Assume the position: Al's Italian Beef in Chi-town

Why did I feel compelled to write "Chi-town" in the title of this entry? I really dislike that nickname. Just as I dislike it when people pronounce the silent "s" at the end of "Illinois". Oh, you're from Illinoise! No, no, no. "Chi-town" just somehow seemed folksy and appropriate when discussing Italian beef. Which is what I will be discussing in a moment, when I stop rambling about pronunciation and nicknames.

So, Randy and I made a pilgrimmage to Al's Italian Beef on Taylor Street last Friday. Of course I pigged out beforehand so I wasn't very hungry, but I still managed quite well. Italian beef is something that seems so specific to Chicago. I really can't imagine eating it in any other city, and I wouldn't want to.


An Italian beef blossoms before me like a late-blooming rose.

An Italian beef sandwich is basically a hoagie roll topped with thinly sliced beef that has been soaking in its own juices and other spices for a long time. You can get it topped with sweet or hot peppers; the hot are sooo good - it's a celery spice mixture and I wish I knew how to recreate it. It's also possible to get the whole sandwich dipped in the juices, or to order it with a hot Italian sausage tucked in between the slices of beef. Did you catch that last part? A sausage wrapped in beef. This is one of the many reasons why I love Chicago.


The first delectable bite.

At Al's, you eat standing up in front of a long metal counter. To keep your shirt clean, you have to assume "the position", in which you are forced to slouch your entire upper torso forward and keep your elbows raised so that the juices and grease can drain onto the paper that the sandwich was wrapped in. Their fries are limp and greasy, but real, not pre-cut. And right across the street is Mario's Italian Ice, which is a fabulous end to the Al's experience in the summer heat. Sadly, right now it's closed for winter.

Italian beef goes down surprisingly easy. I rarely feel sick - ok, maybe a teeny bit queasy, but that's all - after eating one. The woman who made our sandwiches had no teeth and lit up a cigarette right after she served us, and it all just added to the experience. What also added to the experience was seeing the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry afterwards. Randy and I had made only one vow before seeing the exhibit: that we would go on empty stomachs. Ch'ya. The first thing we saw, a human body plastinated and sliced vertically, reminded me of ham slices. The rest of the bodies recalled beef jerky. But the museum's baby chick hatchery remains my favorite thing:



After four months of living in Marin, Chicago seemed refreshingly real. Don't get me wrong; I love the Bay Area for a million reasons, but Chicago is a City with a capital "C". It's gritty, dirty and cold; it has people from a million countries; it's filled with crazy drivers and chain smokers and shady dealings and brash skyscrapers. It's got the Green Mill, where the bartender was too busy trading insults with the regulars to make our drinks, and El Taco Loco, where we ate chorizo tacos at midnight that gave me heartburn.

Can't I just live in two places at once?

Baking Days 4 and 5: Chalky pastries, divine brownies

Baking Day 4 was a bit of a failure. Despite being moderately busy, I still tried to squeeze in Half-Moon Pastries filled with Chocolate and Apricot Jam, from Marcella Hazan's cookbook Marcella Says. We didn't have apricot jam, so I substituted raspberry.



They were ...underwhelming. Chalky. Bland. I'm fairly sure I made them correctly, but they just leave something to be desired. The pastry dough reminds me of biscotti for its heavy, floury flavor. The insides are pleasantly gooey and decadent, but you have to work through the dense exterior to get to the good stuff. I noticed my mom surreptitiously licking the chocolate centers out, and then placing the doughy remains on the side of her plate. They were not well received. I tried to defend them by proposing that they might go well with a nice espresso at breakfast, but nobody seemed to be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This seems to be a recipe created for people who don't like pastries much. That ain't us.

To redeem myself, today I decided to stick with a classic: gooey, rich brownies. I did my homework this time by scouring through all the four-fork recipes on Epicurious, reading the comments and then combining two recipes into one.

