Up on the Roof: Admiring a Chef’s Rooftop Garden

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Uncommon Ground Rooftop Garden

Uncommon Ground’s rooftop garden, solar panels, and the city view beyond.

Last week, we had the opportunity to join a group from Ground Up Chicago to tour the rooftop garden at Uncommon Ground’s location at Devon a few blocks west of Broadway. What a great evening for a garden tour! The air was cool, the sun was bright, and the ideas (and wine) were flowing.

Jen Rosenthal is the owner of Planted Chicago and Farm Director at Uncommon Ground. Rosenthal has a background in art, but fell in love with gardening so hard that she changed her life focus from art to gardening (some might argue gardening is just a different form of art) and wound up being the green thumb at Uncommon Ground.

What a cool job. Rosenthal helps the restaurant develop and maintain the gardens, and works with the chefs to grow the right crops, spending hours and hours pondering the felicity of the soil, the potential for the garden, and the spreadsheets that show how well the garden is doing for the restaurant. She also managed to get the rooftop garden at Uncommon Ground to be a Certified Organic garden (no small feat) and in what little spare time she has, works hard to bring tours of kids and chefs to the rooftop for a closer look and endless questions.

Uncommon Ground Rooftop Garden Chicago

Gardener and Chef collaborating.

On this night, the rooftop was populated mostly by chefs and foodies who eyed the garden with a mixture of appreciation and envy. It’s early June and the lettuces are coming in, radishes are flourishing, and the baby bock choy is already bolting.

Much of the discussion focused on the technicalities of running a chef’s garden on a city rooftop. Soil mixtures, dealing with birds, finding enough bees (Uncommon Ground works with a beekeeper), when to plant, when to seed, when to say “no” to a crop for a multitude of reasons. We nibbled on greens, radishes, white bean dip with lemon and tarragon, and much more, while Rosenthal answered all the questions — ranging from technical questions about the garden to how she measures value in the PR the garden gets for the restaurant.

The rooftop chefs’ garden at Uncommon Ground is flourishing this year, and the restaurant is welcoming new crops each week as the season progresses. If you want to book a special party (small, but intimate and green) call Uncommon Ground and ask for rooftop seats. Or just show up any night and ask for what’s fresh today. You won’t be disappointed.

Want to see more fantastic images of the garden? Check out Ground Up Chicago’s Facebook album.

Sustainable Conversation

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NU Sustainable Food Talks

NU Sustainable Food Talks meets regularly at Northwestern.

In May, the Northwestern Campus was just starting to bloom, and we were invited to a session of a blossoming program called the Northwestern University Sustainable Food Talks hosted by Tiffany Leigton Ozmina.

Tiffany has been hosting these programs for a while with an overall goal of bringing the food community together on a number of levels, and a focused goal of creating a forum for trading and sharing ideas. On this night, the group included a post-graduate studying biology, representatives from the Evanston Farmers Market community, a chef-turned-interested party, a few representatives who work in politics and legislation in Evanston, and me, a humble blogger.

What an interesting conversation.

We talked about everything local — how the farm markets and the university can work together more, how volunteers interested in food can do outreach, and how to engage the state legislature in some of these local issues. One issue in particular is making restaurant jobs more sustainable, and how restaurants can commit to sustainability on an incremental level. We touched on programming ideas for the group, and that led to a host of ideas about what types of things the food community wants to learn more about. We even touched on such nerdly topics as logistics and transportation.

One really interesting project we liked: EvanstonEats.net, a home-grown site dedicated to the same types of legislative and growth issues we had discussed throughout the evening. Check it out!

We’re looking forward to seeing what develops next at NU Sustainable Food Talks, and we’re sure that the next few months will bring some interesting speakers to the table, so to speak. Keep an eye out here at FarmFreshChicago. We’ll keep you up to date on what the group is doing so maybe next time, you can join in and share your ideas.

Ribeye Caps

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beef-iowa-beef-council

We wrote last week about Hearltland Meats, one of the few meat purveyors that you can find at Chicago’s farm markets. Heartland sells Piedmontese beef, a lean but flavorful beef.

We took home a small package with big taste that day – some ribeye caps. While the cuts looked innocently enough like any other beef you might get — maybe a bit more color — they tasted amazing. My husband cooked them on the grill medium-rare, and the flavor was amazing. Sweet, with a soft and supple texture, these ribeye caps really held flavor. I found myself cutting smaller pieces so that I’d have “more” to eat.

