Chicago Food Blogger Virtual Cook-Off

The Tribune's "news lite" arm, Red Eye is generating some content by staging an Iron-Chef style cookoff involving some fellow members of the Chicago food blogerati. It's a bracket elimination type contest that will be going on over the next few weeks.

Fun! I'm in.

The deal is that at 10am, someone from Red Eye announces the secret ingredient and then four of us all start cooking. And taking photos. And writing. The blog entry and photos are due by 8pm that evening, and then people vote. I face off against Titus Ruscitti, whose blog I'm a huge fan of, and he's also a three-time (I believe) Chicago Chili Cookoff champ, so I'm just going to try and do my best.

Last week's ingredient was cherries and two fine bloggers moved on to the next round with dishes like cherry meatballs and cherry knockwurst or something, and I was figuring the Red Eye folks would stay in the summer fruit mindset so was thinking peaches, plums, maybe...

But they hit us this morning with.....tamarind.

Crazy. I've worked with it sparingly. Mostly the paste, which is already processed, and have tasted it plenty in drinks like tamarindo, which is a staple in hot summer Chicago prep kitchens. The main idea with tamarind--which is sour, tart, and a bit astringent--is to sweeten it up plenty so as to get that really nice sweet-sour thing going. After brushing up on all things tamarind, I set out upon my quest.

First question; where to go to get some? My local Jewel isn't going to have any (my wife gave me a list, since we figured I'd be going to the store for the epic cookoff), so I figure I'll head over to H-Mart in Niles. And, as luck would have it, this is a day that I'm taking care of the kids, so wherever Battle Tamarind takes us, they're along for the ride.

Woo-hoo! H-Mart! Sweet bean cake samples!

They had some fresh pods, no paste, and I also picked up a few cans of tamarind juice, some tamarind candy and a whole bunch of other stuff that I was planning to use for my dishes. Once I got home, I got busy with lunch for the kids, naps, and processing tamarind!


Whole tamarinds come in large maroon-brown pods that are very dry and brittle and pulled away from the seed sac kind of stuff inside. You just crack off the shell and pull away the pulp and fibers, yank the strings out and then throw the seeds and pulp together into a bowl. It's way too sticky to clean so the way it's usually done is to soak the seed pods for a few minutes in hot water, and then work the whole mess with your fingers until the pulp separates from the seeds enough that you can strain them out and get a paste. I did it this way and got a nice smooth brown paste, which is what I worked off of for all my dishes.

That's it on the right. It looks kind of like refried beans, but the taste is strongly sour, also tart, but with lots of floral notes and a somewhat mouth-numbing kind of quality.

After tasting it straight, I mashed it through a sieve and sweetened it with a simple syrup I made from palm sugar and water, then added a bit of salt. I worked off of this basic tamarind paste for all my dishes.

First off, I took some of the tamarind paste, muddled it with some fresh mint and ice, and then added a couple cans of "tamarind juice" which, the label states, is 30% tamarind mixed with water, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup, some fresh squeezed lime juice, and poured the whole thing into a pitcher of ice to chill in the fridge.

I served this tamarindo, strained, to Henry to have with his lunch, and then mixed up a little cocktail for myself to enjoy after I put him down for his nap. It consisted of the tamarindo, a tiny dash of bitters, more fresh mint, and a good couple glugs of Elmer T. Lee single barrel bourbon. I shook it all up in a cocktail shaker with lots of ice and served it in a glass dusted with pulverized tamarind candy. Kind of a Thai Julep, I guess.

Thank you, Red Eye, for giving me an excuse to drink bourbon at lunch!

Once I got a nice buzz on and promised Henry another tamarindo if he took a good nap, I got busy cooking.

I decided to do an appetizer and an entree, in addition to the cocktail. I laid out my prep and started working on both dishes. For the entree, my plan was to do an Asian braise with some chicken quarters, and then grill them to crisp up the skin, which I would glaze with a tamarind barbecue sauce. Braised-and-glazed chicken legs and thighs. Description to follow.

I got the braise in the oven and then started working on the shrimp appetizer.

Appetizer; Bacon-wrapped shrimp, herb salad, French melon sauce

I picked up some head-on shrimp at H-Mart, which were a bit small, but it's always more interesting to have the heads on, both visually and for sucking once everything's all brown and
crispy. I shelled the tails, rubbed them with a bit of the tamarind paste, wrapped them in bourbon-vanilla bacon from Father's Country Hams. Next, I made a syrup out of palm sugar, soy sauce, and fish sauce, that I reduced down to a thick caramel before mixing it with the tamarind pulp.

