Team Quito

Corey is back at Wash U to start her sophomore year.  Noah began his senior year and Dylan his freshman year at ETHS.  Work is heating up, gearing up for our students to return to campus.

It's that bittersweet late August thing where we trade beach dinners for homework and the nights are cool and the mornings are once again dark on the way to CrossFit.  Sad but also good.

And after a lot of ad-hoc weeks, I'm back in the kitchen!

This week we had a few Ecuadorean visitors, Andres, Juan and Mateo.  These three guys are spending their summer working at Cedar Point in Ohio, and stayed with us three days this week.  This connection goes wayyyy back.  Andres' mother, Lorena Vivero, was a Rotary exchange student from Ecuador who came to the US in 1984 and lived with my family for three months.  She was a delight: easy, sweet and she fit right in to my crazy wonderful family.

 Mt. Snow, Vermont, 1984

We lost touch until about five years ago, when Lorena found my sister Julie on Facebook. From Julie:

Ironically, I got a friend request from her when I got back from a weekend visit with Colleen at UNC, when she told me she'd decided on Ecuador for her semester abroad.  I told her I had an exchange student in high school from Quito, too bad we lost touch 30 YEARS AGO. 

Isn't that wild?  Just as Julie was about to send her daughter to Quito she hears from our long-ago exchange student who lives in, wait for it, Quito.  Julie and my mom went down and visited Colleen while she was there and had a happy reunion with Lorena and her family.

 Lorena and Colleen, 2010

So a few months ago, when Lorena wrote and asked if I could give Andres some guidance about how to get from O'Hare to Sandusky, Ohio on the way to his summer job,  I was thrilled to jump in.  He spent about twelve hours in my house on his way from here to there:

and I extended an invitation to come to Chicago if he and his friends Juan and Mateo wanted to visit this summer.  And visit they did.

These are three terrific young men who speak impeccable English and have impeccable manners and great senses of humor.   They took the train and arrived in Chicago on Monday morning, spent the day in the city, then took the commuter train up to Evanston.  I picked them up, brought them home, got them settled in with a cold beer.  I had made a ton of tilapia piccata, roasted red potatoes and steamed asparagus for my family so I prepared each a plate and set it down on the table before them.  All three of those boys positively groaned, in unison.

 

Juan:  "Real food!"
Andres: "I have to take a picture.  And send it to my mom."
Mateo:  "I think I"m gonna cry."

Talk about an appreciative audience!  These boys have been eating cafeteria food for two months and they were SO GRATEFUL to be in a house, to eat real food, to play guitar (Andres), to have wireless, and to visit Chicago. 

They were a delight to host and we were genuinely sad to say goodbye today.   Hasta la proxima vez!

Tilapia Piccata, Roasted Red Potatoes & Steamed asparagus

Tilapia Piccata:
Rinse and dry about 6 tilapia fillets, salt & pepper them then coat them in flour
Heat up 2 Tbsp olive oil in a fry pan, heat to med-high.  Add the fish and cook about 2 minutes each side, until golden brown. Remove and set aside
Deglaze the pan with about 1/2 cup white wine, whisk for about a minute, add about 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice and a little broth if you have it.
Add 2Tbsp capers and 2 Tbsp butter, let simmer a couple minutes.
Pour sauce over the fish and add a ton of freshly chopped parsley.

Roasted Red Potatoes
Halve or quarter about 3lbs of red potatoes (small ones can be halved, larger should be quartered)
Coat with olive oil, (2 Tbsp?)  kosher salt & fresh pepper.  Mix well on a cookie sheet.
Bake in a pre-heated 425 oven for about 40 minutes, until crispy on outside and tender inside.  Use a metal spatula to toss them around a few times while cooking.



Chili-rubbed chicken with barbecue table mop, Ina's tomato-feta salad, corn on the cob

Chili-rubbed chicken 

Rub

• 3/4 cup chili powder (about 3 1/2 ounces)
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

Mop

• 1 cup hickory barbecue sauce
• 3/4 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (such as Tabasco)

• 2 3 1/2-pound chickens, quartered, backbones discarded

For Chili Rub:
Mix all ingredients in bowl.

For Mop:
mix first 5 ingredients in medium bowl.
Arrange chicken in single layer on large baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle chili rub generously on both sides of chicken; press to adhere. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour.
Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). When coals are white, drain chips, if using, and scatter over coals. Place chicken, skin side down, on grill rack away from direct heat. Cover grill and cook chicken until cooked through, turning every 5 minutes and covering grill, about 35 to 40 minutes (chili rub may look slightly burned). Serve hot or warm, passing mop separately.

