Tuscan Tuna and Bean Sandwiches

Now that recruiting is done with school, I've been able ot entertain a little again. Since I've got a new batch of guinea pigs, I feel freer to repeat recipes, but I've also enjoyed trying a few new ones. This recipe for Tuscan Tuna and Bean Sandwiches turned into great little open faced sandwiches. They are super easy to make and healthy, so I recommend that you add it to your lunchbox fare. What's nice is that the mashed white beans provide the creaminess and binding quality of mayonaisse without the fatty richness that some folks, bizarrely, do not seem to enjoy.

Now I must add as a caveat that I rather enjoyed these sandwiches, but they didn't get exactly get wiped clean at my gatherings (I made them twice.). I was always pleased to have six or so to munch on for lunch the next day, but the flavor is not explosive so don't go expecting any fireworks buddy.

If you want something to go fast, I recommend using Smitten Kitchen's pizza dough recipe and then taking a whole bunch of mushrooms: white, brown, baby portabella, oyster, shitake, what have you, sauteeing with some garlic and or shallot in olive oil, throw in some dried thyme, white wine, salt and pepper. Then dump the mushroom mixture on the pizza dough and top with a blizzard of shredded fontina. Now that. That you won't have any to eat tomorrow for lunch.

Rockit

Seeing as how it's February, I really do need to get going with things and start talking about the New Year's spread. And speaking of general inadequacy, do good writers roll their eyes every single time they see poor hack authors such as myself write phrases such as "get going with things," indicating such a dearth of imaginative reserves that the best noun the loser can come up with, is "things"?

Well, one thing I know I'm good at is the run-on sentence.

Moving on. The Chicago winter is some other level of demoralizing. Or maybe it's the combination of Chicago winter and lack of fun, warming food parties. Though I was invited to another Abby & Sam dinner, and true to form, it brightened my evening immeasurably.

The other day I did manage to make it to Rockit for a quick bite with friends. We didn't really strain ourselves on the trip over, transforming what would have been a 20 min. walk into a 3 min. cab ride. (I'm actually, being geographically challenged, not quite sure where Rockit is in relation to my home, and rather uncertain on the number of minutes it would take one to get there walking.)

Rockit is civilized bar food. Chicago seems to abound in establishments serving civilized bar food. My burger was satisfactory, but based on that limited interaction, Rockit has not reached a level that would induce cravings and compel me to go far outside my comfort zone in order to get a Rockit-specific meal.

Our dinner did serve its purpose, however, which was to fuel a meal of general absurdity, as I watched one of my compatriots dig verbal graves with his exuberant, unedited, and never ending stream of dialogue. You have to love people who aren't afraid to be themselves.

Rockit, 22 West Hubbard St., Chicago, IL

A Proper Bagel

Being away from New York had had me craving for a multitude of foods that I never ate on a normal basis while living in the Big Apple, including a proper bagel.

So one morning I eschewed a fancy Sex in the City-style NYC brunch and instead opted for a short walk to a corner bagel spot and split two bagels with my friend: nova with cream cheese on a toasted poppy and a scallion schmear on a toasted everything. Add two giant deli pickles, and we didn't even need the pickled herring in cream that I couldn't help ordering too.

Properly dense and chewy on the inside, slick and shiny on the outside, I never fully appreciated the allure of a good ole' bagel until I no longer had easy access.

Somewhere in Yorkville, but available anywhere in the streets of New York

Theory Sports Bar

I am slowly, reluctantly, starting to realize that sports bars are a big thing in Chicago. Yes, so I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box.

I hustled my middle-aged Chinese-immigrant parents into Theory for a quick bite and discovered that I liked the comfy seats, my mom is more interested in football than I am, and my dad was somewhat partial to these Nacho Bites with chunks of grilled steak on top.

My mom, did not like however, these buffalo wings. She kept on talking about how "not fresh" the chicken tasted. I am finally at the stage where I can tell if a Dungeness Crab was alive when it was cooked, but freshness of Buffalo Chicken Wings is not a level of culinary enlightenment that I have attained.

The wings were fried and drenched in hot sauce, so I was good.

Pulled pork slider. Good idea.

What is up with this city's larger aversion to the beauty of skinny wilty french fries? These big honkin' french fries will do in a pinch, but they is much too high a ratio of mealy potato inside to crispy french fry outside. Come on people. Priorities priorities.

Theory was fine, but I am going to keep looking for a sports bar on par with The Half Pint.

Theory, 9 W. Hubbard, Chicago, IL

Publican Sunday Dinner

My parents and I also went to one of Publican's Sunday Dinners in partnership with Allagash brewery.

First up was Nantucket Bay Scallops with celery root, vanilla bean & winter black truffles, paired with Allagash Curieux. The aroma of the black truffles was actually not that good, but I remember enjoying the celery root puree. The Allagash Curieux ended up being my mom's favorite beer out of all the pairings.

