It Must Be Spring

Well you would never know by the 26° Fahrenheit reading on the thermometer this morning, but it is starting to shape up to be spring in Chicago.  In many places this becomes evident when the dogwoods start to bloom, or the robins return and build their nests.  Here in Chicago, the sure sign that spring is on its way is the first appearance of smelt fishing in the harbors.  Last night marked the start of smelt season in Illinois. 

Smelt fisherman come out at night—that is when the smelt “run”.  They shine flashlights into the water to attract the fish, scoop them up in gill nets and then fry them up right on the spot.   Smelt are tiny little fish that you eat whole (minus the head), so this is not as crazy as it sounds.  Here is a good blog entry with some details.

People still go out for the tradition, but apparently the smelt do not run like they used to.  Word is they used to measure the catch by how many buckets were filled.  Now they count how many of the tiny fish were caught.  The fish may be gone, but the uniquely Chicago tradition lives on.  

Smelt was on the menu last night at our favorite restaurant, Anteprima.  Simply cleaned, breaded in corn meal and served with lemon.

Yesterday I enjoyed the first taste of a Chicago spring.

Artichokes Two Ways

The first trip I ever “sent myself” on was to New York City to visit my favorite aunt.  I was 12 or 13 years old—took a super cheap flight on the short-lived Big Apple Airlines.  (A couple kids I knew ran away from home on the $39 fares.)  We had to be driven the 72 miles to Raleigh/Durham airport for the flight to Newark, but mom never complained (to us, anyway ;) ).

My aunt took us for many great restaurant visits during that trip.  At one Italian place in New Jersey, being the good southern boy that I was, I ordered an iced tea.  The waitress honestly and with a straight face asked me if I wanted a Long Island Iced Tea-- remember I am 13 years old--  “That’s a no”, said my aunt. 

During that week we hit Little Italy, ate at an authentic Jersey diner (even took a famous New Jersey jug handle to get to it), had New York pizza, dined in Chinatown, had bagels, ate dirty water hot dogs from a street vendor.  And she took us to Tavern on the Green in Central Park.  Being an adventurous eater even then, I ordered a steamed artichoke as my first course.  I had no idea how to eat it, but anything served with hollandaise sauce sounded good and my aunt showed me how.  A foodie was born that day.

A few years later, at 17 years old I saved money and sent myself to Italy on the Latin Club class trip…yes, I was the Vice President of the Latin Club once.  (Semper ubi sub ubi, peeps!).  I knew then and there that I loved to travel and that I would be back to Rome.  The three coins I tossed into the Trevi Fountain assured it. 

We stopped there on our post-college graduation trip, but then it was many, many years later when we finally made it back to Rome together.  That was last year when I joined my beautiful bride on a business trip (hers) back in Rome for a long weekend.  It was springtime.  We again had limited time but big plans.  We would see several museums and have some great food. 

A Roman colleague made some recommendations on his favorite local places.  We chose one just inside the Porta Portese and gave it a shot.  Long taxi ride (in my mind thinking “how will we get a taxi back?”). 

We walk in at 8pm on a Friday night.  Simple place, not fancy at all, with cinder block walls, wooden tables and stone floors.  Mama in the kitchen cooking.  The place is….empty.  Uh-oh.  Two things make me want to leave a restaurant: too busy and too slow.  But, we were there, taxi was gone, so we greeted the owner and asked to be seated.  “Do you have a reservation?”  Huh?  “The place is E-M-P-T-Y!!!”, I was thinking.  He studied his book and after a long pause, said, “OK, follow me.”  He seated us in the empty dining room, and handed us our menus. 

Wow, what a treat.  Before the first course was out, the place was packed with Romans out for dinner.  Big families enjoying a night together.  We had a great meal, and a few things stand out. First, the pasta course was Cacio e pepe.  Pasta with pecorino romano ewes milk cheese and black pepper.  So simple and so very good:

Next course was the Carciofi fritti.  Just a deep fried whole artichoke. But amazing in it’s simplicity.

Last great memory from that night is at the end of our meal, the owner insisted on serving us an aperitif on the house: Elisir Gambrinus.  It is made of Raboso Piave grappa, cane sugar and herbs.  Aged in oak barrels for 5 years.  This is good stuff.

Next day, we followed our instincts and found another great Roman meal at nice family run place between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona.  Owned and run by two brothers (Fabio and Vincenzo), they explained they just recently purchased it and they could not have been more proud of their business.  For good reason.   I will write another time about the fantastic pizzas we ate there–she with mushrooms, me with anchovies—all I will say now is I have been back. 