Thank god, it worked. The primary recipe I used was from Alice Medrich's BitterSweet, a cookbook I often skimmed while working at Ramekins. The recipe calls for high-quality cocoa, and by a bizarre miracle my parents had a box of Valrhona cocoa in their cupboard. You start the batter by mixing butter, sugar, salt and cocoa in a bowl over simmering water. It makes an incredibly gorgeous, pitch-black sludge, reminding me in color and texture of my recent mud bath in Calistoga. Here are the ingredients, and then the resulting sludge:



As I stirred, I entertained a brief fantasy of taking a bath made from Vahlrona cocoa, butter and sugar. Is this deranged in any way? Isn't there a whole Hershey spa somewhere in Pennsylvania? I made two changes to the Medrich recipe: I baked them for 33 minutes instead of 25, and I added two teaspoons of cinnamon. The result is a small pan of incredibly rich, decadent, black brownies.

Baking Day 3, continued: Russian Easter Bread

I am not Russian, nor is it Easter. Nevertheless, yesterday I baked up some Russian Easter Bread from a recipe I found in the April 2004 issue of Gourmet. One is encouraged to bake the loaves in coffee cans, an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I had just made fun of my boyfriend for retaining all his old Maxwell House containers in case they might be put to future use for some obscure purpose, and here was an obscure purpose if I ever saw one! I ate humble pie and asked him if I could borrow some of his beloved cans for a day. He said yes but that he wanted them back when I was done.



The bread itself is straightforward; it's eggy and slightly sweet like challah, and can be braided into pretty shapes. The recipe calls for saffron, but I skipped it because we didn't have any. I baked the loaf on the left in a casserole dish after becoming paranoid that I would not be able to remove the other loaf from the coffee can after it came out of the oven. The can has a weird lip that juts out around the top rim (not sure whether all coffee cans have this, or just Maxwell House), so I assumed (correctly) that the bread would rise all around the lip as it baked and get stuck inside. My mom pointed out very sensibly that if all else failed, I could just flip the canister over and use a can opener around the bottom, then pop it out. She was exactly right, and this is how I retrieved the loaf. Sadly, this meant that one of Randy's cans would never make it back alive to him.


My parents' senile cat Sherman loves nothing more than to park himself in the most inconvenient spot in the middle of the kitchen floor whenever I try to cook.

The coffee can gave the loaf a very cute, perky shape, although it seemed to start sagging a bit as it cooled on the rack. I'm not sure how much it would have deflated if left to its own devices, because my grandma and I tore into the loaf while it was still hot. It's very tasty bread - flaky and rich, and it makes great toast.

The Week of Baking, Days 1 - 3

Because I am staying at my parents’ house in Chicago for the week, I have access to their kitchen. This kitchen has an oven. If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that for the past four months I have lacked an oven, as well as most other things kitchen-related, because I whine about it constantly. What a jerk I am.

A few days ago I decided to make this The Week of Baking, in which I would sift through my enormous pile of recipes ripped compulsively each month from Gourmet and Food and Wine and try to make something every day.

On Saturday, I baked a batch of Joe Froggers. This was not a recipe culled from a food magazine, but rather from one of my mother’s friends. They’re ginger-molasses cookies, and they’re quite good. Here they are:



The only thing odd about them is that they quickly became rock hard. I can't stay ahead of the Midwest weather; when I make these in the summer, they practically ooze off the plate from the humid air. In the winter, they resemble gingersnaps. It's a conundrum.

Sunday’s attempt was a Cider Spice Cake from the October issue of Gourmet. You know when you’re halfway through a recipe, and you can sense imminent disaster? Or at least imminent mediocrity? That’s what happened here. I was too lazy to read through the comments on Epicurious, so I went full steam ahead and baked a bad cake that only 65% of users would make again. This was stupid of me. Those Epicurious users know their stuff, and often suggest alterations that can transform frequently-weird Gourmet recipes into things that are palatable.

