes from a Michigan farm.

All together:


All of that took awhile, but it all turned out ok. The ribs were definitely good. Perhaps a bit salty, and I could have taken them off the smoker 30 minutes earlier and the texture would have been a little better, but they were a success.

The mozzarella was a bit of a process. It's not hard, but on my first try the curd didn't set up enough, so I had to try again. The second time I ended up with two mounds of fresh cheese. Not bad for a first or second try. Didn't make enough to serve at dinner, but Joe, Timmy, Liz and Thor all got to try it. The really nice heirloom tomatoes made the cheese taste that much better. I also made tres leches, which was really good. Not hard to make, either. But I didn't take a picture of it.

Then, late lunch Sunday at Los Nopales with Flynn. So, for the weekend, I ate at a couple of great local restaurants, and Saturday was full of local produce, fresh cheese, real home smoked ribs, and fun people. Not bad at all.

Mixed grill

So, that's a menu board of a restaurant, just down the street from where I was staying in Jerusalem. Couple of things to note:

1) the skewer of Biz/Udder. Didn't really know that former Briefcase intern Biz Silverstein was available in skewer form.

2) the skewer of Turkey Testicles. Wow.

For the record, I wasn't brave enough to order either of these items, sticking to chicken skewers and kebabs (both very good- fresh grilled meat is delicious). However, the previous night, I had eaten across the street from this place at a little food stand, where I had managed to communicate in broken Hebrew my desire for a pita filled with whatever they were grilling, which was some sort of mixed grill with onions. It smelled terrific. I got greviously overcharged (44 shekels, like $10) for a small sandwich, but it was damn good and I had been starving.

What was in it? Well, definitely some liver and other assorted organs, onions, some regular meat, and well, other assorted organs. Probably turkey testicles. I was later told that this type of mixed grill is called a "Jerusalem grill".

So, next time you go to the Holy Land, try the West Bank Oysters.

Marseille

One thing that's interesting about traveling is how the food culture changes from place to place. In Pisa and Marseille, and really, Tuscany and Provence in general, it's very similar, a Mediterranean culture that really takes pride in its cuisine and time over meals- often to the exclusion of other cuisines- i.e., you're not going to find many ethnic restaurants - maybe one or two Chinese, one or two Indian, and a few middle eastern places, usually all pretty mediocre.

In the two day interlude I had in Geneva in between, I ate mostly at the home of my mom's old school friend (man, was it nice to eat home-cooked Indian- watching the Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final, eating pakoras [deep fried vegetable fritters] with spicy chutney and drinking beer is about as good as it gets) and at ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Indian)- so I didn't really get much of a sense of the food culture.

Israel, where I am now, is still on the Mediterranean, has a much more "American" food culture- fast food being very popular- of course fast food here is mainly falafel, pita, hummus, kebabs, shawarma, etc. I don't really know what the ethnic food (i.e., other than middle-eastern) situation here is, but I did have some mall food-court Chinese, which was oily, gross, but somehow very satisfying at the time.

Anyway, wanted to describe a very, very good meal I had in Marseille at a small restaurant called Resto Provencal, which serves, as you might have guessed, typical Provencal food. It's in the Cours Julien neighborhood, which is a big open-air pedestrian plaza with lots of bars and restaurants, and a lot of children playing and in general people enjoying themselves.

The restaurant itself is unassuming, but I remembered it from when I had gone to Marseille in 2003, and hell, if a meal sticks in your mind for 4 years, it must have been good (or possibly very bad). I went with my colleague and friend Erwan Lanneau and his girlfriend Vacianne, and we all decided on the 3 course prix-fixe menu, and a bottle of rose, which is what you drink in Provence in summer (in Tuscany, of course, you drink red wine. Delicious, full bodied chianti, for the most part. Mmm...red wine).

I started with the onion and anchovy tart, called Pissatiere, which was really fantastic- the salty anchovies and olives nicely complemented by the sweetness of the caramelized onions and the rich, very buttery pastry. I also tried a bit of Vacianne's salmon tartare, which I had back in 2003- still very good. Erwan's soupions (squid, I think, but I'm not sure), grilled, tasted fresh and firm, as they should be in a coastal town.