They had nice-smelling French melons at H-mart, so I got one, chunked it up with a little salt and lime juice, and hit it with the stick blender until it was as smooth as I could get it. Then I turned the stick up and streamed in some canola oil to emulsify and smooth-out the sauce. I stuck it in the fridge for a while and then strained it, since I knew I was going to take a picture, but if you wanted to make a cool melon sauce like this at home, you really don't have to strain it, and I normally wouldn't.

To fill out the plate, I picked leaves of cilantro, mint, and parsley, chopped them roughly, and dressed them just a bit with a squeeze of lime juice and a dash of oil. These flavors all play off of each other really well. The sour tamarind, bright lime, and fresh herb flavors cut through the richness of the bacon and the shrimp, and everything really plays well together in your mouth to give you that awesome Southeast Asian eating experience where all of your taste buds are going at full bore--spicy, sour, salty, sweet--all at the same time.

Entree; Tamarind Braised-and-Glazed Chicken Legs and Thighs, Sesame Slaw

After separating the chicken legs from the thighs, I browned them a bit and then sweated onion, ginger, garlic, scallion, and red chile before adding a can of the tamarind juice, a can of coconut milk and a bit of water. I brought the whole thing up to a simmer and then covered it and put it in a 275° oven for about 2 hours. My goal was to get the chicken really tender and infused with those Asian flavors, but not to allow it to break down to the point that it was falling apart and the skin came off. I pulled it out, refrigerated it, and then made my tamarind barbecue sauce.

The tamarind pulp, molasses, rice wine vinegar, lime juice, and palm sugar went into the glaze. I cranked up my grill and charred the glazed chicken bits over high heat, getting plenty of browning and caramelization. Since it was already braised, the chicken was fully cooked and almost falling-apart tender. I just grilled it to get the char on the skin and crisp up the glaze. It wasn't easy to get it on and off the hot grill without it falling apart, but I just managed.

The slaw is red cabbage, some napa, shredded carrot, some mayo thinned with rice wine vinegar and lime juice, and enriched with sesame oil. I added some anise seeds and sesame seeds as well. Crispy shallots went over the top.

It turned out great. You could definitely taste the ginger, garlic, and coconut from the braise, the meat was super-tender, and the burnt sugar and smokiness of the barbecue sauce nicely offset the sour tanginess of the tamarind. The slaw added a nice fresh, crunchy contrast to the braised dark meat chicken.

So that's that. It's now 7pm, I'm just finishing this post within the time limit, we've eaten dinner, my bourbon buzz is gone, Henry's begging me for yet another cup of tamarindo, and I can definitely say I learned a lot about tamarind today. Hopefully I will manage to move on to the next round as well.

Good luck to all the blogger-chef-testants and thanks to Red Eye for putting this fun deal together! Oh, and don't forget to vote early and often for me here, by writing a comment in the section after the Red Eye blog entry about Battle Tamarind!

Alber's Ice Cream/Union Dairy; Freeport, IL

I took my four year old son, Henry camping a couple weekends ago. Ever been camping with a four-year old?

Anyway, he loved it and we more or less accomplished my goal, which was to give him his first real overnight camping experience so when we start doing longer trips, he'll be used to it. After doing a few backyard campouts, this was our first real foray out into the wild world.

We ventured out about an hour from the city, to nearby Rock Cut State Park, which is a very nice little state park that I've visited and camped at before. They have two lakes--one that's used for fishing, another with a sandy beach, and the campground where the tent campers (as opposed to RV campers) set up is situated nicely between the two lakes. Henry, however, in his typical assertive-for-no-apparent-reason-about-things-he-doesn't-even-have-the-faintest-clue-what-he's-talking-about way, told me early and often that he did "NOT want to ride in a paddle boat. NO. WAY. DAD."

I've learned not to try and convince him that paddle boats are fun, or to even ask what he's got against them, anyway, since he's never been on one. No point to it. Mmm hm. No paddleboat. No way, no how. Check.

After getting an early start, setting up camp, and loading up on firewood and worms for fishing, we were ready to get something to eat, and I was determined to avoid the campground hot dog stand and the endless highway exit fast food options.

We cast about for a while, then found ourselves in the nice little old town of Freeport, Illinois, which just happens to be one of the sites where Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas in 1858, as the two stumped around Illinois in their respective campaigns to become the state's next US senator. The debates all centered around the issue of the day--slavery, and are said to be where Lincoln's mettle was proven and his chops were honed for his presidential run just two years later.

More importantly, though, directly behind Debate Square, where the historic event is commemorated, there's a really cool old ice cream parlor.


I saw the art deco facade when I turned a blind corner and knew that my aimless wandering had paid off. Sometimes when you're hungry it's tempting to give in and just hit the Denny's or the Culver's off the exit ramp, but then you find a sleeper like this place just loaded with old time character and charm.