Ina's Tomato-Feta Salad

4 pints grape tomatoes, red or mixed colors
1 1/2 cups small-diced red onion (2 onions)
1/4 cup good white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons good olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 1/2 pounds feta cheese

Directions

Cut the tomatoes in half and place them in a large bowl. Add the onion, vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, and parsley and toss well. Dice the feta in 1/2 to 3/4-inch cubes, crumbling it as little as possible. Gently fold it into the salad and serve at room temperature.

2006, Ina Garten, All Rights Reserved

lobsters and oysters and steamers

I love summer in Chicago.  It's so hard fought, the city just explodes with people and activities and festivals and concerts and everyone is OUT.  And I adore living in a beach town.  I love beach dinners and the hobie cat and kayaks and Lake Michigan.  But despite all this,  I really miss Connecticut in the summer.  What do I miss, you ask?

I miss
the smell of salt water in the air
the feel of salt water drying on your skin when you get out of it
the smell of low tide
tides in general
the prevalence of water - rivers, inlets, harbors, beaches, streams: it's everywhere
drawbridges (I know we have them downtown but I never see them)
the ethnic mix:  men who look like tony soprano and are actually named tony, women who have skin and hair like mine.
Shorehaven
my sisters and my parents and my childhood friends
and, dear reader, I really really miss the food.  Specifically, I miss oysters, steamers and lobster.

Last week we met our friends Steve and Christy for dinner in the city, at a super cool restaurant called R&M Champagne Salon.  Gorgeous summer night, delicious cocktails, phenomenal food.  Steve picked the place and sent the link that morning and here's what I saw on the menu:

Do you see it?  $1 oysters on Tuesday.  And it was a Tuesday!  Here is the email I subsequently sent to the group:

"OMG people!  $1 oysters on Tuesday from 5-8pm. I am going to burst with happiness and excitement.  And eat a million oysters."

Which we did.  With tabasco and lemon and cocktail sauce (which was too light on the horseradish but whaddaryagonnado?).  YUMMMMMMM.

Starting the summer after I graduated high school and through college, every summer I waitressed
at SoNo Seaport Seafood Restaurant.

When I started working there this amazing deck was just about to open, so it was just a tiny indoor restaurant that specialized in lobster dinners, brought in by their own lobstermen, for $8.95.  It was the deal of the century, so when the deck opened, business exploded.  You could sit outside, right by the water, in the summer, and have a reasonably priced lobster dinner and a pitcher of beer and get out of there for about twenty bucks.  SoNo didn't take reservations but quickly opened a raw bar on the side of the deck (see fake lighthouse in above picture) where people could order oysters, clams and shrimp cocktail while they waited.   The wait was regularly two hours so by the time people sat down to eat, they were starving and ready to order their lobster.  That, along with dinner served on plastic trays and at picnic tables, ensured a high turnover, so we made a fortune. 

And we (I say we because, eventually, both Jacquie and Ellie got jobs there, too!) became experts at New England seafood, especially lobsters.    There is simply nothing like the taste of a freshly caught lobster, steamed up and served in its angry red glory.

When we were little, we used to go up to Fairfield Beach (aka Mary's beach, because my parents' good friend Mary Brown and family had a beach house at Fairfield Beach) and when the tide went out, we'd look for the telltale squirt of water made by clams, dig them up, rinse them off, steam them up and devour them.  Steamers.  When you steam them, the clams open up, revealing the delicious meat.  You serve them with some water for rinsing and some drawn butter for dipping and those suckers are delish.

 And then there's lobster.  When my college buddies and I got together in mystic this spring, we bought fresh lobster from a local market and cooked them.  It's scary,  handling those live prehistoric looking beasts and plunging them into boiling water.  It's super barbaric, really. 

But oh so worth it. 

 And one of the great skills I learned from growing up in coastal CT and from years at SoNo is how to deal with and eat a lobster.  Here is a pretty good instruction sheet, although I always used the tiny fork vs my finger.

Step 1

Take off the claws. Tear them off at the first joint, with a gentle twisting motion.

Step 2

Gently remove the loose part of the claw. Check for especially tasty morsels in small parts!

Step 3

Using a nutcracker, break off the tip of the large section of claw, revealing the meat.

Step 4

With your forefinger, push the meat from the tip of the claw out the larger open end. 

Step 5

Grasp the tail portion with one hand, and the back with the other hand. Twist to separate the two sections.

Step 6

After that, turn to end of the tail which has small flippers, or telsons, at the base. Snap this part off.

