So that is how it is done...

Chow has a nifty article up about how to plate food attractively as part of their design week series. Plating is one of the characteristics of a restaurant meal that generally differentiates it from a home cooked one. After all, no one at home cares that your pasta lacks the delicious parsley garnish or your meatloaf doesn't stay quite... loafish.

The part of the article that I found most interesting was this part: "DON’T: Put an even number of items on a plate." Having never really thought about this until today, I wondered how one could ever do it any other way. For example, pasta. Pasta is served by itself, with a separate dish of salad. OR, serve it on a plate with salad and garlic bread on the side. Either two singular plates, or one plate with three. Of course!

Or, take for example, an oddly healthy trio I cooked last week. Lentils with roasted tomatoes, broccoli with with garlic and soy sauce, and roasted acorn squash. Three just make sense. What would the fourth addition have been?

I like threes in other places as well. For example, when I write, I like to use lists of three, i.e. "see X, be amazed by Y and discover Z." Four wouldn't work their. Neither would two. The reason offered by Chow is plausible: "Having an odd number of foods (three is best) on a plate gives the dish visual tension, making it exciting to look at. Even numbers look too geometrically static and staid." Is that my problem? Not enough tension and too staid? I don't usually think about food in this sort of blatantly visual way.

It won't necessarily taste better if it looks better, but it couldn't hurt, right?

And then it was over... almost

Thanksgiving is, in many ways to someone who likes to cook (and eat!) as Halloween is to kids who like sweets (i.e. all kids). Which is to say, there is extensive preparation, discussion, and debate, and then the day of the holiday arrives, and much eating occurs, and then the day is over. Unlike Christmas with its inevitable let down — what does one do on Christmas day after the presents are opening? — Thanksgiving and Halloween are both holiday gifts that keep on giving, since both require a vast consumption of food after the day ends.


Thanksgiving leftovers aside, our day-of feast was magnificent. After some prodding, my dad even allowed me to brine the turkey. We based our brining (and subsequent preparation and roasting) on this recipe from my favorite cooking magazine, Fine Cooking. We didn't quite follow there recipe, as our decision to brine was a game day decision. Thus "Tom" as my dad named him, only went swimming for four hours, not the suggested 12-14. Like the recipe suggested, our turkey was roasted sans stuffing, which I believe is the correct way to do it. You want the juices from the bird to moisten the turkey, not the stuffing inside of it. Plus, the stuffing from inside, loses any texture it might have once had after sitting inside the cavernous turkey for 4-5 hours.

As you can see in the top picture, we also included the standards in our meal, three types of cranberry sauce, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes and green beans.



Of course the turkey is delicious and all, but the star of any legitimate Thanksgiving meal should not be the poultry, but rather the desserts. We had three options at my house: A sweet potato pie with a pecan streusal topping and hard sauce, a linzertorte, and a trio of mini tarts. The tart recipe is also from Fine Cooking; the three different types were a pumpkin, pecan, and cranberry/pear/ginger. Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe online, but when I get the text version emailed to my from my parents, I will be sure to post it. In the meantime, don't they look stunning in the photo above? For a sense of their size, see below.


Until the leftovers run out/next year...

Thankful for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my number one most favorite holiday. No presents, no religion, no obligations — the only thing one must do is eat, drink, and then eat some more.

In my family, where religion plays a minor role in our day to day lives, I would almost classify our Thanksgiving dinner as a ritual. Certain things are repeated every year, tying one meal from 1992 to another in '95 to what I will be eating tomorrow. Though not spiritual in nature, we create the ritual out of food, and out of stories.

For example, every year we talk about the time my dad yelled at the Manager of Safeway, after a supposedly fresh turkey was discovered to be frozen. As the manager meekly tried to explain the ice crystals inside of our Butterball, my dad held his ground, and sure enough, the Manager drove over a turkey for us within the hour.

Or, there is the yearly winner of "the competition," which occurs between my family, and my mom's friend Anna. Anna always brings a dessert (nearly always a delicious Linzertorte for my grandfather) to share on Thanksgiving. One Thanksgiving, she decided our yearly meal was a competition for best dessert. Since then, the stakes have been raised (not really) and many scrumptious baked goods have been consumed.

My favorite ritual, however, is the yearly nibbling of the cornbread. We have made the same cornbread stuffing from an old issue of Gourmet for year and years ( I posted a slightly augmented version on Chicagoist). The basis for the stuffing is an incredibly dry, unflavorful cornbread, which is baked, cooled, crumbled, and then baked again. Don't get me wrong — it's amazing in stuffing, it just tastes bad on its own. And yet, every year, me and my sister try to dodge my mom's swatting hands in order to snack on the cornbread. Threats, pleas, and ultimatums do nothing to dissuade us from eating the unappetizing cornbread. And that is why we do it every year.