I was hoping for a patty melt or something similarly diner-minded, but we found out that the "grill" portion of this establishment is closed on Sundays, so we had no choice but to eat massive ice cream sundaes for our lunch. Here they are:

Mine was the turtle sundae, that's it on the left, and Henry is all about the mint ice cream, so he got what they were calling a mint meltaway sundae, which had mint chip ice cream, hot fudge, a ton of whipped cream, and a bunch of crushed Andee's mints all over the top and sides.

The ice cream in this place was good (it's Cedar Crest), and they appear to be doing a nice job jazzing it up with their sauces, toppings, and all the fixin's, but the reason this place is worth an hour drive (or at least a detour if you're heading west) is its perfectly preserved condition. It's beautiful. Pristine. It could (and probably should) be in a museum, but it's not; it's still functioning as this town's little local restaurant and ice cream parlor, the counters are staffed by local high school girls, and honestly, most of the people in there looked at me like I was nuts for taking pictures of the shiny chrome and Formica, the amazing soda fountain set-up that runs down the center of the long oval of counter seating, and their sweet old jade green Hamilton Beach spindle milkshake mixer.

But I'm NOT crazy. THEY'RE the ones who are crazy for not recognizing beauty and art when it's right under their noses! Look at that setup!

The ice cream dipping cabinets are still working, they're using those pumps for their syrups and flavorings, the hot well holds the hot fudge and caramel at just the right temperature, and there's not a speck of dirt or a bent piece of stainless to be found. Do people realize how rare that piece is? How incredible it is that no one ripped it out during all these years?!

Remember what I said about camping with a four year old. I'll just say this; no matter how many times they tell you they want to "help", they really don't. Oh, and we now know that four is not old enough to apply Deep Woods Off. But if you let'em get really hungry and then promise them a big ice cream sundae, they're putty in your hands.

Henry doesn't understand why they would prepare and bring the dad's ice cream sundae a full ten minutes before they prepare and bring the kid's. I didn't get it either.

Anyway, after a couple of big ice cream sundaes, our stomachs were cooled down and full, our faith was restored in the world, and we headed back to the campground for some short-attention-span fishing and a few good hours of playing with the pump (endless fun, apparently).

We did our campfire dinner, had the obligatory s'more or two, strummed the guitar a bit, and then settled down in our sleeping bags for some flashlight play and, eventually, sleep. I'm fairly sure I slept at least a little.

Whoa! Camping with a four year old! No one ever said it was restful. Remember what I said earlier about training Henry for longer camping trips? Maybe I'm the one who actually needs a warm-up outing or two.

I won't say the ice cream sundaes at Alber's/Union Dairy were the highlight of the trip...but let me just put it this way; I'm glad I know it's there in such close proximity to the campground for next time.

Healthy Kids Cook-Off

There's a great event this weekend that I was invited to attend and unfortunately won't be able to get to (Henry and I are going camping!) but it's not too late for you to plan on attending and bringing your kids.

It's an Iron-Chef style cook-off where kids will team up with Kendall College students as well as local well-known chefs like Michael Kornick, to see who can whip together a tasty and nutritious snack using "secret ingredients".

The finalists will compete in what the press release calls a "fast paced" cook off in front of a live studio audience "just like on TV". Snacks and prizes are provided, and the whole thing is also done in conjunction with something called the Healthy Living Fair which features demos, free samples, and lots of other cool stuff. You'll also get the opportunity to check out Kendall College's amazing new facility on Goose Island.

The whole thing promises to be plenty of fun, but it's also pretty important; when school lets out, 8 out of 10 kids who receive free school lunches during the year don't get any assistance over the summer. This event is geared towards raising awareness about child hunger and also teaching adults and kids alike how to prepare simple and nutritious meals and snacks.

It takes place this Sunday, June 7th from 12:00 noon to 5pm at Kendall College--900 North Branch Street (on Goose Island near Chicago Avenue and Halsted) in Chicago.

So, go! Bring your kids. Cook, watch, feast, and have a good time.

Peoria Packing Butcher Shop

I referred briefly to my recent visit to Peoria Packing in my review of the bacon I bought there, but didn't really get into the whole experience of the place itself, which is a real trip and very thought provoking.

Most Americans are pretty squeamish about meat, despite the fact that we eat more of it than any other country in the world. At this point, we are really insulated from the process. Meat is fully broken down into only the most desirable parts, fully trimmed, and ready to go from the shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray right into the pan. Or fully cooked on the plate, if consumed in a restaurant. It's been like that forever, for most of us, and we really don't think about it too much.

Until we're confronted with something different, like a European market where piles of offal or whole animals are just out in the open, for all to see. Even for someone like me, a chef who's been dealing with larger primal cuts of meat for years, these cruder, more "real" displays represent an off-putting paradox, because I find myself curiously attracted and also, at the same time, repulsed.