Step 7

Insert a fork or your finger into the telson end to push the tail meat out intact through the larger opening.

mmmmmmm. Get yourself some seafood.  It's summer.  And if you get the chance, get yourself to New England.

Sunset in Bar Harbor, Maine

Coffee Tawk

It's hard to come back to reality after vacation, have you noticed?  Last week our family - our extended family - was in Phelps and it was heavenly as usual.

I miss it already:  waking up without an alarm, prepping an awesome meal, biking those hills or running the dog on the trail, then reading or playing scrabble on the dock all afternoon, alternating with water skiing, sailing, or swimming in the lake.  Sigh.

But when I got to my office on Monday morning, in addition to the pile of emails I had to wade through, I had a fantastic new toy to play it.  An Aeropress coffee maker.  And going back to work just got easier, boom. 

Let's backtrack.

I adore coffee.  I love everything about it.  In addition to the obvious benefits, like, say,  caffeine, I also love the ritual of coffee.  I love the smell. I  love the way you can create so many delicious concoctions from this berry that was supposedly discovered by a goatherder in Ethiopia who noticed his goats, after feasting on them, became animated and didn't want to sleep.  He reported this to the abbot of the local monastery, who brewed up the first batch and voila, the word started to spread.

I lived in Italy my junior year in college and the soundtrack to that year, without a doubt, is the hiss of the steaming wand, the rap of a spent portafilter being emptied of its espresso, and the clank of a tiny spoon hitting the saucer that contained your perfect shot of espresso.  Those sounds, and that ubiquitous smell of espresso, bring me right back to Firenze in 1987-1988.

After I graduated from UVA with a degree in Art History and very few people beating down my door to hire me, I stayed in Charlottesville for a year to learn some office skills (and to stay in Charlottesville), then moved to TX to be with Doug.  I worked in TV/Radio for a year, which was super fun but ultimately led me to decide I wanted to get some straight business experience and perhaps try sales. But I knew I couldn't sell anything I didn't actually enjoy or believe in, so I thought about the things I liked and would want to sell and came up with food or coffee.  Doug had a boss who mail ordered with a tiny coffee company in Seattle called Starbucks and we both loved the product and started to do the same.  When we moved to Chicago in 1993 and I saw Starbucks stores around, and read about this up-and-coming-company, I knew I had found a good match.

Starbucks in 1993 was still very small and little known, with only TWO markets:  Seattle and Chicago.  I remember getting a job with them and calling my dad to tell him.  His response was, "You're going to work in a coffee shop?"  No one had heard of Starbucks.   It was an exciting time to get in with this fast growing company.  And, much as they've become a punching bag, I am still a huge fan of the company and their product.  No one touches them with quality control and consistency, and they treat their employees extremely well.  I stayed with Starbucks through two more moves and two kids and they accommodated my moves, my limited availability with each child and made room for me even when we moved to El Paso.  I finally left the company in 1998 after Noah was born when, financially, it just didn't make sense to stay.

So..... I'm a coffee snob.  Unless I'm absolutely desperate, I'd rather drink no coffee than awful coffee.  Bad coffee actually just pisses me off. When I worked in a store in Lincoln Park I used to be amazed that these young moms would come in every day and drop five bucks on a drink.   Now I'm the sucker, but I get it:  it's extravagant, but it's a huge treat and sort of an affordable luxury.  I can't afford a new car or a vacation home, but I can have a delicious overpriced cup of coffee made just for me on a cold day and it makes me happy happy happy.

I approach coffee the same way I approach food and alcohol:  it's not that I eat or drink that much of it, but I want it to be perfect.   So finding the right coffee brewer is key.  I've had a Barista espresso machine since the days I worked behind the espresso bar.

 If you want good espresso at home (good being defined as having enough pressure to produce crema, the brown foam indicative of a good shot of espresso) you need to invest in a pump-driven machine.  They're expensive but they're worth it.


And for standard coffee, the french press is pretty much the gold standard.
It makes outstanding coffee, but I confess that for my first cup of the day, when I'm getting out the door at 5:15am to get to CrossFit, it takes too much time.  So we've rotated though a series of drip coffee makers that all produce adequate, if not phenomenal coffee.  (For drip coffee makers, it's all about getting the water to the proper temperature (just off the boil.)  Starbucks' machines do, Bunn machines do and so do Mr. Coffee machines.  I'm sure others do, too, but these I know.)