Of course, the food helps create the ritual as well. When we switched from lemon sweet potatoes to bourbon sweet potatoes, well, that was a large change for us. I was going to list another change we have made in the meal, but to be honest, I don't think we have changed anything else within the last decade.

I'm thankful for tradition this year.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Recipes to come later.

Life is good

I was lucky enough to attend a party sponsored by Food & Wine on Wednesday night. I was covering the party for Chicagoist with Caroline, and if I do say so, we did it well. All the heavy hitters were there — Alinea, Moto, Avenues, Spring/Green Zebra/Custom House/Charlie Trotters — if I ever make some dollars, I know where to head.

Because this is haute cuisine, I thought pictures with descriptions would do more than verbiage. So here are some of the highlights.

Alinea

They served bacon, wrapped in caramel, with an apple butter. Unfortunetly, it looked way better than it tasted. Granted, I haven't eaten bacon in probably 15 years. But it just wasn't that awesome. The caramel got stuck in mine (and Caroline's) teeth, and the apple butter didn't really hold up its end of the bargain. That being said, the presentation was Amazing (see the capital A).

Avenues

Pictured here is a smoked vichyssoise with a chive marshmallow, served in a shooter. This was one of my favorites of the evening. I dislike food that is more innovative than good, or pretty than tasty. This was both. The soup was delicious; just smoky enough to give it an edge on a traditional vichyssoise. The marshmallow was the pleasant surprise at the end. Though it was sweet, it matched the tangy soup well, and the texture was to do for.

Blackbird

The Blackbird chef wasn't the nicest. As snapped my picture, he looked up at me and asked "Is this for you blog?," with a smirk. I didn't really know how to respond, so I took the picture, grabbed the snack and moved on. This was, to put it simply, delicious. Cured salmon with persimmon and yogurt, with a dill garnish. As I ate it, flavor after flavor emerged. First the salty fish, then the sweet persimmon muted by the tangy yogurt, and finally the dill to add the green essence that was missing.

That is all I have for pictures — Caroline was the photographer for the night, so she was doing most of the photo taking, and I was doing.... well, a lot of eating. Check out Chicagoist tomorrow for more pictures and a better wrap up.

Serious Meat

I was a vegetarian for ten years. Ten glorious years of tofu, Morningstar Farms products, pasta, gardenburgers and the like. Ten years of somewhat healthy eating, scoffing at low-carb diets, and appluading myself for my work in keeping our ecosystem healthy and strong. And then I went to Paris.

I'm not a big meat eater by any means. Chicken and fish are my new friends, and I indulge ever once in a while in the occasional hotdog at a White Sox game. But when it came time to make Brian a birthday dinner, there was only one option -- Steak.

I've eaten two steaks since I joined the carnivores (omnivores). One was in a little bistro in Paris, when I indulged in a Stek a Poivre. That steak was somewhat chewy; I wasn't sure if it was the steak I didn't like, or the preparation, but I didn't like how it felt in my mouth. I declared that I didn't like steak, that it was too meaty. I declared myself a non-vegetarian, but a non-steak eater as well.

Well, as it turns out, steak is pretty good. Not something I'd eat everyday, but something that when prepared correctly (as I did of course), makes an easily made, most impressive meal.

Steak with Shallot Wine Sauce

Ingredients

2 steaks (here is where my ignorance comes in. I have no idea what cut of meat I used, but lets just say that it looked like your typical steak)
2 tblspn olive oil
1 shallot
1/2 cup red wine (I used a Bourdeux)
1/3 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Take the steaks out of the refrigerator a half an hour before you want to cook them; this allows them to come to room temperature. Finely chop the shallots and set aside. Give each steak a generous serving of salt and pepper and coat each with the olive oil.

Place a large skillet over high heat -- if you have a non-stick one, now is the time to bust it out. Once the pan gets hot, place the steaks into it. This is the important part: DO NOT MOVE THE STEAK. It is very tempting to peak at it, to flip it a couple of times, but don't do it. Something about the high heat changes the structure of the sugar or proteins, or something, to create the delicious crust. Flip the steak, depending on your preferences. I recommend about seven minutes for each side. When the steak is done, set it on a plate to finish up while you make the sauce. Letting the steak rest before serving is an important step - it allows all the juices to be absorbed. Around 15 minutes of resting should suffice.

In the same hot pan as the steaks were in, add the shallots. After the soften for about 1 minute, add the wine and let it reduce. If you use a sweater red wine, you might not need to add the sugar, so add to taste. Finish it off with more salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce over the steak and serve.