I think this is true for most Americans, with varying degrees of attraction/revulsion, of course, and most simply avoid the revulsion side of the equation, which results in a sad state of affairs. We've managed, as a society, to hide and sanitize the reality of meat. Perhaps that's why we eat so much of it.

A visit to Peoria Packing will cause one to ponder these things, because once you enter the butcher shop wing of this small grocery store across the street from their commercial packing house, you will be confronted with MEAT in a way that not too many Americans are accustomed to.

PP's meat section is a large refrigerated room with big long tables running the length of it. The various cuts of meat are just piled onto the tables and customers (wearing the required latex gloves) just kind of rummage through the piles until they find what they're looking for. The meat is very fresh, very inexpensive, and they carry cuts that are difficult to find elsewhere. I went specifically to get "packer cut" brisket for smoking. I also picked up some pork bellies (to make homemade bacon) and a few other things.

A lot of people have trouble handling this set-up. The online reviews of PP are mixed, with quite a few folks stating they'll never go back due to the way the meat is just right out in the open for anyone to sneeze or cough on. This is true, of course, but I didn't see this happening and I like to believe that people have enough sense not to do that. Most people do a pretty decent job of covering their mouths and not coughing or sneezing directly on me, so I'm not sure why expecting them to do the same in a roomful of meat is any more of a leap.

I think this sort of revulsion is how people deal with the fact that they are just not used to seeing meat displayed this way. It is jarring, I will admit, and seeing whole cow's feet, pig's heads, and other less common animal parts is definitely a bit of a shock as well. I think a lot of people are simply put off by the sheer real-ness of it, and so they use the "unsanitary" claim as a rationale for their revulsion, and as a justifiable reason to avoid that experience in the future.

Revulsion, however, is natural when confronted with meat. Revulsion is normal. Meat is a dead, decaying animal. It's bloody, gruesome, and serves as a reminder of our own mortality. Yet most people eat it every day. I'll go out on a limb and say that NOT feeling revulsion at the sight or thought of meat is what's, in fact, abnormal.

We're so unaccustomed, though, to this feeling, because the meat industry has done it's level best to eliminate any and all reminders of death, blood, and the idea that these are animals we're eating. And they've been very successful, with the full compliance of a willing populace, who values avoiding the cognitive dissonance of feeling both hunger and revulsion far more than it values coming to terms with our carnivorous impulses.

Up until recently, the luxury of not getting to know one's meat up close and personal just wasn't a real possibility for most people. It's only in the last hundred years or so that we've acquired this new found squeamishness, which has gotten to the ridiculous point where some people act all grossed out even by chicken served on-the-bone, or with skin. Grow up, folks.

The conflict intrinsic to eating meat has long attracted deeper thinkers. Cultural anthropologists and sociologists like Mary Douglass and Claude Levi-Strauss have written reams on this fascinating subject. It's human nature to be both repulsed and attracted by meat, and people have been dealing with it since back in the hunter-gatherer days. It's just that here in modern-day America, we've made a new art form out of figuring out ways to avoid dealing with it.

The flip side of this is the head-to-tail movement that's been steadily gaining momentum among chefs. In Chicago, chefs like Paul Kahan, Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds, and Paul Virant have been sourcing whole animals direct from the farmers who raise them and utilizing all of the various cuts, including the organs. There is no better way to pay tribute to an animal that has been slaughtered for food, these chefs say, than to ensure that nothing goes to waste.

These chefs feel it's their responsibility to close the awareness gap created by the commercial meat industry, and they're bypassing it entirely by going direct to farmers, buying whole animals, and doing the butchering themselves in their subterranean restaurant prep kitchens.

So the head is used to make pâté, the cheeks to make guanciale or braised for ravioli filling, the neck for coppa, the bellies are cured for bacon, and the feet used for cotecchino or for their natural gelatin. Blood sausage, tripe, and kidneys are making a comeback among foodies.

Before you wince and get all squeamish, stop and think for a moment that the bacon you enjoy is also attached to lungs, a heart, a head, and feet, and ask yourself what happens to all that stuff once you've eaten your ribs and bacon. If you're not a vegetarian, animals are being killed to support your meat habit, and if you're not eating anything but the prime cuts, you're wasting big chunks of the animals that were killed to feed you.

The Reader's Mike Sula did an extensive piece called The Whole Hog Project (scroll to the bottom and check out the reader comments to get a taste of how strongly people feel about the subject) which documents the paper's purchase of a rare mulefoot pig, and follows Dee Dee's (yes, they named it) life over the course of a year and a half, culminating in its slaughter. It was a fascinating and courageous exercise in journalism which cut right to the heart of America's schizophrenic relationship with meat, and it was recently nominated (along with Mike Gebert's Sky Full of Bacon video podcast that accompanied the Sula piece) for a prestigious James Beard Award.