What was Gourmet thinking? And more importantly, what was I thinking? The frosting for this cake is quite foul. It was basically two sticks of butter mixed with a small amount of flavorless apple cider goo. Here it is, the goo:



Doesn’t it remind you of something on Iron Chef? Something that would be dished up in a large bowl, and all the panelists would scoop it up gleefully and talk about how it lacks a fishy smell and reminds them of being a little girl, and how comforting it is? Isn’t it interesting how Americans are so disturbed by gelatinous things?

Anyway, there were a number of problems with the cake. Some are my fault, and some are not:
1) The only apple cider available at my supermarket was the generic brand, which was thin and lacked a robust flavor.
2) The recipe was already criticized for producing very thin cakes, and I worsened this by using cake pans that were one inch larger than what was called for.
3) The buttercream frosting was just bad. Way, way too much butter, and the weak cider added no additional flavor. A tangy cream cheese frosting would be better.
4) I suspect that this cake will get stale very quickly.
5) It needs something crunchy for texture, like nuts. If I make it again, I will scatter some carmelized walnuts or pecans over the top.



Luckily, all my family members are butter-hounds, and don’t seem to be repulsed by the fact that the frosting is essentially two sticks of butter smeared all around the cake. In fact, I think they like it. They are also all on cholesterol-lowering medications.

Today is Russian Easter Bread Day. I’ll follow up in a few hours when it comes out of the oven.

Churrascaria-a-rama

I'm in Chicago for the week, so last night my boyfriend Randy and I went to one of our favorite spots. El Llano is a hole-in-the-wall Colombian place that features bargain-priced steak and chicken served on giant wooden slabs, along with yummy beef empanadillas and soups. Nothing is over $12. I always order the same meal: the antioque custome (?), a huge platter overflowing with the following things:

1) A slab of steak
2) A hunk of fried pork rind
3) Large sausages
3) Rice
4) Beans
5) A fried egg
6) Half an avocado
7) Plantains
8) A corn pancake

Sometimes it also includes yucca or a chicken breast.

Note: My torso is not as small as it appears in the picture. Nor is my head so mammoth. Randy had a weird lens on his camera that made me look like a mutant.

The last time we went to El Llano, the waitress went to the back room to retrieve a photo of herself thirty pounds heavier in an attempt to dissuade me from ordering the platter. She said the excess weight was from eating too much Colombian food, but later admitted that the photo was taken soon after she moved to the U.S., when she was frequently pigging out at Pizza Hut and McDonald's.

She was unable to change my mind, but I do get the feeling that the antioque custome is designed to feed an entire Colombian family, or at the very least a ravenous cowboy after a day on the ranch. Certainly it doesn't seem intended for a twenty-seven-year-old girl. Maybe it's just my imagination, but nearby diners always seem to titter when I order it. I've taken to apologizing in advance, making it clear that I am perfectly aware of its enormity, but insisting that I want it anyway.

Also, we finally got our BYOB act together and remembered to bring some beers along. For those unfamiliar with Chicago dining, many smaller establishments in the city have a BYOB policy because liquor licenses are too costly. Cheapskates like us like it because it's a great way to keep meal costs down without looking obviously like cheapskates.

We were so engrossed in conversation that I forgot to notice what I was eating until I had almost finished the entire platter. This was a gross mistake on my part. That night I was so full that I had to sleep on my back, as if I was pregnant with steak. It literally hurt to breathe. It just may have been a new low.

Steeping myself in Dragon Pearls tea

"When the tea came it was of a strength and darkness that reminded one more of meat extract than of some delicate infusion of leaves from India or Ceylon."
-Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died

***

A few days ago, I impulsively opted to buy some $68-a-pound Dragon Pearls green tea. I only bought $2.50 worth, but it still made me feel like a rock star.