For the main course, I stuck to what I had eaten 4 years ago- filet de dourade en bouillabaisse- a filet of the fish dourade served in bouillabaisse, the famous Provencal seafood stew. On the side comes little toasts with an aioli-like spread called rouille. I hate to keep using the same words, but the fish was clearly fresh, and the soup surrounding it was delicately flavored- though it could have use a little more salt.

Dessert was an absurd chocolate mousse. Dark, dark, almost black, and thick, rich, and probably more calories than in the rest of the meal, it sent me almost into a stupor- luckily E. and V. then took me out for a digestif, a fiery pear brandy, which was the perfect restoring tonic.

As you can see, I'm missing being in France.

North Carolina Historic Barbecue Trail

I like North Carolina. I like BBQ. Who's in for a mid-fall trip?

From this article:

The non-profit North Carolina Barbecue Society speaks of barbecue in terms of culture, heritage and tradition. Earlier this year, the society created a historic barbecue trail spotlighting 25 joints from Ayden in the east to Murphy in the west. Each stop on the trail specializes "in roasting pig the old-fashioned way, slowly over pits of wood or charcoal," the society notes. The cited businesses also have to make their own sauce, be in business more than 15 years, provide sit-down service and provide a final product "that is a high quality representation" of the state's barbecue.

Very cool. 25 historic BBQ places serving pork the traditional way? Luckily, the North Carolina Barbecue Society has a website.

This is a link to the description of the historic BBQ trail.

This is a link to the map of the trail.

Who's it? I'm not saying we could hit all 25 places in one trip, but we could start on one side or the other and get as far as we can in an allotted time.

Surprise! New post!

It's just a link, but it's the type of thing that makes me excited about food.

Make your own what?

Tu peux pas test (Part 1)

Bonjour. Or, should I say, bonsoir, since it's night here in Stone Harbor. It is, however, early-ass morning in Brussels, where I was just this morning, or rather, late last night in Jersey time. Confused? Me too, but here's the short version: I went to Brussels from M-F this week to check out an MBA program. I don't think it'll pan out, but I did get to sample some fine Belgian cuisine. Let's start at the beginning:

Day 1 - Dans Bruxelles Straight Up, Son
I unfolded myself from sitting in Row 101B in ultra-slim coach seating on Continental's joyful Newark-Brussels night flight. Katie met me at Schuman (you know, Schuman...the Metro stop, duh) and escorted me to her flat in the Sant-Gilles commune (neighborhood, not an actual commune, I was displeased to find). I don't recall eating much, since I'd gorged myself on TCBY, protein shakes, and pizza in the Newark airport (gimme a break, I was there for six hours). I went to bed. I awoke and did some other stuff. You can thank me later for skipping all the non-food stuff and cutting to the chase. If you wanted more Drew Coursin action, you'd have been an avid reader of my heretofore nonexistent travel blog...but it's Scrump, so, whatever.

Katie and I went to the great pizza place, which doesn't sound like much, but was exciting because there was an excellent variety, from aubergine- and pesto-topped (that's right, I've stopped using the word 'eggplant,' it's crude) pie to prosciutto and peppers. Yum! AND the pizza came in these giant slabs monitored by these petite femmes with pruning shears. Basically, I pointed to a type of pizza and made hand signals for how much, and the girls went to town with the scissors and cut me a custom-sized slice. THEN I paid by weight, which I found just delightful. Call me a sucker for the metric system.

Whew, just writing that little bit was exhausting, so I'm off to bed for now. See Part Deux tomorrow!

Pictures of dessert.

I know pictures aren't the be-all and end-all when it comes to food, but I had to put up a couple of dessert pictures. Nicole was here in Pisa this week, and so we went out for some very nice meals at some nice trattorias and osterias. Here are two standout desserts we had:

First, on my birthday, we had a Lemon Sorbet in Prosecco at the Osteria De Cavalieri, which I've mentioned before. Prosecco is sort of an Italian Champagne, basically sparkling white wine. The tartness of the sorbet and the dryness of the wine work beautifully together:



Last night (Saturday), we went to a trattoria, whose name I sadly don't remember, but we had what the waitress simply described as "chocolate cake". It didn't do it justice. Moist, souffle-esque, and accompanied by perfectly ripe apricots.