It's extremely thought-provoking stuff, and it's a subject that most people would prefer to avoid thinking about. But it's also perhaps a subject that we must consider more often, considering our love/hate relationship with food, the growing national obesity issue, the extent to which we consume highly processed foods and fast foods, and the myriad other ways in which we're all dysfunctional in our relationships to what we eat. Myself included--I'm certainly no exception.

I'm not claiming, mind you, that I have the answers here, or that a visit to Peoria Packing will solve all your problems. But I do think that burying our collective heads in the sand and continuing to buy grocery store trays with shrink-wrapped beef tenderloin and BSCB is the exact wrong thing to do.

So, instead of mindlessly purchasing your animal proteins from the grocery store, take a trip over to PP and check the place out. Bring your kids and do your part to kind of de-mythologize the process for them, and start closing, if only by small increments, the awareness gap that the meat industry has spent decades building in their attempt to try and insulate us from the inner conflicts that are inherent in being carnivorous.

I was actually somewhat concerned that it might bother Henry, my four year old son, who made the trip with me, given that, in many of the books we read him, piggies and cows are cute barnyard animals that talk, sing, or drive the school bus. But it didn't. After we got back, my wife asked him what he liked best about the place and he said, enthusiastically, "the pig heads!"

Henry, 4, surveys the carnage

So there you go. This little field trip can be an opportunity to start grappling with these deeper issues of morality, mortality, and animal rights, or you could just look at it as a good, cheap option for bulk burgers, hot links, and ribs. Either way, Peoria Packing is worth a visit. Don't forget to bring a cooler.

Fruit vs. Vegetable

When you've got kids, and you're doing your best to be actively, engagingly parenting at all times, everything is a "teachable moment". And when you're a foodie like me, meal times are especially fraught with opportunities to inform, enlighten, and just generally inflict my personal worldview onto my progeny.

But sometimes, even though I consider myself pretty well informed about food and all matters relating to food, I find myself saying stuff that I'm not even sure is true.

And so it was, the other night, when dinner included dishes featuring spinach, cucumbers, mushrooms, avocados, and grapes.

"Grapes! I like grapes!" says Henry.

"That's nice"

"Grapes are a fruit!"

"Yep, they sure are."

From there, we started breaking down the relevant categorizations of the other foodstuffs of which our dinner was comprised.

Spinach is an easy one. Clearly it's a vegetable. Grapes, we know are a fruit.

What about mushrooms? "Neither", I said. "Mushrooms are a fungus." I think.

Hmmm......

Cucumbers? "Cucumbers are a fruit", I confidently announced. "And so are avocados. If it has a seed, then it's a fruit."

But I wasn't so sure, and found myself doubting this analysis, since, if this is the case, that means there are really a lot of vegetables that are really fruits.

So I looked it up.

The official scientific definition is that anything that is produced by a plant for the purpose of reproduction (so seeds and the stuff that contains/holds/protects seeds) is a fruit. Any other part of a plant (stems, leaves, flowers, roots) is a vegetable.

Crazy, no?

We tend to think of anything we tend to eat with our meal, in a savory preparation, as a vegetable, and things we eat on their own or as part of dessert as fruits. But that's just completely ass-backwards.

Olives and avocados are fruits, just like peaches and plums. They are all drupes. Other examples of drupes are mangoes, apricots, and almonds. Blackberries and raspberries are actually clusters of tiny drupes called "drupelets".

Cucumbers are fruits. Which makes sense, since, if you think about it, they are really similar to melons. Try eating a not-so-ripe green melon and see if it doesn't remind you of a cucumber. Squashes are part of this same "family" as well. Winter (or hard) squashes like acorn, butternut, and pumpkins, as well as summer (soft) squashes like yellow squash or zucchini are all fruits.

(Incidentally, the designation of "winter" or "summer" squash is fairly meaningless in today's horticultural world, although we do tend to eat the winter squashes much more during the cold weather months. Basically, winter squashes are long-keepers and, before the advent of refrigeration and flying in produce from South America, people would keep them in their cellars and eat them throughout the winter, whereas "summer" squashes would rot quickly and needed to be eaten soon after harvesting.)

Tomatoes, as most people know, are fruits. I think people are more open to this one, since good tomatoes do have a lot of sweetness, even though we wouldn't eat them for dessert or out of hand like we do an apple. But many people don't realize that eggplant and peppers (both spicy and sweet, or "bell" peppers) are also part of the same group, the "nightshade" family (Solanaceae).