I don't know much about tea, because I tend to gravitate towards the toe-curling English breakfast varieties (PG Tips, Typhoo and Safeway Red Label, which I force my friend Adam to bring me whenever he comes to visit from London; he calls it "pure crap" but I choose to ignore him). The whole spectrum of Asian green varieties is a giant mystery to me and I often find them disappointingly subtle, probably because I have blown out my tastebuds on "pure crap". I always just end up choosing them based on the name, and anything with "monkey" in the title usually wins.

I brewed up some Dragon Pearls this afternoon, and I am now enamored of them despite their initially frightening appearance. Look:



At first, I thought I'd opened a jar of some weirdo hippie hairball treatment. Apparently they are hand-rolled into that shape, but I don't think monkeys (or dragons, for that matter) have anything to do with it. Slightly disappointing, I know. When they are immersed in hot water, they unfurl and begin to resemble crabs or spiders:



You can resuse the buds over and over. The tea that resulted was excellent: smooth, potent, and not bitter in the least. I am a convert.

Lamb with chocolate-peppercorn sauce in reduced circumstances

A friend passed along the SF Chronicle Magazine’s “Hot New Chefs 2005” issue. I leafed through it this afternoon, reading about the rising stars of the food world who all happen to be my age. It made me feel increasingly like dog poop, so I set it aside and went to the movies.

As I sat snuffling throughout The Sea Inside, I couldn’t get the recipe submitted by Ron Boyd (of Domaine Chandon in Yountville) out of my head. It was Venison with Chocolate-Peppercorn Sauce, and it sounded precisely like the kind of thing I would order in a restaurant but never bother to make at home. Especially in my current living situation, a furnished studio that lacks an oven and just about every other major and minor kitchen tool and appliance except, for some bizarre reason, a gigantic fish poacher. That I have.

I decided to take the plunge, and began to rush around picking up ingredients. The venison had to be scratched off the list early, because nobody carries it and I don’t really like venison that much anyway. I substituted three garnet-colored lamb medallions, labeled “Chateaubriand”, which I found slightly confusing. I guess they were just little tenderloins. I was also unable to find unsalted beef broth, so I just used the regular kind, and I was couldn’t cook the meat in an oven, so I just continued to pan-fry them until they seemed done. One more switch: I didn’t wrap the lamb in bacon. I cooked the bacon and removed it, and fried the meat in the bacon fat. Then I stood at the stove, eating the bacon by itself. One should never let bacon go to waste.

The results were nice. The sauce turned out velvety and rich, but not as peppery as I expected. I might increase the amount of peppercorns if I make it again. If you want to give it a shot, go here.

I served it with some quinoa that I simmered in beef broth and water. I added a bit of the bacon fat from the frying pan, and scattered some parmesan over the top. The result, pictured below, looks a bit like monkey brains, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Bon appetit!

Flirting with health

Last week I experienced the foodie equivalent of backsliding. I had just made it through three consecutive weeks of nightly gastronomic indulgences, and I was starting to gross myself out. My pants were tight, my skin had turned zitty, and I felt debauched and lethargic. My body seemed to be insisting that I return to a more puritanical diet, eat only three meals a day, and get some exercise. Looking back on it, I can only blame the ensuing lapse in my typically excessive behavior on Satan himself, who tempted me with the prospect of a moderate, healthy Marin County lifestyle. You know, the kind in which I would rise early to go jogging with my golden retriever, Dakota, whose coat is shiny and glossy because she eats only holistic dog food. I’m so ashamed.

Because I live in a hippie town in California, I have unrestricted access to some of the most quackish and ridiculous New Age theories, products and practitioners the country has to offer. To make use of this unique opportunity, I decided to spend a few days pursuing a self-constructed detox program in the hopes of purging myself of the previous weeks’ foie gras, oysters, wine and gourmet cookies that surely must have started clogging up my guts. At first I planned to buy one of those “cleansing” kits available at natural grocery stores everywhere, but frightening pictures and triumphant testimonials recounting the extreme, explosive successes enjoyed by other satisfied customers scared me away for good.