Coffee at work, on the other hand, especially since I started my new job, has been, let's say, suboptimal.  The office has a small Keurig and it produces a very disappointing cup of coffee.  So some days I'd bring in my mini french press pre-loaded with coffee and simply boil up some water in the microwave to make a good cup.  One of our professors here at Northwestern, Mark Sheldon, saw my french press a while back and said, "have you ever tried the Aeropress?"  (cue angel chorus)  I said I hadn't, but of course proceeded to go right down the rabbit hole of where to get it, how much it costs, user reviews and YouTube videos on how to use it.

And oh my land, people.  It is good.  Incredibly good.  It makes an amazingly delicious cup of coffee in less than two minutes, with ridiculously easy cleanup, and the whole shebang costs only $30.  Here's how it works:

The Aeropress comes with a scoop and stirring paddle.  Grind some coffee to the consistency of table salt and grab a scoop.

 Place a paper filter in the bottom and screw the bottom chamber on it.  Dump in your scoop.

Place it on top of your favorite adorable mug.

  Heat up some water to a boil and let it sit for a second, then put in enough water to just cover the beans and give it a stir with the paddle.  Then add water (to the "2")

Put the plunger piece on top of the canister and pull up a bit to create suction and an airtight seal.  Let it sit for about a minute (Aeropress says 30 seconds, some like it longer - I do a minute).  Then slowly plunge until the canister is all the way down.

 

Clean up is amazing - you  unscrew the bottom part and this little coffee puck pops out with the filter.  

This is espresso/concentrate quality so you might want to add a little more water from your kettle.  Add some half-and-half and you are in business.  It is rockin good coffee. 

Ahhhh.  

Can't wait for tomorrow morning.

let's pretend it's summer

People who complain about the weather generally annoy me.  Until this month, when I became one of them.  June has been ridiculous in Chicago.  I just read this:

State climatologist Jim Angel said Sunday that rainfall the past few days has officially made the month Illinois' wettest June in recorded state history. State records go back to 1895.
Angel said that through Saturday, the statewide average rainfall total for the month was 8.91 inches.

That's compared to an average of 3.5 inches.   It has been really stinkin rainy.  And cold. It's barely cracked 70 by the lake most days this month.  I keep dressing for the weather I want, not the weather that's actually out there, so I've been freezing all month.  And continuing that theme, I'm also cooking as though it's summer.  Who says we're too old to pretend?

Anyway, here are a  few yummy summer meals, sides and drinks from the past week:

Jennifer's Corn Salad 
 c/o Jennifer Jordan, my sister-in-law Sue's longtime friend

It's a fantastic side for any grill food.

1 pkg frozen corn

1 can black beans, rinsed

 add a chopped red pepper and a chopped red onion

 Sautee a couple zucchini and dice them.

Cut up an avocado or two

Add some chopped cilantro and crumbled feta.

then season with salt, pepper, olive oil and red wine vinegar.  Let it sit a bit for maximum yum.

Shrimp Tacos with Avocado Jalapeno Salsa

This was killer and the whole thing took about 20 minutes.  

 mix in a food processor: 

1 small onion or shallot, 1 quartered and seeded jalapeno and 2 cloves garlic. Pulse till blended.

 Put that yumminess in a bowl with 1 lg chopped tomato, 1 diced avocado, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro.

Add 3/4 tsp salt & 1 Tbsp fresh lime juice. Mix and set aside.

 Take 2 lb peeled and deveined large shrimp and mix with 1-1/2 Tbsp olive oil, 1-1/2 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp salt & a few good dashes cayenne pepper. 

 Either grill the shrimp 90 sec per side or oven roast them at 400 for 9 minutes.

Serve on corn tortillas with the avocado salsa.

I made brown rice and black beans for sides. 

Watermelon-Feta-Mint salad 

Thinly slice 1/2 red onion.   Add 2 TBSP fresh lime juice and let sit about 10 minutes.
Add 1 TBSP olive oil.

 Wash, trim and thinly slice about 1/4 cup mint leaves

 Cut up 1/2 round watermelon into large dice

peel and cube 1 large hothouse cucumber

add 1/2 cup crumbled feta

Add the onion mixture and stir well.

I served it with chicken kabobs (marinate in italian dressing, grill about 10 minutes) and corn

And then?  Last but definitely not least.  

La Paloma.

My sister Ellie emailed about this drink a couple weeks ago and I tell you what, it's a summer time 

game changer. 

rim a highball glass with kosher salt.

put a jalapeno slice on the bottom

add:

1/2 ounce fresh lime juice

2 ounces silver or blanco tequila

fill the glass with ice

top with grapefruit soda.  (sometimes hard to find but persevere, it's worth it.)

I ran into my neighbor this morning and she declared, July is going to be awesome.  

I'm buying what she's selling.   

Happy summer everyone.