Trapped in New Jersey

So...here I am, back in Philadelphia after month+ of wandering around in No Internet Land, aka the Jersey Shore. It's been tough. And the food kind of sucks down there...hence the not posting for a while. Whatever, don't judge me! It's not like YOU post on Scrumptulescence every day! In any case, I promise to be a better food critic/correspondent, even in the absence of gastronomic delights to report.

In any case, I thought I'd do something a little different a write a round-up of rather sub-par but edible places to eat if you every find yourself in sunny South Jersey. And I don't mean Cherry Hill. Oh no, my friends, I'm talking the cape. You know, down the Garden State Parkway, exit 13 down (that's Swainton/Avalon in case you're wondering).

STONE HARBOR

Green Cuisine:
Okay, so I eat here at least once a day, since it's really the only reasonably healthy joint to eat on the island. I mean, it makes sense, having mostly pizza joints and Italian restaurants, because people are vacationing and love crappy food on the road. Right? Not me, damn it! So yeah. Green Cuisine is a bonafied health food place - they even promise to prepare otherwise alien (to South Jersey and its inhabitants) dishes like tofu, fresh-squeezed (pressed? pulverized?) carrot and celery juice, and salad that's not made of iceberg lettuce. Fresh fruits and vegetables proliferate, and your best bet is to share one of the enormous salads and maybe grab a side of the hummous and pita to supplement. A few stand-outs: the Cobb Salad is a deliciously linear presentation of sliced avocado, turkey breast, bacon, and hard-boiled egg atop mixed greens. Yum! Also, try the Eggless Egg Salad Sandwich, if only for the novelty. Like I said, the hummous is good, especially in the pita sandwich form, although I'm a sucker for anything chick pea-, sprout-, cucumber-, and tomato-based. For a true fruit overload, try the Jamaican Joy - a half pineapple filled to overflowing with blueberries, strawberries, apples, kiwi, and whatever else they can cram in there. Yum!

Peace a Pizza:
Sucks big time.

Stone Harbor Pizza:
Sucks slightly less.

Back Bay Crab Cakes and Seafood:
This is THE place to get your choice of broiled or fried crab cakes. My stalwart culinary companion Todd made the trip down, and we enjoyed the hell out of these heaping, golden-brown mounds of jumbo lump crab. I'm talking no fillers. NO FILLERS, do you even understand the gravity of that?! It's effin' amazing. Seriously. You can even buy frozen crab cakes to make at your leisure...but who really likes to cook these days?

AVALON

Via Mare:
I figured I'd add one Italian spot, since it's my parents' favorite and it's halfway decent. The eggplant parm is good, but I wouldn't recommend skipping a trip to Italy to eat here.

RIO GRANDE

That Sushi Place Right Off the Garden State Parkway:
Okay, so I can't remember exactly what the place is called, but it was delicious. I went with our neighbor, the good Dr. Dave Connelly, and we ate our fill of fresh-caught whitefish, thin-sliced and wrapped with lemon, and finished the meal with flying fish roe and quail's egg atop a mound of rice. Far from the most jaw-dropping sushi I've ever eaten, but considerably better than that one time I ate it in Minnesota and almost died shortly thereafter.

So, there you have it, a rather halfhearted roundup of some pretty lackluster eateries. I promise I'll be back with more, better soon. More better!

Cecina

So, Saturday night was the festival of San Ranieri here in Pisa. The main celebration was a huge street fair, and lighting up the windows all the buildings along the river Arno with candles (the Luminara). It's quite picturesque, you can read more about it here.

A bunch of us from the conference went into town to take part, including Enrico, who's Italian and did his undergrad in Pisa, and my friend Anish, with whom I plan to open a restaurant/microbrewery in Bangalore, India, after we both get tenure somewhere. Anyway, Enrico had been telling us about Cecina, a typical Pisan snack food, which is more-or-less a thin, savory, brick-oven pancake made with chickpea flour. It's made on a huge pan, and then cut into slices, and served on bread made from pizza dough as a sandwich. So we went to the most famous purveyor of this snack, waited in line for about an hour (LOTS of people come to the festival), and maybe it was the wait, or maybe it was the fact that we got a fresh, fresh slice, but damn, was it good. One of our group got it with jalapeno peppers on it, and this looked even better. It tastes actually quite similar to the Indian snack pakora, which is fried lentil flour dumplings, usually spiced up a bit.

