by Nick Kindelsperger on July 30, 2010
Next Friday my wife and I will hop on the Blue Line, head north to O’Hare, and then take a plane halfway across North America to Mexico City for one of the most intense eating experiences of my life. As you may have noticed over the four years or so that I’ve been writing, I adore Mexican cuisine all out of proportion. It’s my favorite cuisine--from complex and elegant moles to simple fish tacos and everything else in between. It’s an infatuation that will not end. I love it like Woody Allen loves New York. When I go more than a few days without it (be that a simple spoonful of refried beans, crispy carnitas, or a rustic chipotle and tomatillo salsa) I start to get weak. I’ve had flings with other cuisines, but if you’re at my house, more likely than not you're sitting down to a Mexican feast. I have no excuse other than it just tastes like home to me.
So I need to go to Mexico, and not just to the beach (which is where I went on my lovely honeymoon). My wife and I decided to really go for it, and head to Oaxaca, which is home to my favorite regional cuisine and where we’ll take language classes for two weeks. I’m not worried about eating in Oaxaca. I’ll have enough time to sort of get the lay of the land, and more than a few locals to help me with recommendations. It will be relaxing and therapeutic. The mezcal will help.
But I’m planning my flight into Mexico with the precision of the D-Day landing. I’ll only have 36 hours in the capital to eat as much as I possibly can, which is completely overwhelming when you’re flying into one of the largest and most confusing cities in the whole world. This means no wasted steps and no wasted bites.
I need your help. Does anyone have any must bites in Mexico City? I will eat al pastor. I will visit the central market. We’re planning a nice meal out, based on recs from Rick Bayless’s Twitter guide. But I want to eat as much as I can. I want to roll out of town without an ounce of hunger left. We’ll be staying in the neighborhood of Condesa, so we’ll be able to get around fairly quickly.
Can anyone help me out?
by Blake Royer on July 29, 2010
Through a heavy, metal door with "Brewery Employees Only" slapped on the front, I was led into a warm, steamy room where Goose Island beer is made. I side-stepped hoses and puddles of water and found a capacious space filled with slanted light; up above, at the top of a skinny ladder, great tanks of beer were lined up at various stages of aging and fermentation on a platform, were Goose Island's brewmaster Jared was talking to Chicago chef Graham Elliot.
Graham Elliot is one of a series of restaurants that have participated in Goose Island's chef brewing program (Others have included Mindy Segal of Hot Chocolate, Rick Bayless of Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and XOCO, and Paul Kahan of the Publican). In each case, a chef will meet with brewmaster Jared Rouben and decide on the kind of beer they'd like to make.
Graham Elliot takes an unusual approach to beverage pairing--”You're as likely to find us pairing something with chocolate milk"--so even though it’s a beer, that doesn’t mean it has to taste like anything you’ve had before.
The start of their collaboration began with Jared: in two heroic sessions, he ate the entire menu at Graham Elliot in order to get a sense of what kind of beer they would make. Then Graham came to Goose Island and tasted different kinds of beer. Together, they settled on a lighter style--a Kristal Wit Belgian ale--that would appear early on in the tasting menu, as a kind of alternative to champagne to pair with lighter courses like fish or herbs, or as an apertif. The beer was to be light, floral, and very aromatic.
Brewmaster Jared inspecting the brew
To create the flavor profile Jared and Graham are after, the ale is steeped in aromatic fruits and spices at a very low temperature (45 degrees F) for a significant amount of time, just long enough so that the flavor is prominent, “but not so long that it's over-extracted or tannic,” as Jared explained. Cardamom, chile, pineapple, lychee, and lemongrass are all apart of the mix process.
When I got an email invitation to hang out at Goose Island with Graham and learn about the beer he was brewing, I leapt at the chance. I don't know a lot about beer making, and, it turns out, neither does Graham. (I asked Graham if he has ever brewed beer at home, and the answer was no.) In fact, he was learning as much about the process by which beer is brewed as I was. From the grain mash to the first taste of the unfermented product, it was all pretty fascinating.