This family also includes the poisonous belladonna plant, and, because Europeans knew of the belladonna before tomatoes were brought back from the new world (all Solanaceae are native to the western hemisphere), people in many parts of Europe were very slow to embrace tomatoes as a foodstuff. They were used as decorative items for years before they began to be incorporated for culinary use. In fact, the Italian word for tomato, pomodoro, (literal translation; "apple of gold") derives from what was basically a marketing campaign to get Italians to eat the foreign fruit that many associated with a poisonous plant. Considering how ubiquitous tomato products are in Italian cooking, it's pretty amazing to consider that they weren't really widely used in Italy until the 1700's.

Incredibly enough, the question of "fruit or vegetable" as it relates to tomatoes once came before the US Supreme Court. The Tariff Act of March 3, 1883 imposed a duty on vegetables, but not fruits, and so, the case of Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304), in which the Nixes sued to recover back duties paid to the port of New York under protest, the Supreme Court was forced to weigh in on the question.

The court ruled against the Nixes, claiming that the culinary categorization of a tomato as a vegetable based on the way it was used overruled the scientific designation that it was a fruit.

The court got it wrong, of course. Tomatoes are a fruit. This is the precursor to Ronald Reagan's infamous declaration that "ketchup is a vegetable". So the government has a history of (and some would argue, a vested interest in) getting it wrong.

Another yardstick some use to answer the question is; does taking the item and eating it kill the plant? Fruits are totally regenerative--plucking them off and eating them hurts the plant not at all. In fact, that's just what the plant wants you to do, since doing that effectively spreads the plants seeds around and aids in reproduction. This is, in theory, why many fruits are brightly colored and taste sweet. So eating fruits clearly doesn't kill the plant, whereas when you pull a carrot up out of the dirt and eat it, that carrot plant is no longer with us.

This, of course, calls into question the designation of a few "vegetables". Specifically, those that are essentially flowers (squash blossoms, broccoli, cauliflower) and those where the plant isn't killed when the vegetable is harvested, like asparagus. But flowers, while part of the reproductive process, are not, in and of themselves, reproductive in the way that seeds are.

So I'm sticking with my first definition, concerning reproduction and seeds, for the sake of sanity.

Getting back to the first definition, then, peas are a fruit. All peas, in fact--pea pods, English peas, snap peas, and blackeyed peas. Oh, but blackeyed peas are not actually peas, they're beans. But that's ok, because beans are in fact fruits as well. They're seeds contained in a seed pod which you can pluck off the vine and eat. Or, if you plant them, they'll grow a whole new bean plant. So, they're a fruit.

This is pretty crazy stuff once you start getting into it. Nuts are also fruits. They are the reproductive organs of trees like almond, hazelnut, pecan, and walnut. Same thing with nuts that aren't normally eaten by humans, like acorns, beech, and hickory nuts. Cashews are also a fruit, but don't grow on trees. Peanuts aren't really nuts at all; they are legumes. But, since legumes like lentils and soybeans are reproductive, they're fruits. So, a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut, but it is a fruit.

Corn, too, is a fruit. Each kernel contains a seed which can be planted and grown into a whole new corn plant. Which brings the question of grains into the discussion. Grains (rice, wheat, oats, etc) are seeds of certain grass plants. So they are also fruits. Almost everywhere I look on the internet disagrees with this, and most seem to be claiming that "grains" is a whole 'nother category, separate from fruits or vegetables, but that creates all sorts of gray areas with regard to "pulses" like lentils, beans, and, as noted above, corn. So I'm calling them fruits.

And, if that's not enough to really send your mind spinning, consider this; an argument can be made that a potato is actually a fruit. The eyes sprout and are reproductive. If you put a potato in water or the ground, a new plant will grow. Leave it long enough and the sprouts will flower and produce seeds. But, harvesting a potato kills the plant. And potatoes themselves do not actually contain seeds.

Similarly, one can find arguments made that strawberries are not a fruit, because the seeds are on the outside, and because the plant actually reproduces by sending out "runners", not via the seeds on the outside of the strawberry (another tangent; separate arguments exist that claim that strawberries are not actually berries either).

Crazy stuff. My mind is reeling. And, just think; all this started because I wanted to make sure I was giving my kid the right answers at the dinner table. Damn. I liked it better when cucumbers were vegetables simply by virtue of the fact that they go in salad. But it's not like I could claim that blue cheese and crumbled bacon are vegetables.

This parenting stuff is a real pain in the ass sometimes. Next time, I'm just going to take the easy way out and lie. "Yep. You got it. Cucumbers are vegetables. Now, quit squirming and eat your vegetables, Henry."

Spicy Szechuan at Asian Bistro

During the years that my wife was staying home with our kids and I was working, I always thought that she had the easier end of the bargain; I envied her time at home all day--in my mind she was always idly reading, sipping hot beverages on the couch while the kids napped. I'd come home after 10 hours of running around hot restaurant kitchens and wonder why she was always so stressed and ready to hand the kids off to me the second I walked in the door. "C'mon," I'd think, "how hard can it really be? Millions of women have been doing this for centuries."