Served with fresh, roasted asparagus, this was a delightfully easy and healthy meal.

Here’s a recipe from Heartland Meats — you can find Heartland tomorrow at Green City Market

Heartland Meats Ribeye Caps

Thaw completely. Pat dry with a paper towel and insert toothpick to hold together. Sprinkle with kosher salt, cracked pepper and dry herbs. Press into meat. Turn over and season the same way. Drizzle with balsamic reduction. Grill on medium heat to desired doneness. These are thicker cuts, so probably 4 – 5 minutes per side for medium rare. Heartland recommends grilling therm “lower and slower” Just before they re prepared to your desired doneness, remove from heat, cover and let stand 3 – 5 minutes.

I Heart Meats: Heartland Meats is Something to Love

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heartland meatsBack in 2001, the idea of traveling almost 100 miles to sell beef at a farmers market seemed like a far-awy idea to Pat Sondgeroth, who, along with her husband, John, owns Heartland Meats

“The whole idea of farm markets was fairly new,” says Sondgeroth. In fact, Heartland was one of the first vendors at Chicago’s Green City Market, and they’ve had quite a journey since then.

To Market, to Market

Sondgeroth may not have known a lot about the emerging idea of farmers markets, but in 2001, she knew enough about marketing to understand that, in order to earn a good reputation in Chicago, they would need to bring consistent quality to the marketplace.

The Sondgeroth’s raised cattle, but the quality of the meat they were getting from their livestock was inconsistent. “I saw an ad for Piedmontese and decided to try it,” says Sondgeroth. Piedmontese cattle originate in Italy. They’re a double-muscle breed, and this provides a leaner and more tender meat, overall. “the quality and the flavor was so good,”  says Sondgeroth, “we invested in more.”

Now they had product, but the Sondgeroths had to figure out how to process the meat. They sent the product out to a processor, but knew that some of the meat that came back wasn’t their own. “I realized that, to build a reputation, we had to start doing our own processing,” said Sondgeroth.

Once Heartland’s product was in place, they had to take it to market — and get people to fall in love with their high-quality product.

Product Perception

Over the years, Sondgeroth faced some challenges. “We kept bringing chuck roast to the market, and had to lug it home every weekend because nobody was buying it. Then one day I heard someone asking for ‘pot roast’. Once we started calling it ‘pot roast’, it sold really well.”

Each market has its own favorites. Evanston, notes Sondgeroth, likes ground beef while filet mignon sells really well at Green City market. Heartland carries cuts of every variety — the whole animal — but they’re especially happy to sell unusual cuts like the shoulder tender which are very small cuts that probably amount to a pound per animal, Sondgeroth notes, but delicious. Coulotte, the cap off the top butt where sirloins come from, is more tender than the sirloin but has the same flavor and leanness. Sondgeroth loves this cut on the grill.

On a cool Wednesday in early summer, Sondgeroth recognizes her regular customers who stop by to pick up their orders, and answers questions about her product. At one point, Heartland was in 32 markets a summer, but that was a bit much. She talks about her farm, and smiles a little when she describes the kitchen remodel she’s working on currently. Another customer comes by and she’s ready to talk business again.

 

 

Three Simple Things my Mother Loved

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bisquickWe kidded my mom a lot about her “Irish” cooking, teasing her about “boiling the hell” out of everything and chiding her for her sometimes-simple palate. My sister recently reminded me of one of her favorite dishes: white fish cooked in milk, which I think is illegal in some cultures.

But when it came to desserts, her love of simplicity was welcome. Apple Betty, aka apple crisp in hour house, was delicious. Apples baked with an oatmeal-brown sugar topping. Served warm with ice cream, it’s a perfect mid-week dessert.

She would also make stewed peaches. Impatient, I guess, to wait for just the right few weeks in summer when they’re really in season, and just that actual moment during the week when they would finally be ripe enough to eat, she would encourage them along by placing them in a bit of water with a little sugar and bringing them to a gentle boil. More than a few times, I caught her having this treat alone in the middle of the day. A small treat to have, all to herself, while her six kids and her husband were out.