[continue reading…]
by Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer on July 26, 2010
by Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer on July 19, 2010
by Blake Royer on July 15, 2010
My fridge lately has been so full of food I can hardly see what’s inside of it. Since joining a CSA, I am completely overwhelmed with the amount of food I have, and how to cook it all quickly enough. The other day I realized that I had, like, 2 or 3 pounds of green onions--and not wispy little ones, big, fat ones, the white roots thick and juicy, the green shoots long and vibrant. I’d been using them as quickly as I could, mincing them into salads and topping scrambled eggs. But it was a losing battle: I would need to find a way to cook them.
A quick tweet asking for ideas brought a handful of suggestions, from braising them to pickling. Since my solution last time I was faced with too many vegetables was to pickle--which allowed me to put away a head of kohlrabi and a bunch of beets--I was on the lookout for something else. By chance, two people recommended not only the same cooking method, which was to char them on the grills until smoky and tender, but also the same sauce. Which: was weird. And, I decided, some kind of fate.
Romesco sauce is Spanish in origin, essentially a blend of peppers, tomato, nuts, bread, olive oil, and vinegar. The method was actually very similar to another Spanish recipe I cooked recently--white gazpacho. The shared elements are bread, garlic, olive oil, and nuts, as well as the procedure: mashing the heck out of them until a smooth. Traditionally this would be done in a mortar and pestle by hand; modern convenience is the food processor. But compared to the light, garlicky gazpacho, this romesco sauce is much richer and denser--no added water--and also spicy, pungent, and smoky. Which is why it seems like it’s made for anything that comes off the grill.
I made about 18 times as much as I needed--realizing later that this is potent stuff--but having it in the fridge is no burden. It keeps for weeks and can be spooned on anything grilled, spread onto toasted bread with a little crumbled goat cheese, used to dip tortilla chips, or in a sandwich.
The green onions grilling method comes from my friend Art Jackson over at Pleasant House. He recommends allowing the onions to cook quickly over coals scatted with wood chips (to generate some smoke), then finish elsewhere on the grill in a little foil pouch, which allows them to smoke and steam and get melty, and which keeps all the aromatic flavor trapped in the package and absorbing into the onions. Marvelous.
[continue reading…]
by Nick Kindelsperger on July 13, 2010
You know how you see scallops at the fish market and think to yourself, I could sauté those with?...When I’m at the farmers’ market, I see bushels and baskets of potential pickles...
- David Chang, Momofuku
It's been over three years, and yet I can still vividly remember an appetizer I ate at Momofuku Ssäm Bar. In a meal filled with gloriously fatty meat laced with spice, this small plate of cucumber and radish seemed to lighten the load, and allow me to eat far more than was normal or right. But that's kind of selling them short. Because however much I'd like to deny it, they may have been my favorite bite of the whole meal. Naturally I wondered what went into them, but it wasn't until I picked up David Chang's cookbook that I found the recipe. This is what I saw:
Combine the vegetable with the sugar and salt in a small mixing bowl and toss to coat with the sugar and salt. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes.
5 to 10 minutes! Last time I made pickles I stuffed cucumbers into a jar and sat them in the fridge for three weeks. They came out crunchy and tangy, but they took THREE WEEKS! By then the growing season for cucumbers was nearly over, and I didn’t have any time to adjust and tweak. How about some immediate satisfaction?
I thinly sliced some cucumbers and then combined them with one tablespoon of sugar and one teaspoon of salt. They hung out for 10 minutes, before I gave them a taste. They were slightly sweet, still crunchy, but a touch salty.
So I followed Chang’s directions and rinsed them off in a colander, dried them on a kitchen towel, and then added a bit more sugar. Five minutes later I had little crunchy quick pickles which I ate next to a huge plate of spicy Asian noodles. How fun is that?