Well. Karma--it's a bitch, isn't it?

Now, I'm unemployed, my wife is working, and I'm staying home dealing with the kids. And now I get it. It's hard. It's stressful. There's no leisurely beverage-sipping, no naps (for me, at least), and even carving out enough time to shower without worrying about coming out and finding Henry pinned under a bookcase is a challenge.

So, now, around six when I'm walking circles around the dining room table with the baby on my shoulder, attempting to employ just the right bounce so that she'll stop frickin' SCREAMING, Henry's telling me for the four hundred and sixty-third time about how, "Hey, Dad--Gordon is fastest and best" whereas Thomas is "really useful", and I see the dog run toward the back door, I breathe a sigh of relief and try to rein in the impulse to hand off the baby before my wife's even got her coat off.

So, yeah--ok. I get it. Props, ladies. It's not easy. In fact, I'm looking forward to going back to 10 hour days in a restaurant kitchen just to get some peace.

All of this is a big reason why I've been making an effort, in recent weeks, to do a regular Thursday night out with Mitch, a friend I've known since fifth grade. My wife doesn't work on Friday, so Thursday is the last day of the week that I'm solely responsible for diapers, spit-up, playdates, and Play-Doh®, so I took it upon myself to make Thursday night an opportunity to get together with an old friend, have a few beers, and try a new restaurant.

Mitch was the friend I mentioned in my review of Burt's Place, and he and I recently went to Asian Bistro in Arlington Heights last week to try what I had heard was some pretty authentic Szechuan food.

This place would've probably never even been on my radar, but Mitch is reluctant to drive too far and he lives in this area, so I did a little research (using this handy suburban restaurant index topic at LTH forum) and decided that this place would be a good one to try.

(A note about my intrepid dining companion: Mitch is not a foodie. He'd be perfectly happy eating a mediocre steak and under seasoned mashed potatoes every day of the week, which is fine. For him. But I like to try new places and new things and, if I'm spending some bucks, some time, and a meal opportunity on a night out, it's important to me to make it somewhat of an experience. If I left it up to Mitch, we'd be at Fox and Hound or Stony River Steakhouse every Thursday.)

That's not a knock on Mitch. Or others for whom restaurants like TGI McHoulihannigan's are just fine. Food simply doesn't hold the intellectual, cultural, and entertainment appeal for them that it does for me. Hey, I'm not really interested in movies or theater, so to each his own.

So while loaded potato skins and chicken fajitas might fill the belly, they don't feed my appetite for authenticity, for real, personalized experiences, or for the novelty of trying new, interesting dishes that I can't make myself or haven't ever heard of.

And Mitch, to his credit, appears to be allowing me to drag him to places that he normally would be disinclined to try. Probably due to the fact that I really had to talk him into making the half-hour drive over to Burt's, where he was blown away by the pizza and loved the classic old dive, hole-in-the-wall-type ambiance.

Burt's vindicated me; gave me credibility with Mitch. A mandate, even. I've got culinary capital now...and I intend to spend it.

Which brings us to Asian Bistro. (Finally. Damn, I do go on, don't I?)

It was practically empty when we arrived at around 7:30 last Thursday. There were two other tables--parties of two and six--and we were the only non-Asians in the place. We were greeted warmly and seated promptly at a nice booth to the rear of the dining room.

When the server first approached, Mitch asked for an iced tea, which appeared to confuse the guy. Mitch repeated his request and then I tried to help the waiter understand--but really, all I did was also repeat "iced tea" with a slight Hispanic accent, which is what I inexplicably tend to do when speaking to non-native English-speakers. Needless to say, this wasn't at all helpful.

Anyway, the guy vanished and we didn't see him for about 10 minutes. We thought maybe he was in back, frantically icing down a pot of hot tea or something, and he did eventually emerge with a pitcher of iced tea and two large glasses full of ice. I didn't order iced tea, and would normally have opted for a Diet Coke, but given the fact that the guy apparently went to some effort on this, I wasn't going to say anything and so just drank some of the tea. It was actually pretty good.

When he asked if we were ready to order, I started asking some questions and butchering some of the names of the dishes, so he called for backup and soon we had three--and then four--people at our table making sure we were being well taken care of.

And we were. This is why I love these kind of family-owned, authentic places. If you just show some interest, ask a few questions, and put yourself in the hands of the people for whom this food represents a cultural heritage, you get a really tasty meal, some knowledge, and a good dose of real hospitality.