But more than anything, she loved Strawberry Shortcake. We would be on the lookout for good strawberries from the first sign of spring so she could make a batch. Strawberry shortcake topped with whipped cream was a Sunday treat. Hulled strawberries bathed in sugar and gently tossed all day to foster a nice thick syrup would sit atop a Bisquick shortcake (baking wasn’t her thing, so Bisquick would do just fine, thank you) and then topped with a big dollop of freshly made whipped cream. Don’t get me started on the whipped cream, a ritual that involved freezing a bowl — not just any bowl, the green Fiestaware bowl that was just the right height — along with the paddles from the mixer for a few hours and an alchemist’s mixture of cream, confectioner’s sugar and vanilla. Hitting the right consistency on the peaks in the whipped cream was essential. I still haven’t exactly matched her recipe.

The shortcakes tasted great after dinner, but somehow they were even better the next day. The strawberries were a bit more tender, and the shortcakes a bit more dry. Eating the left-overs with her at the kitchen table the next day was almost better than having first dibs.

Strawberries aren’t quite ready yet, so I’m waiting until they are. I’ll grab the first really beautiful pint of strawberries I see, and mix up a batch of shortcakes in honor of my mom.

And then I’ll wait for the peaches…

Let The Outdoor Farmers Market Season Begin

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FarmFreshEggs6x24Today is April 27th here in Chicago land and for the first time this year I am sitting on my balcony wearing shorts while I write this. Granted I have on a long sleeve shirt and a hooded sweatshirt but I am in shorts! As every Chicagoan knows, this has been a long, cold and wet spring that has had only 8 days above 60 degrees this year. I sip a cup of coffee (Sumatra) from the Coffee and Tea Exchange in Lakeview knowing that this is sweater weather for most of the country.  I also sit here knowing that starting next week, May 4th, my Saturday routine will change for the better. That is because the Green City farmers market goes out doors into Lincoln Park.

Almost every Saturday in the late spring through the early fall, my dog and I walk to the bank and withdraw $40 and then head over to that stretch of Lincoln Park between North Ave and the Lincoln Park Zoo entrance. That is where local farmers have sprawled out onto a couple acres with just picked fruits, vegetables and herbs. It is where you can get specialty and artisanal Wisconsin cheese. Last year I bought a 4lb slab of pork belly from a 400 acre farm in Dubuque Iowa where the pigs roam free all day and eat organic corn, hay and grain. I was able to do this because Becker Lane farm is there every Saturday. Each week I buy at least 1 dozen farm fresh eggs and a baguette from Bennison’s Bakery for my breakfast when I get back home. I walk around and look, feel and smell the products. I plan out a couple of meals for the week based on what looks especially good and fresh.

After a few weeks of the outdoor season, familiar faces go from pleasant nods to spoken “hi’s”, “hello’s” and “how are you’s”. There is a Sesame Street “Who are the people in your neighborhood” vibe that brings a genuine sense of community to the market. Folks are smiling, kids are running around, dogs checking out other dogs. Even a few of the Florida snow birds are back and catch up with one another. This seasonal outdoor market is one of the things I love about my neighborhood and this great city of Chicago.

The Joy of a Well Made Wine

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girardAmong my wife’s friends and most of the people I have met here in Chicago, I am known as the wine guy. (I know it is a cliché but if I had a $1 for every time someone asked me any variation of the question “Have you had this wine?” or “Do you like this wine?” my wife and I would eat out more often.) Needless to say, people like coming to our house because of our good food, great conversations and they know we have good wine to serve. And if the people at our place have an interest in wine, inevitably a conversation grows.

We Have So Much in Common

A well-made wine is capable of so much. I think interesting wines often start discussions that boring bottles could never inspire. Captivating wines can bring a dynamic of commonality to simple cheese and wine get-togethers  that can make the evening much more memorable than a fancy four-course sit down dinner party..

Wine is like almost anything else that will bring about discussion whether it be cars, art, movies or food. Consider a group of guys sitting on a patio having a couple of beers.  They won’t talk about the brand new VW Jetta that’s parked out front, but if a 1963 black-on-black MGB in great condition pulls up and parks, the guys  are likely to start a conversation with the owner which will lead to a discussion about their favorite automobiles and great cars they have owned.  Soon – and inevitably – additional strangers will join the conversation because of a simple commonality.

Another Glass? Of Course

My wife had a couple of her friends over last week for some wine and desert. I opened a bottle of the 2009 Girard Napa Valley petite sirah which retails for less than $30 and is a really well made wine. Some of the fruit comes from 100-year old vines and the grapes are hand-sorted before going into stainless steel tanks for fermentation. It is a wine with ample new French oak, good acidity and plenty of fruit-forward flavors. It is also inky dark in color.