You can find a recipe here.

Anish and I have some ideas for improvement before we serve it at our restaurant- basically, to make it more like a pakora- so before you put it in the oven, we think some finely chopped white onions, fresh green chilis, and cilantro should be mixed in with the dough. I'm getting hungry just writing about it.

does anyone know a single hedge fund manager?

this weekend i had the opportunity to go to two of the country's best restaurants in 48 hours because of a friend in town from nyc on a culinary mission. friday night - alinea, which you might know from such facts as its the best restaurant in america according to gourmet magazine and the chef grant achatz is a 31 year old mastermind of micro-gastronomy. saturday night - moto, which you might have heard of because they have a class 4 military laser in the kitchen and cook everything in liquid nitrogen. i will lightly touch on moto but the short and long of it is this... alinea is earth shattering. moto... eh. it doesnt even hold a candle to the type of experience you get at alinea on many levels.. food, service, atmosphere. sitting at dinner friday i was thinking about something my dear friend ms. ultimate said to me one night... she said 'im going to start dating the type of guys my parents sent me to private school to meet.' now i didnt go to private school but upon tasting the good life friday night i have learned the wisdom of her ways. so if anyone has a corporate lawyer tucked away for safe keeping... hook a sister up.

but on to alinea. the exterior is a non-descript townhouse on halsted near steppenwolf. looks like somebody's rich aunt's house. but when you walk into the entry hall and the stainless sliding doors pop open you know its something different. for the record, i was wearing a pink satin roberto cavalli skirt, black alexandra neel stilletos, and brought the black fendi. adam was wearing a pale blue jacket and black pants and shirt with a bright blue and purple tie, all ted baker.

you are greeted by a host and on your left is one small dining area, lushly carpeted and comfortable, in front of you is a beautiful structural glass stair to the second floor dining space, and down the hall on your right is a view to the kitchen, all white and stainless and sparkling, where an endless flurry of chefs dance around one another. we sat up stairs in a small dining room on the front of the building. we had an army of people to serve us and literally never for a second were things out of order. it was precision like ive never imagined in dining. we did the grand tour, 25 courses, and chose to get the wine pairings that the chef recommended. with the first champagne based cocktail we got a small croquette made of steelhead roe. i slid it into my mouth from the small white ceramic pedestal it was served on and instantly lost my train of thought. it was perfection. and every course thereafter was better than the last with very few exceptions.

its impossible to outline them all but some highlights... there was a chilled shot glass filled with celery gellee and a small frozen marble sized shell made of horseradish and filled with an apple water that you took all at once. it was sweet, clean and just a tiny hint spicy at the end when the shell dissolved in your mouth. theres a picture here at top left. there was a dish with 7 small bites of rhubarb in different forms, including a dime sized rhubarb ice cream sandwich. there was a duck dish that was served in a bowl placed on top of a pillow filled with a cool lavender scented air that surrounded you as you leaned over to take a taste. there was a small envelope, maybe the size of my thumbnail, made of a sheet of clear pineapple based gel, filled with bacon powder. the chef even defied the local regulations and sent us a smalll cinnamon pastry, hollowed out and filled with foie gras, then sealed with apple pate de fruit.

i wont go on and on because there are no words. grant aschatz is a motherf&$*ing genius. literally.

there is a lot of theater in the food at alinea but it all is part of how the food tastes and how the flavors combine in your mouth. unfortunately moto was a lot of theater in a disney sense. it was a lot of gymnastics for no reason it seemed. most of the courses were uninspired, or inspired by the fact that the kitchen wanted to play with liquid nitrogen and not inspired by taste. the service was marginal and the atmosphere was blah. the music was terrible and it was literally the worst restaurant bathroom ive ever been in. id rather use the restroom at popeyes. a few courses were good but overall for 330$ id rather eat at piece every day for six months. or go to kuma's and eat 33 mastadons.

so in summation, if you can save some money go to alinea. you must go at some point before you die or you will not, in fact, go to heaven. this is a scientific fact and not debatable in any way. the price tag is steep but its worth every penny to witness achatz in action. its like spending money to see micheal jordan play basketball or mike tyson bite someone. the full menu changes every 12 weeks amazingly. hit me up next year and well go again. big time.

miss casual signing off.