I insisted on ordering the pork rinds. I have a hard time turning down an opportunity to eat fried pork rinds. Sometimes when I am in polite company, I feel the need to restrain myself, but my eyes always linger on the bags of spicy crispy pork rinds at the convenience store.

Publican's pork rinds were light and crispy and delicately salted.

A serving of Spain's Jamon Iberico. Really nice. Richer than a prosciutto, not as fatty as a culatello. I prefer culatello, but I would choose this over Prosciutto San Danielle, Prosciutto Parma or Speck. Well, I really love Prosciutto San Danielle, but okay okay, I would still choose this Spanish ham first.


I seriously overdosed on pig that weekend with the parents. This charcuterie plate has pork pie, head cheese, country terrine, morteau sausage, pickles & mustards. The pork pie was not too my liking, the head cheese very nice, I could barely handle the sausage -- it was just too much food, and this girl always likes a good porky terrine.

A wood-oven pizza with guanciale and squid that had me fairly excited because I love the intense salty, porky characteristics of guanciale (cured pork jowl), but in a total diss, there was hardly any guanciale to speak of! Just loads of squid! Even I, the calamari sucker of all time, vote for a heavy guanciale:squid ratio. Someone should hire me to get their ingredient priorities in life straight.

This turkey ballotine with schnitzel, brussel sprouts and pears went a long way towards softening my heart though. Some of you may know of my deep aversion to the dry hulking mounds of white turkey breast, but this was a truly phenomenal turkey entree that really opened my eyes to the potential of this fine beast that Ben Franklin once proffered as a candidate for our national bird.

Dessert was a chocolate ice cream of some sort with burnt marshmallows, salted peanuts and caramelised banana. A really great upscale version of some classic American favorite sweets.

The Publican, 837 W. Fulton Market, Chicago, IL

Quick Salad

Have you ever hit that moment when you really need to turn rabbit and hoover down as much roughage as you can? After one too many days of pizzas and burgers and ramen, I couldn't take it anymore, ran to the corner grocery store, and whipped this salad up: celery, cucumber, grape tomatoes, seeded kalamata olives, feta cheese, sliced red onion, and rough-chopped butter lettuce in a quick vinaigrette of mustard, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. It hit the spot.

Post-Thanksgiving Break-Down

How was your Thanksgiving? I zipped back to San Francisco, and I have to confess that Thanksgiving meal, food-wise, was a small disappointment, but it was great to see family. Usually, we do shabu-shabu for Thanksgiving at a family friend's place, as our own extended family is often out of town.

This year we stayed at home and had some family over. My dad cooked, and he upped and went rogue on me. Not wanting to do shabu-shabu I can handle, my dad's Chinese cooking is fantastic. Note the qualifier on Chinese cooking though. Dad decided to make a more traditional Thanksgiving meal, except he isn't entirely clear on what that entails. He knew there was supposed to be a turkey, but not wanting to grapple with that hurdle, he bought a half-turkey from a Chinese butcher. You know, those Chinese butchers that usually have half the carcass of a roast-pig hanging in the window, alongside some mahogany-colored Peking duck and glistening poached chicken?

There was no stuffing. No mashed potatoes. No gravy.

Instead, we had a ying and yang carrot and celery soup. Roasted cauliflower and green beans, which sounds delicious, but dad likes his cauliflower on the crisp side, so let your visions of deliciously charred and tender cauliflower slip away. He roasted some lamb, which was quite nice, but all-in-all I would have preferred a table laden with garlic and black-pepper crab, shrimp and egg stir-fry, a big heaping plate of seafood noodles, Chinese broccoli wok-cooked with cured pork-belly, some steaming bowls of wonton soup, and drunken chicken. Mmmm, that would have been so good.

Well, there's always Christmas!

Gino's East

This is one mad-ugly picture of a slice of deep-dish pizza. I apologize. I also apologize for my general delinquency in posting. I came into graduate school with some smug confidence that I knew what it meant to work hard, and this new phase of my life would be a time to hibernate and take a load off. Boy was I wrong to say the least. I'm happy to be busy, but I am far more busy than I had anticipated. But I am grateful that you are still reading. Thank you, it has been fun writing for you.

Way back in September, I met up with my old next door neighbors for pizza. We used to wage epic battles on the carpet of our sparsely-furnished bedrooms. Legions of Lego men fell, though we generally never intermingled the space Legos with the woodsmen Legos. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had some totally cool and awesome fights. Some of the best hours were passed with my friends' stash of a hundred plug G.I. Joe's, and their gloried possession was the G.I. Joe Mobile Command Center.

