Content about Chicago
April 14, 2010
The brief, wondrous history of a Chicago sandwich.
A few weeks ago, a mad group of seven men took part in the great Chicago Italian Sub Tour of 2010. We visited six places, ate way more than we should have, and came away with the pretty definite conclusion that J.P. Graziano served the best Italian sub of the day. They used the best bread, and paid the most attention to each individual element of the sandwich. Oddly though, mixed in with all the Italian subs was one oddball sandwich that we...
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April 6, 2010
We realize it's been a tad quiet over here for the past couple weeks, but there is some exciting news. As of, well...yesterday, I'm the new editor of Grub Street Chicago. I'll cover all the juicy restaurant news in our city from fine dining to as many posts about hot dogs I can manage. Check out my intro post here. It's a challenging new position, but one that will allow me to work from home. Yes, I'm still in pajamas.
And don't worry, we have...
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March 10, 2010
Which Italian deli in Chicago makes the best subs?
We assembled at 11 a.m., seven hungry men, at J. P. Graziano's. This unadorned storefront in the restaurant supply district of Chicago's West Loop seemed like an odd place to begin a journey to find the best Italian sub in Chicago. The shop's exterior had no tell-tale signals that it made sandwiches--just a sign stating their business as wholesale importers. The interior contained no vine covered trellises or...
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March 4, 2010
A tastier and quicker version of the classic.
I'm tired of people lying about cassoulet. Every recipe I've ever read calls it a "peasant dish," and the fact is, cassoulet is really, really expensive to make. You need duck confit, which, if you don't buy pre-made, costs you either in the form of overpriced duck fat or the need to buy a whole duck to render it yourself. Then, you need fancy sausage, preferably the garlicky "Toulouse" variety, which is...
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February 9, 2010
Vinegar and sugar can spruce up any sauce.
Once we had blanched and peeled the tomatoes we chopped them, strained the seeds, and simmered it for twenty minutes into a simple sauce. Then I made my gastrique, which involved no measuring -- maybe 1/4 cup of vinegar and 3 tablespoons of sugar -- and a quick boil into something thick and syrupy.
I tasted the sauce before adding it, which was fine, clean and simple. And then I tasted it after. The difference was noticeable. Both...
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February 2, 2010
Other uses for the unloved spirit.
I have this large bottle of vodka and I don't know what to do with it. It was lugged over by a friend (Blake) during a party as some kind of gift for the festivities, but I could see through his evil plan. He was trying to pawn this half finished bottle off on me because he didn't want to drink it. Sure enough, while the whiskey and gin were manhandled during the party, stirred and shaken into all manner of cocktails, that bottle of...
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January 26, 2010
This fishy roe is a meal in itself.
My Chicago is about life as a cooks and eaters in our home city. Markets, restaurants, secret finds, really tasty bites--or just a great story. We're lucky to live here.
Bottarga would handily win the award for "foodstuff with least correlation between attractiveness and deliciousness," if such a thing existed. It is a brown, firm lobe, and, poor thing, really quite ugly. A cured, pressed, and dried fish egg sack. How...
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January 12, 2010
Can great pizza be made at home quickly?
Idea Lab is where we explore topics before we head into the kitchen. We welcome your thoughts, opinions, and ideas, so please leave them in the comments!
Though I once praised the virtues of the broiling pizza on Serious Eats, I'm now over it. I'm tired of broiler antics and pre-heating cast iron pans to make approximations of Neopolitan-style pizza at home (I've already ruined one baking stone in the process). The fact is, a...
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January 8, 2010
How to dress up cheap ramen.
Every Friday, we publish a story about life as a cooks and eaters in Chicago. Markets, restaurants, secret finds, really tasty bites--or just a great story. We're lucky to live here.
Close your eyes and think about instant ramen...I know it's probably been a while. You probably have in mind some MSG-laden bastion of cheap college eating, because that's where I used to be, too.
But now it's different...
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November 25, 2009
A little holiday help
We're signing off for the week, ready to see family, drink some of our homemade hard apple cider, and fatten ourselves on turkey. We hope you're off to do the same! But before you do, please direct your attention to this week's Time Out Chicago, were you will discover a cheesy picture of your humble correspondents (above).
A month ago we met up with the dashing food folks over at Time Out to have a little dinner...
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November 18, 2009
Perhaps the best way to cook chicken.
In my opinion, the best chicken is chicken sous-vide. Each bite is tender and succulent in a way I never thought chicken could possibly be. It's kind of changed everything for me. Even the appearance of the meat is different, instead of stringy and tough, a fork can simply cut through the meat. It's enough to make anyone convert.