Both of my wife’s friends enjoyed the wine enough to comment and ask questions about the producer and varietal.  This wine was essentially responsible for a conversation that started with our bottle of wine from Napa Valley and meandered to one person’s weekend in California wine country and then to great vacations that we have all taken. This good bottle of petite sirah elicited a familiarity that would not have occurred had we started talking about the cold Chicago spring weather.

In the Back of My Mind I Knew I was Neglecting You…A promise to You Wine

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guiseppeWhy do we do it? Why do we neglect and forget about the people and things that bring us pleasure? I began thinking about this after I decided to call an old friend I had not been in contact with for a while. After the call ended, I looked at my phone — I could hardly believe that it had been almost 16 months since she and I had spoken.  We had been pretty close friends for many years. We shared good meals, great conversations and more than a few bottles of wine, but as we both got busier and older we slowly began to lose touch with one another. Fortunately we were able to catch up enough to plan on seeing one another despite our being in different parts of the country. If only our wines were as forgiving.

Pure Gold Without the Karats

Those of us that made an effort to buy multiple bottles of some of our favorite producer’s wines from multiple vintages can sometimes forget that each year has distinct similarities and often big differences. Some wines will be OK with us not checking in on them for five or six or even 10 years while others will simply fade from neglect.

I have always had a certain affection for the white burgundies from Jean Marc Boillot. Maybe that is because my first real experiences were the 1996 and 1997s. I bought a mixed case of Puligny Montrachet from each vintage. Four bottles of the “Les Referts” the “Champ Canet” and “Les Folatieres”   The 96’s almost required 10-12 years of cellaring to be at their best. They were full and rich with subtle oak and tons of acidity. The 97’s were the opposite. Riper fruit, generous oak and significantly less acid and around 2002 they were simply delicious — nothing earth-shattering or profound but just a really good bottle of chardonnay.

As is the case with most wine collectors, life got busier and I bought more wine as the weeks and months passed. Each year that I got older so, too, would every bottle of wine I owned. In the back of my mind I knew I had a few bottles left of these 97 Boillot’s and I knew they likely weren’t getting any better. So, early in the summer of 2010 I decided to open a bottle from the Champ Canet vineyard. As I feared, it was tired and lacking life and I was so disappointed. Not in the wine but in letting this happen to the wine. I really let this bottle down, along with the three others I owned.

I thought about the places where I had enjoyed some of the other bottles. My little yard in Berkeley in the late spring after planting 12 kinds of heirloom tomatoes, Thomas Brown’s living room watching a U.S. Open night  match between Agassi and Sampras while eating take out sushi after a typical 12 hour harvest day. More than once at Chez Panisse with a friend. These were all good memories and because of my neglect, my last memory of the 1997 Jean Marc Boillot’s is one of regret.

 Pouring out a Bottle for the Deceased Wine

valpoOn a long drive back from Cleveland this past week, I thought about family, friends and wines. I tried to take mental stock of some of the wines that I had not tried in a while and approach them with some of the meticulous enthusiasm that I had when I started out buying wine to cellar. With that, on Saturday  I texted my friend Dan Pilkey (somellier at the Boarding House restaurant) and told him I was going to bring a bottle in to decant and taste blind. I  wanted to open something we could taste and gauge its life expectancy.

For the next 45 minutes Dan, Alpana Singh and I chatted and shared our thoughts over that decanted bottle of 1997 Quintarelli “Ca del Merlo” Veneto IGT. The wine had good color with some classic brick around the edges. It smelled dusty, with dried fruit and Amarone like aromas. It was balanced, pretty and big despite a supple mouth feel. It was, as I think all agreed, a wine that will likely not get much better but will certainly hang around for another 4 or 5 years. It was a beautiful bottle of wine that was approaching 14 years old. We toasted the lost wines we left unopened in the cellar and promised we would not disappoint the late Guiseppe Quintarelli by forgetting and regretting because wines like our real friends deserve better

Food and Wine in Chicago? What an Amazing Surprise

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chez_panisse_crop380wI moved to Chicago in January 2009 from the San Francisco bay area (Berkeley to be precise) with the idea of trying something new and expecting to lose some of the things I had come to take for granted, namely, awesome food and tremendously good wine. After two months of living here I discovered that Chicago is actually a food destination city in its own right. In six months I had fallen in love with an amazing city (and an equally amazing woman).