On this visit, we started with another artichoke—steamed and served in a wine sauce.  Again, simply prepared and delicious. 

I wonder who the first person to eat this pre-historic looking vegetable was, and what in the world made them think it was edible.  Must have been a Roman, and they have been perfecting it ever since.  

Careful What You Ask For

Last night I took my beautiful better half out for a celebratory evening.  January is birthday month in our household and we celebrated its conclusion with a fancy dinner and a show at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.  For dinner we went to a nice new place that has been getting great reviews, called Henri.  We are not really high end restaurant fans, finding ourselves thinking “I could have made that…”, so we tend to more casual places.  That said, next time you are in Chicago, go to this restaurant.  Excellent food, beautiful room, attentive service and above all a first class fine dining experience without the pretension. 

When we do go to a really nice place, we usually order things we would not cook at home.  I won’t go into all the details of our meal, but on the menu as a first course was steak tartare.  When I see this dish it reminds me of the 1970s—you know the deal: raw hamburger with a raw egg on top.  A salmonella and E. coli cocktail.  Yikes.  It never really appealed to me, but I have seen it a lot lately and figured “If not here, where?”, “If not now, when?”   

Good choice.  Great choice, as a matter of fact.  Wow was that tasty.

Henri’s Steak Tartar:  (source: Henri website)

When Mrs. B and I were younger we would often go to Paris for a few days during birthday month.  January is a very slow time in Paris, so it is cheap to get there and cheap to stay (especially where we stayed).  The museums are empty and restaurants not busy.  That old hotel, still there, has a great location in the 7^th arrondissement, in an area called Invalides, near metro lines, the Eiffel Tower and, especially, near the foodie heaven rue Cler.  

Rue Cler is not a restaurant, but rather a street full of food stores – a bakery, a butcher, a cheese shop, wine store, fruits and vegetable stand, sausage shop, etc, etc..  We would often shop for dinner on the rue Cler and bring it back to the room for a cheap feast of the best of Paris.  To this day we still have a framed butcher paper wrapper from a long gone charcutier (sausage maker) hanging on a wall in our kitchen.  I think it held a slab of pâté:    

One night during a birthday month trip to Paris we ventured into La Poule au Pot, a typical Parisian brasserie located right in the neighborhood.  Zinc bar, rushed service, slightly faded.  This place is the Paris of Parisians.  We review the menus, only in French of course….  Some items are obvious what they are, others not so much and we were a bit unsure what to order.  Then the table next to us received their order.  Some sort of meat chunks in the most delicious smelling mustard cream sauce.  When we asked what that was the waiter indicated it was “something-something-de veau sauce moutard”.  

OK, we did not understand the first part, but it is some sort of veal dish in a mustard sauce.   Anything veal in that sauce must be great—we’ll take two of those…

Our food arrived.  As expected, a delicious mustard sauce.  The hunks of “meat”…well, not quite sure what it was.  Tasted a bit…musky.  It’s not liver, we decided.  But what IS it?  We did our best to eat what we ordered and went right back to our room to look it up in our guide book. 

“Rognons de veau” = Veal Kidneys. 

So that night we had a “delicious” meal of veal kidneys in a Dijon mustard, crème fraîche and cognac sauce served with crispy french fries.   If you are feeling adventurous, here is a recipe (with great photos):  http://blog.deluxe.fr/cuisine/rognons-veau-moutarde.html

Good luck with that.  And be sure to dip your fries in the sauce.   

Food Trucks

Here in Chicago we have a movement about regarding food trucks.  These are the mobile food vendors that park on downtown corners during weekday lunch hours and sell (generally) high end sandwiches and such to loop office workers for two hours, then depart back to their lairs.  Chicago is clearly behind the curve on this movement and needs to decide how (legally) we will treat this innovative approach to catering.


Recently, I posted my first encounter with the Gaztro-Wagon in downtown Chicago: On the third day of Christmas, the sandwich I had to eat, was a Naan-Wich with confit of beef, blue cheese, dried cherry, pecans and onion from the Gaztro-Wagon (a Michelin starred food truck), moving all over Chicagohttp://www.gaztro-wagon.com/ and on Twitter @wherezthewagon

Many established restaurants in Chicago are fighting the licensing of these food trucks (just watch the video link above).  Personally, I believe as long as they follow good sanitation rules and are monitored in the same was as brick-and-morter establishments, they are good competition that benefit consumers.    


Your thoughts?

I'm the Emperor, and I want dumplings!