Instead, I opted to drink as much juice as possible and eat veggie and vegan stuff for a few days. I would buy only organic food, walk everywhere, and keep an open mind. I leafed through the local New Age paper for ideas, and grew ever more bewildered by the pages of listings for colonic hydrotherapists, re-mothering sessions and animal communicators. Apparently, because I don’t filter my tap water or ingest large quantities of cayenne, lemon juice and flaxseed oil every day, I am doomed to die an untimely and lonely death, veins choked with butter and lungs blackened by environmental pollutants.

Fearfully, I went to the local organic grocery store to get a few supplies for dinner. The bearded, matted-looking guy in front of me at the check-out stand was buying a small packet of shriveled red things.

ME (suspiciously): “What are those?”
NEW AGE GUY: “Goji berries. The difference in vitality you’ll feel from eating them is just amazing.” (I’m not making it up; he actually said this.)
ME (even more suspiciously): “What do they taste like?”
NEW AGE GUY: “Like raisins, but tangier.”

A pause. I hate raisins.

NEW AGE GUY (smiling mischievously): “Apparently they also do wonders for the female sex drive. Like, crazy things will start happening if you eat enough.”
ME (mildly repulsed): “I find that kind of scary.”
NEW AGE GUY: “Don’t be scared. This is Fairfax. Anything goes in Fairfax, man!”

Apparently. This encounter made me ponder my relationship with food. I don’t judge what I eat in terms of what it will do for my health, and how it will smooth or enhance the functioning of my various systems. I judge it by whether it tastes good. It’s a big plus if it’s not going to actively contribute to my swift demise, but in general it’s not often a determining factor. I suppose this lack of concern for my longevity is the privilege of the young and stupid.

The New Aged, on the other hand, seem to approach food in terms of its capacity to deliver various physical results. It’s more of a vehicle than a pleasurable sensory experience. This reminds me of Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust, where the fashionable characters eat yogurt in the name of health even though they all think it’s disgusting. It becomes this symbol for the joylessness and emptiness of modern life, this slightly repulsive food that everybody chokes down in the name of nutrition.

That night, I made a big vat of vegan stuff. The results are below, and I must admit that the meal totally hit the spot.

It included a pot of Himalayan red rice, a spinach and tofu stir fry with organic oranges, ginger and garlic, and some lovely asparagus sprinkled with gomasio. Also, I finally bit the bullet and bought a squirt bottle of Bragg’s. Six years had passed since I savored my last Bragg’s-soaked bowl of burnt brown rice in the dining co-op of my hippie college, and I was feeling nostalgic. Like Proust’s madeleine, its comforting saltiness brought back a flood of co-operative memories. Sadly, most of them involved culinary atrocities that are too painful to repeat here.

So, for a few days, I went over to the dark side. I took hikes. I drank carrot juice.

I worried about toxins, and tried to breathe deeply, and ate the freakiest, most hardcore cereal that I could find, Ezekiel 4:9. This is the kind of cereal whose box scrupulously avoids any mention of cow’s milk when discussing possible preparations, presumably because milk is assumed to be such a festering, deadly concoction of hormones and pesticides that no sane person could even entertain the slightest possibility of ingesting it.

And after a few days of this regime, I did feel a little better. A little lighter, a little calmer. So today, I ate a cookie for breakfast, and you know what? It tasted good. And that made me feel great.

Thai brunch in Berkeley

My computer is finally back in action, which means I can resume regaling you with joyous tales of eating. Last Sunday I met some friends in Berkeley at the Buddhist temple Wat Monkolratanaram for Thai brunch. They’ve got a neat system going: the temple accepts cash donations, and in exchange provides the hungry public with tokens that can then be spent on a huge variety of fresh Thai food at their makeshift restaurant. Old ladies volunteer their time to cook each week, and crowds gather by about 11 a.m. to tuck into giant plates of beef curry or pad thai or taro fritters while sitting at long picnic tables in the backyard of the temple. Since it’s Berkeley, there are limitless opportunities for people-watching as you stuff yourself full of coconut and spice.