Go Midwest Young Man

Just after my arrival, I set out on a quest to try a few of the extraordinary restaurants I had read about and I decided on Grant Achatz’s famed Alinea first. I am not here to write any reviews and I will gladly acknowledge that Alinea is a really special and memorable meal, but I have to admit that I was disappointed. I was disappointed because it was an event that I don’t really need to experience more than a couple of times in my lifetime. I was disappointed because one of the things I really love is spending a couple hours or more relaxing and talking over several courses of food and a few different glasses of wine with my friends and loved ones. A great restaurant for me is one that I can start a relationship with. A place I can go and know I will always get a wonderful meal. A place I can bring a couple bottles of wine that I can enjoy with my meal as well as share with the staff. A place I can develop a friendship with the people that work there.

The Good ol’ Days

I had that place when I lived in Berkeley, Ca. It was the venerable Chez Panisse. I ate upstairs in the café almost every single Monday for almost 5 years. I always brought a bottle of wine and dined alone half of the time. I could read a book and reflect over a leisurely dinner and then head home. Often times I would call the sommelier or the manager and asked if they felt like drinking any wine in particular. More than a few times I would bring 375 ml barrel samples of wine and seek the opinion of Jonathon the wine director.  It was something I expected not to find here in Chicago.

A New Place to Call Restaurant Home

After about a year of looking I found that restaurant in the Elysian Hotel, Ria (and its sister restaurant Balsan) when I met my dear friend Randy for dinner. I brought a bottle of chardonnay that I helped make and the 2001 Chateau Hosanna. As Randy and I got up to leave 3 hours later, I knew had found my new spot. It was my new go to restaurant and I looked forward to good wine, good food and catching up with the servers, bartenders, managers and, of course, the wine director. I called it dinner 3 or 4 times a month for about a year-and-a-half until Ria closed last May. It was a sad day for sure because I had to begin my quest for another restaurant I could call “mine”.

Let the Search Begin

So here I sit on a cold early spring day. My better half is out town and I really wish I had a new place where I can walk in and catch up with the staff, have a nice meal, a great bottle and a good read.

The 4 Wines that Changed Me

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There is always a beginning that starts a lifelong passion. That initial moment of being taken aback after having experienced something unimaginable for the first time. Sure there may be times when we step away from it for a short time, but we know that it will be with us for a lifetime.

Wine 1: Clubbed over the head2005-front

While I don’t recall the occasion or have any tasting notes I just remember that this was the glass that made me change the way I thought about wine. Sure I had lots of different wines but this was the first time I genuinely liked it enough to want another glass. It was the first wine that I thought was…well…good. That 1983 Chateau Cos d’ Estournel had me wanting to know why this was so much better than all the other wines I had ever tried. Within a week, I was subscribing to wine magazines and reading through the tasting notes for their reviews.

Wine 2: Deep pockets wine

The second wine was the 1984 Caymus Special Selection. It was a bottle  that I spent a small fortune on because it had received 98 points from the most widely read wine publication in America, Wine Spectator. I could taste, appreciate and understand the accolades. I started a modest but highly collectible California cabernet collection and began making friends who were into wine. It was all so perfect until wine #3.

Wine 3: A subtle surprise

The third wine epiphany happened while having dinner with a new friend (and future all-star wine maker) and a couple of his friends. I brought a bottle or two of high scoring California Cabernets and was eager to drink some until Thomas Brown handed me a glass of 1985 Armand Rousseau Gevrey-Chambertin Clos St Jacques. I distinctly remember putting my nose in the glass and then sitting down. I had never smelled anything so exotic, perfumey and pretty. I took a small taste and immediately accepted that this was a revelation. The flavors evolved and resonated. The world of red Burgundy had grabbed me by the neck and walked me over to sneer disdainfully at that bottle of Silver Oak sitting on the table. After that glass of wine, I never bought another cabernet from California to lay down for future consumption. I instead sold 6 or 7 cases of cabernet because I needed to explore the world of French pinot noir.

Wine 4: Close to the soul

Now we come to the fourth wine. It was one of the top-three greatest wines that I have had the pleasure of drinking. I have opened this wine a couple of times since that first encounter and the 1994 Zind Hmbrecht Pinot Gris Clos Windsbuhl Vendage Tardive has always been as good as I remember. I had sweet wines in the past but this wine has always been nothing short of of stunning. It has been 11 years since I first tasted this pinot gris but my memory is perfectly clear on this wine. A near perfect rendition of a late harvest wine that could comfortably last another 25 years. I am certain I will drink wines that will astound me, confuse me, bore me or simply disappoint me and that is essence and nature of passion. So, what were your four wines?