Weißwurst Frühstück

When flying to Europe I try to take Lufthansa whenever possible.  Say what you want about how great Singapore Air and the other Asian airlines are, my money is with the Germans.  The planes are new, cabins clean and seats comfortable.  There is a great selection of entertainment on a modern system.  They fly on time, the food is good and they don’t charge you for a glass of wine in coach (hello, United).  They also have great airport lounges—always stocked with hot food and never too crowded. 

While I don’t care much for the Frankfurt airport, I love Munich airport and find it a great place to connect through.   You can get a very quick and efficient flight connection in Munich if you need it, but I always make mine a little long so I have time to visit the BEER GARDEN. 

One of the great pleasures of being jet lagged and in Germany is that your stomach is not thinking about the time of day.  I take advantage of this dissonance and order the great Bavarian breakfast, Weißwurst Frühstück (literally "white sausage breakfast").   First time I had this, my bride and I were connecting through Munich on the way to Genoa.  We had a long layover and were completely jet lagged because we had such an early afternoon departure from Chicago that, although local time was 7am our bodies thought it was midnight. 

Looking for a bite to eat, we sat down in the café Dallmayr (an outpost of the famous Munich delicatessen that dates back to the late 1600’s) and, looking around, noted an exceptional number of people drinking coffee AND beer with their sausage breakfast.  I thought “Hey, I like this place!”

The waiter told us what was going on.  As they say, when in Munich, do as the Münchner do, so we ordered the same.  For each of us: two veal sausages served in a tureen of hot water with parsley, a jumbo soft pretzel, dark coffee and a hefe-weizen beer.   

Three critical pieces of advice from the waiter: 1) peel the skin off the sausage, and 2) don’t drink the water in the tureen.  It’s not soup.  And 3) never, ever even consider ordering this after 11am.  It is strictly a breakfast item.  More details on proper etiquette for serving and eating weisswurst can be found here.

The Dallmayr store in the airport sells canned weisswurst, and I bring a few home with the special sweet mustard every time.

I’m telling you this because today is my birthday, and if I want German sausage for breakfast, I’m having it.  

Geburtstagfrühstück : 

Banh Mi = Vietnamese for "Yum"

On the second day of Sandwiches, the sandwich I had to eat, was a Vietnamese banh mi (pate, ham, headcheese, pork roll, mayonnaise, house pickle daikon & carrot, cilantro, jalapeño, onion, soy sauce, salt & pepper) from Ba Le Bakery 5016 N. Broadway, Chicago http://www.balesandwich.com/

Cheese

Fat, cholesterol, salt, milk, rennet, mold. Yum.  My favorite food, and one I will write about often.  Some people have a sweet tooth, some go for the salt, (nobody seems to want to claim a bitter tooth or a sour tooth, and for that matter, have you ever met a person with an umami tooth?  Didn’t think so). 

One of the most surprising discoveries I made when I first started traveling to Asia was that they really don’t eat cheese in most areas.  There is a total lack of a cheese culture. <<pun intended>>  I’ve read various explanations for this—lactose intolerance, rarity of dairy cows, the rule "don’t serve cheese with fish"...  Who knows, but this site points out some exceptions to this observation, (it’s a British food site, so believe what you like.)

”This tastes a whole lot worse than it looks.”

One of my great favorites is cheese, or as they call it in Switzerland, cheese.  Not just the stuff with holes that you buy at the deli, but the vast array of cheeses on offer.  Switzerland melds three cultures to form their own– German to the north, French to the west and Italian to the south.  While there are regional differences in language, food and such, they all have their cheese.  Melt it in a pot under a fire at the table, and you get the greatest Swiss invention since the army knife, Fondue. 

Last year I tagged along with my bride on a business trip to Geneva, Switzerland.  It was last minute, and just for a couple of days, so we were intent on making the most of the free time we had together to find some great Swiss meals.  This meant a lot of cheese—fondue, raclette, fondue.  She has a friend in Geneva that we met for dinner our first night.  It was at a traditional, if perhaps a bit touristy place.  Dark and rustic with a fireplace and bubbling cauldrons of cheese fondue on every table.   A pot of fondue with crusty bread and boiled potatoes (no green veggies to dip in the fondue here), a terrific plate of bresaola (I’ll get to my other food favorite, cured meats, in another post), and several bottles of wine later, we were sated. 

The next night we decided to try a more local place.  Not quite the same cozy atmosphere when we walked in, but soon we felt as if the owner welcomed us into his home, had an even better fondue (see picture above) and the service (from the proprietor himself) was excellent.  Two for two.

Day three, we took a train to Montreux for the local Christmas market.  An hour on the train for raclette served outdoors along Lake Geneva like this:

Worth every minute.  Luckily I have a few more weeks before the cholesterol test.