So for the past few weeks I've been proselytizing about the powers of sous-vide, a...
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October 29, 2009
Our guide to turning apple juice into booze.
As we realized on our last post, it was time to stop talking emphatically about the cultural significance of cider, and start getting to the business of making it. Though we had read more websites, emails, and books than we could know what to do with, we were still confused, and more importantly, l didn't have a solid recipe. It was beginning to be a problem.
At its simplest, hard apple cider is pressed and strained apples that are...
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October 22, 2009
Why every American should drink more cider.
Currently Blake and I have four gallons of apple cider fermenting in the back of his bedroom closet. The hope is that in a few days, thanks to some hungry yeast, we'll have something that might resemble hard apple cider. We're honestly nervous. We've undertaken ridiculous experiments before, but nothing that could potentially get us hammered. If it works, then we'll have made an alcoholic drink for less than it costs to buy...
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October 2, 2009
Whisky and sugar combine to make an unforgettable cocktail.
Recently Nick and I were in the gritty West Loop neighborhood of Chicago, after a long, pork-ridden meal at The Publican, where we fed on cracklins, rillettes, belly, shoulder, and all manner of sausages. We slipped out of the restaurant happy and stuffed into the long fluorescent shadows, in search of a good bar to aid all the oncoming digesting to be done.
We ended up at Matchbox, a slender little bar no more than 10 feet wide, but well...
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September 29, 2009
What is your kimchi secret?
Vinegary, spicy, crunchy, and addictive. These are just some of the words we use to describe Korean dish kimchi. We could go on, but the idea is this: Kimchi fascinates us. We put it into stews, mix it with noodles and sesame oil, chop it up with fried rice, and side it up with Korean barbecue. We've been known to eat it straight out of the jar when we need a fix.
There are all kinds of kimchi out there --...
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September 24, 2009
Make both of those at home.
The tomatoes were turning on me. A few weeks ago they were red and rosy, destined for a starring role in a BLT. Now, I'm not sure if they can withstand the scrutiny of the spotlight. They are still light years beyond what appears during the winter here in the Midwest, but not quite the ones you can slice up, sprinkle with salt, and eat raw. I kind of wish I would have known this before I bought a huge batch of them at the farmers market...
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September 22, 2009
We take a walk around the legendary market.
Nick and I arrived at the Maxwell Street Market to a line of colorful tents stretching out into the distance along Desplaines Street longer than we could see: men playing blues on the sidewalk, piles of tchotkes and used power tools, used DVDs, discount bras and panties, and endless stands full of tube socks. In fact, it wasn't immediately clear what we were doing there. If it weren't for the smell of cooking meat, we would have...
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September 18, 2009
Try this awesome Korean appetizer.
I began to wonder whether the banchan were going to overwhelm the table. We had placed the little Korean side dishes on the smallest plates I owned, but the shear number of them added up. It was our own fault. When Blake and I decided to do a Korean Barbecue feast last weekend we figured it was time to lavish attention on banchan, giving them the attention and care usually just reserved for the main course. Along the way we made...
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August 21, 2009
How to create the perfect cucumber sandwich.
I feel like I finally understand the cucumber sandwich. After weeks of thinking about it, and trying to recreate the most authentic version I could muster, it finally sunk in. The taste isn't rich, indulgent, spicy, acidic, comforting, salty, or fatty. It's cool, calm, and collected. The strongest reaction I had towards one was a contented sigh, a sort of momentary delight.
So why was I breaking a sweat trying to make one? I had...
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August 18, 2009
Starting with the perfect loaf of bread.
(Check out Part Two of My Cucumber Sandwich Revenge for the sandwich recipe)
I went to see a man about a loaf pan. All the traditional outlets had failed (Crate and Barrel, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma and four restaurant supply stores) and I was starting to get desperate. See, I needed a very peculiar kind of loaf pan, one that would help me create the mysterious loaf, pain de mie, which would hopefully provide the base for the perfect...
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July 22, 2009
A step-by-step guide to every condiment and step in making the perfect, authentic Chicago-style hot dog.
The Chicago Hot Dog is, perhaps, one of the most improbable food combinations in the world. We do know this: it shouldn't work. A towering, precipitous bundle, loaded up with so many condiments that it's twice the volume of the dog itself. It threatens to fall apart, to be so absurd it forgets its provenance as a hot dog. It's misguided, it's madness. Yet it's mad enough to succeed brilliantly.