Great Food Saturday

Hey everyone. Sorry about the lack of posting. I don't know why Jayadev is the only one posting. But I do know that there hasn't been any blog-worthy eating on my part for some time. Saturday was a really relaxing day, and pretty interesting food-wise, so I thought I'd try to get back on the horse, as it were.

Saturday morning. 8 am. I had yet to visit the Green City Market this year. It runs Wednesdays and Saturdays in Lincoln Park. Lots of stuff on their mission and their goals. Very admirable. I just know that small farmers from Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana come in for it, and bring usually superb examples of what is in season. I'd go twice a week if I could. There were a LOT of strawberries to be had. Really nice ones, read all of the way through, with great flavor. I picked up some of those, some asparagus, spring garlic, some 3 year old raw cheddar cheese, and some decent early season, started indoors beefsteak tomatoes. I also grabbed some hydroponic yellow tomatoes, which were pretty bad, so enough about them. But the nice red beefsteaks were actually pretty good. Had them for dinner Sunday, which I will get to soon. Anyway, the market is a great little event, and it's held twice a week. I like going around, looking at everything, trying the samples, talking to some of the farmers, and then buying. best produce you'll find anywhere in the city, other than at other farmer's markets, and the farms all supposedly have to practice sustainable growing. Sustainable and local are the new organic, and you can definitely tell the difference in the quality of the food. Plus I like that my money goes from me straight into the hands of the farmer. In some cases, literally. Everyone should check it out.

I've been hearing about the Copper River Salmon that is in season right now. Even though the definition of what constitutes the Copper River has become somewhat lax of late, this time of year means that there is a LOT of really beautiful fish to be had. I definitely want to cook more with fish, and my one experience with grilled wild salmon was great, so I thought this year I'd find some and try grilling it. There is a thread on the lth forum about it. Dirk's, a great fish market in the city, is getting supposedly gorgeous wild salmon right now, selling it around $19 a pound. Whole Foods has some nice stuff. $15 a pound. And then I find that Costco is getting it, too, for $9 a pound, and the reports say that it is REALLY good. So, after the market, I ran into costco and got two sides of it. Those will probably go on the grill Tuesday night.

On the way home from Costco, knowing that AY and the new guy were probably only recently away, I decided to grab Hot Doug's takeout for all of us. What can be said about this place? In some ways, it's the best restaurant in the city. Cool guy making great food from interesting ingredients in a casual setting. And it's very reasonably priced. Saturday the specials menu was particularly inspiring. We shared the duck-fat french fries, and I had half of a jerk-pork sausage with spicy mango mayonnaise, queso fresco, and crispy fried onions, as well as half of the Saucisse de Toulouse with Scallion-Horseradish Beurre de Chevre and Saint Rocco Brie Cheese. Yeah, I'm serious, and yeah, they were fantastic, even after the quick car ride home (about 7 minutes). Doug can do no wrong in my book. And I think he's making a good living out of it.

After a lazy afternoon (it was a weekend off of ultimate and a lot of folks were out of town, so I took it easy), it was time for dinner. I didn't want to cook until more roommates were around. Quick consultation with AY and we were off to Kuma's Corner. Another great place, easy to get to from our apartment, and probably serving the best burger in town. Time-Out may not have picked it as such, but, seriously, they know burgers there. We sat on the patio, I had a couple of great beers off of their interesting beer menu, and then I gad the Kaijo burger. Blue cheese, crispy fried onions, bacon. Had chips on the side. AY had the Mayhem. Pancetta, fresh jalepenos, pepper jack cheese, giardiniera mayo. We had some good conversations, the weather was perfect, the beer was cold, the waitress was friendly. The food was perfect.

Afterwards we went to Scooter's custard. Another establishment that is too new to be called a Chicago institution, they make fresh frozen custard. It's really good. Not much else to say about it.

So, for a day when I didn't have anything planned, I wore flip-flops, shorts, and a t-shirt all day, and I never strayed far from home, I had a GREAT Chicago food day. I hope to repeat it throughout the summer. Although to be honest, I probably don't need to double up Hot Doug's and Kuma's on the same day, and the Scooter's was a bit excessive. But, trust me, it made for a very happy Saturday.