But complex pickles don’t need to take long, and they don’t need to be held back by what is traditionally thought of as a pickle. I’ve been obsessed with these zucchini pickles I had a Mado a few weeks ago. They were so simple --the best things at Mado always are-- and they perfectly balanced a heavy plate of pâté. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Zucchini and squash are busting out at the farmers’ market, and here was something new to do with them besides making ratatouille (which is an admittedly delicious dish). Plus, they were pickles that weren’t cucumbers.
I found this stunning recipe from the L.A. Times for Zuni Cafe’s zucchini pickles. It takes a day to make, which compared to three weeks is like a blip. Just make them the night before and enjoy them for a week in the fridge.
[continue reading…]
by Blake Royer on July 12, 2010
by Nick Kindelsperger on July 9, 2010
As far as I know there are only two kinds of ways to make carne asada. The first method is to take thinly sliced flank or skirt steak, sear it over mad charcoal fire, chop it up, and then stuff it into warm corn tortillas. It's almost always great. The second method is the kind that most taquerias use, which is to scoop some bits of raw steak, plop it on a grill, and sauté until it is cooked. This one is almost always bad. The meat is too greasy, or it's too chewy. I've always just assumed that grilled was superior to griddled, especially because I loved that smokey characteristic from the charcoal. Plus it also meant that everything was freshly prepared.
But now I’m not so sure. I had a taco last weekend that might have changed my mind.
The taco held stunningly crisp shards of caramelized meat, nearly jet black, which punctuated each bite with this intense beefiness. It would have almost been too much, had they not been cut by the spicy salsa an agree squeeze of lime. These tacos made 99% of the carne asada I’ve ever had look weak.
Could griddled carne asada be the best method?
[continue reading…]
by Blake Royer on July 7, 2010
Pickling vegetables is something that I’ve yet to get real excited about. Of all the "DIY" food movements, it’s one of the last to catch on. Why, I don’t know. Probably because a slab of homemade bacon is a lot more exciting than a jar of tangy vegetables. Which is no mark against the vegetables. Most anything next to a slab of bacon is bound to lose terribly.
But actually, pickling is rather easy when it comes down to it, even when you make the variety that naturally ferment (some “pickling” techniques are hardly more than packing the vegetables with a hot vinegar solution and calling it a day). It takes about a week. That week is about coaxing the vegetables to ferment (remember our kimchi-making sessions? Same idea). Lactic acid fermentation is the name of the game; by using a pickling liquid with a high amount of salt, other harmful bacteria is prevented from multiplying, while the lactic stuff dominates and prevents other cultures from thriving. It’s rather imperialist, to be honest. But it adds that wonderful tang to the proceedings.
Using this recipe, I had zero problems succeeding.
For some reason, when I pulled out a head of kohlrabi from my CSA box last week (the first time I’d ever seen or heard of this vegetable, true story) my mind wandered to pickling and a recipe I tucked away a long time ago from David Tanis’ book A Platter of Figs. The original recipe called for turnips, another firm, white, bulbous root sort of vegetable that nobody really wants to eat raw. Kohlrabi smells a little like broccoli stems.
Since I had a few beets as well, I added them in, resulting in the shocking pink before you.
The brine, besides being salty, is flavored with garlic, thyme, oregano, bay leaf, fennel seeds, coriander, a crushed red chiles. It’s never boiled, and in fact nothing here is ever raised above room temperature, preserving all the flavor and nutrients. A small amount of cider vinegar is also added, which punches up the acidity and I think helps ensure nothing spoils while the natural lactic fermentation kicks in. Once the vegetables are packed into jars with the brine, you leave them at room temperature for 5-7 days (depending on how warm your particular room temperature actually is), which allows the fermentation to happen. Tiny bubbles form--an excellent sign--and pressure builds inside the jar. You turn it over once a day to make sure everything distributes, and once they’re through pickling, you stick them in the fridge and eat at will.
[continue reading…]
by Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer on July 6, 2010