The ratio of bun-to-dog...
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May 27, 2009
Nick's tour of the South's barbecue capital.
Memphis has insanely good ribs, some so mouthwatering and juicy that they make most of the barbecue I've ever eaten fall of their bones in shame. The rub is better, the smoke more lingering, and the sauce more lip-smacklingly suited to the cause. What cause? Sublime barbecue. I wanted to see how good it could be. Which isn't to say that everything went perfectly or that every bite left me in awe. ...
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April 22, 2009
Hey everyone! Check out the most recent DIY issue of Time Out Chicago and you'll see me! The issue is online today and should be sent out tomorrow. The article focuses on some of the more absurd projects Blake and I have done here on the site. It also quite accurately describes the chaos of creation and the battle scars that occasionally result. There's even a great picture of me in my cleaner-than-usual kitchen...
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April 16, 2009
How to make Grand World Champion ribs.
I returned home from a weekend in Ohio to to find that a fire had struck Honey 1 Barbecue. The building was still intact, but the smoking aquarium where they cook all their meat had been destroyed. According to owner, it might take a few months to get back in order if smoker is salvageable and the insurance company gives up the money quickly. It could take much longer.
I found the news hard to take. It's...
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April 3, 2009
Nick learns from his mistakes and makes a good deep-dish pie at home.
I was determined not to fail this time. My last attempt at deep-dish wasn't an absolute failure, but it was close. It was too soggy and messy, and had none of the glorious qualities that my favorite Chicago pizzeria, Pequods, displayed. I theorized about all kinds reasons for the failure, thinking it had something to do with the crust. Then I just gave up and asked you all to help me. Ended up I was way off...
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March 17, 2009
Nick struggles to perfect deep-dish pizza at home.
Or at least, that was my hunch. I searched for a long time and finally settled on this recipe from pizzamaking.com. Deep-dish dough is very different from its thin crust counterpart. The crust has a healthy dose of cornmeal, which gives it an interesting crunch and texture. All the elements seemed to be here. I tracked down some tomatoes, cheese, and even decided to add some spinach (an addition that has worked well...
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March 3, 2009
My wife has been bugging me for months now to make tamales, and it's always been the next project, the one I'll do after I finish whatever I'm doing at the moment. When that time comes I've usually forgotten about them and have moved onto something else. Truthfully, I didn't see much of a rush. I love tamales, but I can indulge in them whenever I'd like around my neighborhood. The possibilities are endless: I can...
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February 11, 2009
Discovering Chicago's distinctive beef sandwich.
The mystery is that while the sandwich's meat is incredibly tender, it isn't made from some expensive cut of beef. From the research that I've done, most Italian beef recipes call for round or the sirloin tip, which are both tough and lean cuts. The use of a cheap, neglected cut really interested me.
At first glance, the sandwich looks a lot like a cheese-less Philly cheesesteak....
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February 6, 2009
It sounds like an easy question to answer, but sometimes even I have a hard time remembering where Blake is half the time (Don't even get me started on what time zone he lives in). I can only imagine what casual readers might think. In the past three years we've both lived in a combined total of 9 or so apartments, which doesn't include Blake's month of couch surfing, which might bring the total closer to 13. Of course, ...
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January 29, 2009
The best chili starts with the best chili powder.
That meant forgoing the blend I had in my spice rack and picking up a load of dried chilies from the local Mexican market. I needed to create my own blend, something that was completely unique to me, but where do I start? There honestly aren't that many recipes for chili powder out there. My only real resources were Homesick Texan (great site) and Alton Brown.
Thanks to the large Mexican population in...
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January 22, 2009
Though I once promised an Irish waitress that I'd never compete in a chili cook-off, I've decided to officially break my oath. I am in the running for the top prize at the 2009 Time Out Chicago's Chili Cook-off at Martyr's (3855 N Lincoln Ave). It's all happening this Saturday, Janurary 24th from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
This is my first competition, and in typical Paupered Chef fashion I haven't exactly settled on a final recipe. I've...
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October 6, 2008
(Scene at the Paulina Meat Market in Chicago)
Butcher: "Number 37!"
Me: "Yeah, that's me."
Butcher: "What can I get for you?"
Me: "Yeah, I'll take 10 feet of sheep casings."
I don't say that often enough in life, and up until this Saturday it had never crossed my mind. But here I was at Paulina Meat Market ordering sheep intestines from butchers that make their own fine sausages. The...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
