Three Simple Things my Mother Loved

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Miriam

We 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

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Sean King

FarmFreshEggs6x24 Today is April 27^th 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 4^th, 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

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Sean King

Among 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

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Sean King

Why 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

On 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

Is that an heirloom in your salad?

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Miriam

Art shamelessly stolen from Scrumptious Pantry.

Just loving what the Scrumptious Pantry is doing. These guys work with sustainable family farms to make sure that heirloom foods grown the old-fashioned way get into the hands of eaters like us.

On March 2, from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Scrumptious Pantry is hosting a warehouse sale. You’ll have a chance to buy Spanish olives and olive oil grown, one must imagine, in a quaint grove somewhere in the south of Spain. There will be bakery from San Francisco, single blossom honeys direct from the bees, and much more.

They’ll be serving complementary virgin Bloody Mary’s, too, so bring a flask of your favorite hooch, if you want to add a bit of a charge.

Visit Scrumptious Pantry for more information, or just show up and see what it’s all about. Saturday, March 2, 3230 W. Fullterton at Kedzie.

Trendy Vegetables – Introducing the Watermelon Radish

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Miriam

Watermelon radishes with a simple salad — and a side of tomato bisque. Delicious.

I have to admit, when my eye fell on the splash of bright red at the farm market, I was immediately drawn to it. These dull, gray Chicago skies were starting to get to me, last weekend, so I was immediately happy to see some true color shouting out amidst all the dirty (but delicious) root vegetables. My curiosity about this fresh-looking upstart drew me right to it and the farmer proudly introduced me to his watermelon radishes.

Eating a Watermelon Radish

Even from the outside, watermelon radishes look a bit like very small watermelons, with a greenish tinge to their skin, which seems a bit thicker than a regular radish’s, and a size that looks a bit bigger than your standard grocery store radish.

Inside, these babies pop with color. They look enticing. They taste milder than a regular radish — not so much bite to them, and perhaps its just the suggestion of watermelon that makes you think so, but the texture seems a bit looser and you really want to imagine watermelon when they first hit your tongue.

Watermelon Radish Salad

Watermelon radishes from the farm market.

What else? I made a quick, simple salad to enjoy these radishes for the first time. I sliced them then and thick to see which gave a better experience — my vote is for thick in the future — and tossed them with some red-leaf lettuce, carrots, olive oil and a bit of red wine vinegar.

Articles and Stories to Wine About

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Sean King

Photo credit: National Archives, Flip Schulke, 1930-2008, Photographer

I have worked around and in the wine business for quite many a year. From the retail side, restaurant side, collecting side but mostly from the production side.

When I am out at parties or at bars and most restaurants I prefer to drink a winemaker’s best friend, beer. Does this make me a wine snob? Despite my insistence that I am not, I am viewed with skepticism. So often I hear people say “I like it even though it is crappy wine,” or “Even though it isn’t good enough for you, I like it.”

As you like it

Well allow me to dispel the myth: Not all wine people are wine snobs. Just because I don’t like a wine doesn’t mean it is bad wine and when that happens, which is 95% of the time, I just drink a cold beer. A delicious and refreshing cold beer.

“Just taste it, it is not that bad,” “Taste it and tell me why you don’t like it.” I say: Let me enjoy my cold beer and you enjoy the glass of wine that I chose not to drink.

Wine the way you like it

My grandmother genuinely enjoyed a couple of glasses of Almaden Chablis from the jug each night with two ice cubes. She looked forward to it and I would have a glass of beer along with her. Never did it occur to me to say “Grandma, you are drinking bad wine.” And I will tell you why. Because she liked it!

So begins a once or twice a week rambling about my life in wine. From stories in the vineyard and winery to long meals with good friends and family.

Farm Fresh Popcorn for Oscar Night

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Miriam

Popcorn kernels at the Green City Market.

We love the dog sitter. He’s one of those great kids who is gonna be somebody someday, and we’ll tell folks, “No kidding, he used to dogsit for us…”

I always try to stock up on snacks for him, but the last overnight we planned came up too fast and as we were leaving I timidly said, “well…you know how to make popcorn, right?”

“Sure,” he replied, “Just pop the bag in the microwave.”

Something to pop about

We’re old-fashioned here at the house, and we love making popcorn on the stove, the way Mom used to. In fact, the method I use was taught to me by my BFF’s mom, Alice, who liked to get a pan hot with oil, toss in the kernels and pour salt on top of them before they even popped. She would put a paper towel on top of the pan and secure the paper towel with the lid to catch some of the extra oil and then pop away!

Even more old-fashioned is the over-the-fire popcorn basket of yore — I’ve never had the opportunity to give that a try, but if our next home has a fireplace, I’m for sure going to.

For the Oscars, I want to make a nice big bowl of popcorn and enjoy the evening from the couch, celebrating the long-lasting relationship between the movies and popcorn.

Farm fresh popcorn

Have you tried fresh farm market popcorn? Available at all the markets, its grown locally and helps your local farmer pop a bit of extra income in these lean winter moths. Buy some and take the opportunity to show your child that popcorn doesn’t originate in a bag — they’ll love the experience of stove-popping with you, and they’ll appreciate 8,000 fewer chemicals, too.

Don’t forget the butter and the salt — and if you want to know more than you really want to know about popcorn, visit the Popcorn Growers Association site to read about the history or popcorn and the movies and find some great recipes.

Wanna Make a Rutabaga?

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Miriam

Rutabaga with caramelized onions and honey.

Growing up, I had Irish aunts who seemed to be from another time. They used words like “pocketbook”, “davenport”, and “icebox”. They still stocked white gloves in their drawers in case, I suppose, the trend for white gloves ever returned, and they cooked as if the depression was still on. I remember hearing the word “rutabaga” in their house for the first time. I think their kitchen was the only place I heard that word. I thought rutabaga must be some old-world food that they kept in their “root cellar”.

I have avoided rutabaga all this time.

What is a rutabaga, anyway?

Turns out rutabaga was the result of a liaison between a turnip and a cabbage at some point in the 17th Century — according to a very lovely entry in the University of Wisconsin Extension’s Alternative Field Crops Manual. Maligned for the first part of the 20th century for being a bit too difficult to grow, the root vegetable enjoyed a renaissance in the 1970s, and can now be found on grocery store shelves.

It’s one of those unsightly, often misshapen vegetables that makes you either feel a bit sorry for it, or spurs you to believe perhaps there’s something really great inside that dirty exterior. So today, I picked up some rutabaga at the Green City Market and decided to give it a try.

Cooking Rutabaga

Most recipes seem to suggest mixing rutabaga with its earthy companions — carrots, parsnips, turnips — for a hash, but I wasn’t in the mood for too much frying. Instead, I diced and boiled the rutabaga, then mixed it with some caramelized onion and honey.

Rutabaga’s got an earthy, interesting taste. “savory” was my husband’s word for it. I’d serve it as a side to a real juicy pork chop, or with stew — something that could really stand up to the texture and flavor of the rutabaga.

In all, as part of an “eat more vegetables” campaign, I’d say the rutabaga has got a place at our table for a change of pace every once in a while. And making it today gave me a chance to think of my aunts cuisine — so Irish with their cottage hams and cabbage. The simple meals they made for us came directly from the heart. As my dear old aunts would say, “Oh, heavens to Betsy, I haven’t had a rutabaga in ages!”

Chocolate Tasting at Garfield Park Conservatory

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Miriam

The Wednesday before Valentine’s Day (well-timed) The Garfield Park Conservatory is hosting a chocolate tasting program. Find out about the history of the caco plant and learn how the concoction of caco and sugar turns into a confection.

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