I got there a bit early, so I milled around outside eavesdropping on a couple near me who appeared to be in the early stages of mail-order-bridal bliss. Which is to say, neither one (an older, slightly seedy-looking man and a younger, pretty Thai woman) appeared to like one another very much or speak the other’s language, and were communicating with pidgin English (him) and hand gestures (her). She went off to explore the temple (with, I suspect, no small amount of relief), so naturally he and I started chatting.

I say “naturally” because as most of my friends know, I have a tendency to strike up conversations with just about anyone, anywhere, about any subject. This was actually the second gentleman I have met who has admitted without shame to mail-ordering his wife. He told me that she had just arrived from Thailand a few days earlier and was a bit homesick, so he was trying to help her meet other Thais by bringing her to the temple. I thought that this was rather jolly of him.

He gave me some background on their introduction, and was in the process of regaling me with a litany of complaints about the shocking expenses of marriage when Rachael arrived and extricated me from the conversation (I, too, felt no small amount of relief at being led away from this man, especially because I was being led in the direction of groaning steam trays of Thai food).

Rachael’s friend Matt joined us, and our conversation about the inevitability of his future employment at a think tank (he's working on a Ph.D. in poli sci at Berkeley) quickly began to falter as we attacked heaping piles of squash curry, fiery beef curry, pork with green beans and Thai iced tea. A small paper dish of khanom krok appeared, and we all agreed that the pairing of coconut and scallion was a delicious combination indeed. In fact, Matt was so overcome by the little cakes that he pronounced them “the best thing he has ever eaten” and vowed that he could eat them daily for the rest of his life if need be.


Here is Matt, overcome with emotion. "Is a life without khanom krok worth living?" he asks himself. "Can I get khanom krok in the think tank?"


We finished the meal off with a container filled with mango and coconut sticky rice (one of my favorites, as you can see in the header of this here blog), and black sticky rice topped with coconut custard.

It was a very good morning that led to a long, yet not altogether unpleasant, afternoon of heartburn.

A semi-drunken father's tirade against zucchini

Setting: Lalime's in Berkeley
The waiter has just set down a bowl of stuffed zucchini on our table.

"Oh boy. Stuffed zucchini. I can't wait," says my father sarcastically.

"What's wrong with stuffed zucchini?" I ask.

"It's just boring. Zucchini is nothing. It has no taste of its own." His voice rises to mimic a high-pitched whine. "Oh! I'm zucchini! I'll be whatever you want me to be! Stuff me and I'll taste like lamb. Fry me and I'll absorb all your olive oil and garlic. Please, please just cook with me and love me!"

"Dad!" My eyes dart around the room, wondering if anyone is eavesdropping on this unexpected outburst, as my shoulders start to shake with laughter.

"And why does it have to grow so huge? It's like, 'Just plant me and I'll become enormous. Just leave me alone and I'll be as big as a house.' And then what are we left with? Months and months of trying to cook with zucchini. Everybody's got it, and nobody wants it. I mean, what are we supposed to do with all of it? Even in Greene on Greens, the best vegetable cookbook ever, they leave you high and dry with squash. He can't think of anything worthwhile to do with it."

"Well, zucchini bread is yummy," I volunteer.

"That's just because it tastes like something other than zucchini, which has no inherent flavor of its own. And don't even get me started on root vegetables. Those are even worse than squash. They all taste like dirt. Carrots. What good are carrots? There is no good recipe for carrots in existence that doesn't involve ginger."

Silenced, I direct my attention to the bowl of stuffed zucchini, languishing sadly before us as my father berates it and its kind. I cut off a bite and pop it in my mouth.

"Pretty good. Tastes like lamb."