We've only seen each other maybe once in the past decade, so it was great catching up over a slice of deep dish. Gino's East has a good crust. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, but I have to admit, I am not a deep dish kind of girl.

Gino's East, 2801 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL‎

Spotted Pig

We are finally nearing the end of my meals in New York this summer. It was a terribly indulgent span of months, and I basically had an extended vacation in my favorite city. It's amazing to think of the number of restaurants and dishes that I still want to try. I never finished eating my way through Prune's entire brunch menu. I'd love to go to Corton one day. And though I've had drinks at Spotted Pig and distinctly remember rolling my eyes at a man with devil horns (it was Halloween) who told me his condo was in Murray Hill, I had never previously sat down to sample some of the restaurant's fare.

We started with some Devils on Horseback. The lighting is decidedly dim in Spotted Pig, so I got to enjoy the fatty richness of the bacon-wrapped dates, but I didn't see the grease it was swimming in.



Deviled eggs that would make the Bastard Consultant's stomach churn. He has a childlike and irrational aversion to hard-boiled eggs and because of a difficult youth, can only associate them with the smell of foot. Someone's mother didn't know about Julia Child's suggestions on how to cook perfect hard-boiled eggs: put eggs in cold water, bring to boil, turn off heat, let sit covered for 17 minutes, transfer to ice bath for 2 minutes, put eggs back in boiling water for 10 seconds, shell. (Actually, I'm lazy: I let them boil for 1-2 minutes, then let them sit covered for about 11-13 minutes, then shell.)

Poached duck egg with Beans and Bottarga. Who am I going to find to eat these things with me in Chicago? Actually, my friend Sam from Abby & Sam's Kitchen, would totally eat with me. If only I could extract the blessed time from the crazed schedule that is currently my life. Just the thought of cracking open that duck egg and having the yolk ooze into the warm beans and salty bottarga is making me wish I was tucked away in that seat at Spotted Pig again.

Yes, yes, I'm a sucker for fries. I love them. More than chips. More than ice cream, which I actually have no strong feelings about generally. I don't know if I can say that I love them more than bubbly, but I am on an eternal quest for a plate of beautifully fried skinny fries.

Spotted Pig, 314 W. 11th St. (@ Greenwich), New York, NY

Apiary

Dinner at Apiary was a series of highs and lows. The Tuscan Mushroom Soup with sour dough croutons and Parmesan was warm and savory and wafting redolent earthy aromas. (Did I use "redolent" correctly? Where are my wordsmiths?)

One of the reasons why I don't tend to eat salads on a casual basis at home or at work for lunch is that it's hard to get a good salad outside of a restaurant setting or without some decent farmers' markets/prep time. The repetitive combination of mesclun/romaine/spinach with boring deli meats and veggies just doesn't make me think of mother nature's bounty, which is what a good salad can evoke.

My friend is a sucker for duck confit, whereas I'm more of a seared medium-rare duck breast kinda girl myself. I know confit is super savory, but it hasn't got nearly the juicy, lip-smacking qualities of a well seared duck breast.

This skate wing was a low though. It was perfectly fried and the creamy sauce was a wonderful complement to the crispy, light flaky skate, but the dish overall was way way way too salty. I considered sending it back to the kitchen and insulting the chef manning the fish station, but for some reason decided to just drink a lot of water instead.

Basically, the beginning of every bit was delicious until the saltiness began to make its presence known, and I couldn't bear the thought of waiting for the kitchen to remake another plate before I could get to enjoy again the first-half of the skate wing taste experience. So instead, I suffered the consequences of way to salty second-half taste experience in exchange for a 50% yummy entree.

Oh Bayona, you have forever ruined me to panna cotta. I can't stop ordering it, but it is never as smooth and slippery and jiggly and light and divine as yours. New Orleans I miss you.

Do any of you try experimenting with unusual sorbet flavors at home? I like fooling around with citrus flavors, but I don't tend to play with the rich creamy fruits like mango. Apiary makes decent ice creams and sorbet that taste of their main ingredient, but nothing revelatory like pain de mie ice cream is going on here (thank you Per Se). (... my my, what a little name-dropper I've become here. Apologies all.)

Apiary, 60 3rd Ave. (@ 11th St), New York, NY

Going Away Party

In August I decided to hold a going away party for myself, and I cooked up a storm.

I'm always worried that there won't be enough food, and for me, it's the worse thing for someone to leave hungry.

Just looking at all of this food makes me wish I had some of those as leftovers in my fridge right now. Because I have not had much time to cook in the last few days.

My mother's style of Vietnamese spring rolls. They are actually nothing like traditional spring rolls.

I put in fried egg crepe, shrimp, cucumber, bean sprouts (which I painstakingly pulled the ends off of), basil, mint, and vermicelli that I flavored with msg, sugar, salt, and dried Chinese pork.

Roasted fresh corn with feta, roasted tomatoes and cilantro in a simple vinaigrette.

Potato salad with these awesome dill pickles that are so easy to make.

Peach cobbler, this one is mind-numbingly simple. I made it with these white peaches that were a tad juicy. I must say though, I don't understand the addition of warm water to cold butter. I'm with the recipe on the cold butter, just not on the warm water.

Moroccan carrot salad, thank you Mark Bittman. See number 14.

Cool cucumber soup shots. I also had watermelon gazpacho shots.

Caprese skewers. Thank goodness for friends. I called in reinforcements. Both the Bastard Consultant, and someone who I will hereby deem the Dr. Consultant came in to help. They skewered, they peeled, they helped. A lot.

I may have gone a bit overboard on the cream, but I get a little exuberant when making Cajun Shrimp Curry.

All-in-all it was a lot of fun to see people from all the different parts of my life. Stuck out here in the Windy City, I miss all of them dearly.

Yale: Fly by Night and din din

This summer I went to see a fabulous musical put on by a friend who is studying at Yale. If you ever see Fly-by-Night on Broadway, just remember that I was the one who told you it was fantastic.

The musical was held in a tiny theater on campus, but surpisingly we were able to have table service and a nice dinner at one of the ten or so tables surrounding the small, open stage.

I was delighted to discover that the food is pretty decent.

I am now convinced that having dinner and seeing a bit of theater put on by the students at the Yale School of Drama is a great way to pass an evening and benefit from some brilliant talent.

Everything is modestly priced, so if you happen to be in the area, I think you should go next summer.

But don't order the profiteroles. At least not if you've had them in Paris and know that hard to pair combination of light airy pastry, rich icecream with strong tones of vanilla and warm oozing chocolate. It's hard to get just right.

Chicago's Dog House

In a burger vs. dog face-off, what would you prefer? My friend is a dog man, and he was responsible for finding Chicago's Dog House. Aside from slicing my finger on the door of the drinks cooler, it was a good find.

We started out with a Chicago-Style dog (dragged through the garden), though I was tempted by the Blago (Chicago-Style with ketchup). Where did the Chicago-Style dog come from? If I had an intern, I'd have an assignment.

Then we opted for Chompers: a smoked alligator sausage topped with caramelized onions and sweet chili sauce.

I would have preferred something light, crunchy, slightly pickled to contrast the smoky sausage and rich caramelized onions, and my friend and I both agreed the bun was a tad too large. I forgot that alligator is a reptile and unlikely to have the meaty mouth feel of pork or beef. It's leaner than I had anticipated, but the flavor is maybe slightly more intense than a poultry dog.

In an unconscious attempt to have a cardiac arrest in less than 48 hours of Chicago eating, we ordered the chili cheese fries. The fries are really homemade potato chips, that one of the employees slices fresh via an attachment hooked up to your standard electric drill. The oil must not have been hot enough because these fries absorbed a lot of grease, but someone the addition of the Velveeta-like cheese and the homemade chili made it seem more balanced.

Chicago's Dog House, 816 W. Fullerton, Chicago, IL, 773-248-3647

Giordano's

Well, I signed a lease for a place in Chicago. I'm headed for the Windy City in September, and on the gustatory front, I am not what you'd call excited.

After debating endlessly the merits of this apartment or that, my friend and I were beyond starving by the time I was down with the lease. I could not get to Giordano's fast enough.

We started with an appetizer of fried zucchini and mozzarella sticks, rounded out by fried button mushrooms to tied us over while we waited for our deep-dish pizza to bake. I was the sort of hungry that can't think rationally, and after the hard gnawing edge began to subside with the application of some rapid fork jabs at the fried zucchini, I began to see that the appetizer alone could do us in. I dealt with it by treating the last two-thirds of the fried bounty as if the crispy batter shell served the same role as a salt crust: existing solely to trap the flavors of the main ingredient and to keep it moist.

Never mind that in reality the main ingredient in a plate of fried zucchini, mozzarella, and mushrooms is the fried (if you'll let me get away with using fried as a noun). I wasn't going to let my first appetizer order while in Chicago that weekend take me down. And I wasn't prepared to let my first meal send me into the population that's grateful for the vanity sizing at the retail outlets in the mall.

It occurred to me as I was picking off the fried batter shell off every single piece of vegetable (gave up on the cheese as well) that this appetizer was relatively normal, but in the last three years in New York I don't think I've had it once. I might have had a fried mozzarella stick or two, but definitely not any fried button mushrooms.

Before my brain could get too far, our pizza arrived.

Much better than Lou Malnati's. Can't put my finger on why, but something about the ratio of cheese and the texture of the dough gives Giordano's a definite edge.

Giordano's, 135 E. Lake, Chicago, IL