The owner, an older woman who introduced herself as "Jenny", came over to help with the ordering. I knew I wanted the La Tsi (Dry Chile) Chicken, since I had read about this dish on LTH forum, and I knew Mitch wanted a couple more pedestrian choices, like fried rice and Mongolian beef, but other than that, we put ourselves in Jenny's hands.

She did not steer us wrong. She asked us if we liked spicy, and I said yes, so she recommended the spicy Szechuan wontons, which were fabulously spicy but also a bit sweet--steamed dumplings tossed in a very addictive sticky sauce (they're at the right in the picture above). She also gave us an eyeball-poppingly spicy cold noodle salad with these translucent gelatinous square-cut noodles that were apparently tossed in the same sauce, but with added crushed chiles and, I believe, fermented black beans. This dish was interesting, but too spicy even for me, and also texturally kind of strange.

We also tried Shu Mai, which were just kind of average (that was my choice, not Jenny's) and the Thai Meat Egg Roll, just to have something crunchy to dip into sweet and sour sauce. These were quite good, filled with lots of very good, sweet-tasting shredded pork and cellophane noodles, and wrapped in a very thin delicate skin that reminded me of what lumpia are usually wrapped in.

We liked the appetizers, but the entrees were really what blew us away. In particular the La Tsi chicken, which proved to be so addictive that I got another whole order of it to take home after we were done (it was Mitch's week to pay. Heh.) It's essentially this huge plate of small pieces of chicken that are stir-fried with slivers of garlic, slices of ginger, and about two hundred whole dried chiles. I'm not enough of an expert to know what kind of chiles they are, but they stir-fry them whole to simply infuse the oil with the heat and, while they're served in the bowl, you're not supposed to eat them. Or at least I'm not supposed to eat them. Jenny and her assistant, who kind of doted over us the whole meal, quickly clearing the plates the moment we finished the last morsel off of them, rushed over as the plate came out, making sure to warn us to "not eat the chiles".

I knew this already, but I kind of played up the gringo act for a laugh and picked one up as if I was going to chomp down on it. They got this great look of panic on their faces, so I assured them that we knew not to eat the chiles.

The chicken dish was awesome. The small pieces of chicken were simultaneously crispy, chewy, and tender, in a way that only a thin coating of cornstarch and an insanely hot wok can produce. It's a distinctly Chinese texture that I have never been able to reproduce in a home kitchen setting. The flavors were great. Very spicy, but the heat was balanced well by the large slices of stir-fried ginger which provided a great burst of flavor and relief from the spice. Mitch and I both loved this dish.

I tried the Mongolian beef and was pleasantly surprised as well. They used really high quality, large pieces of beef, and it was cooked perfectly, with lots of that smokey wok char flavor that you get from good Chinese cooking. Also, the fried rice was really excellent. We ordered the house special combo fried rice, which featured chicken, beef, and shrimp along with all the normal elements of fried rice, and it was just loaded. Tons of meat and really large shrimp in there, and, again, lots of flavor from the wok. I'd come back here again just for the fried rice, which, for me, is somewhat of an afterthought when eating Chinese food, especially Szechuan.

(Sorry for the low-grade cell-phone pictures, but you get the gist.)

We raved about the food to Jenny and the two helpful servers continued to attempt to anticipate all of our needs. The guy who came to our table first appeared to relegate himself to iced tea duty exclusively, but I was actually kind of thankful, since I was downing glasses of the stuff to put out the fire from the chiles. Jenny came over about halfway through and asked how I had heard about them and how I knew about some of the dishes I'd ordered, and I told her that I'd seen them mentioned online.

She was noticeably excited by this and told me that I should make sure to write a review about them. And, really, I should. I mean, this blog is one thing, but I should actually go to sites like Citysearch and Yelp and give these guys some love. The economy's killing little independent restaurants, and even with the huge Asian community in and around Arlington Heights, places like this probably need all the help they can get to survive. It would be a shame to see them close up only to be replaced by another Chipotle or Panera.

So this place was definitely a find. I only wish I lived closer so that we could do take-out from there once in a while. My wife, who is normally very interested in ethnic food and trying new and interesting things, is strongly anti-Chinese food (but I suspect that's due to one too many bad experiences with Amero-Chinese stuff like Egg Foo Yung and Chop Suey) would, I believe, really like this place.

And, of course, it was good to clear my head, get away from the kids, and be able to walk ten steps without sidestepping a Diaper Genie or tripping over the friggin' bouncy chair for the thirty-eighth time this week. I look forward to doing it again. Much the same way I look forward to breathing. Or drinking water. Or having coffee in the morning.

I need these Thursday nights. Really--I now feel your frustration, stay-at-home moms. And I'm already looking forward to my next foray into the northwest 'burbs. Since I'm picking the restaurants, I thought it would be only sporting to allow Mitch to make genre requests. And so...next week will be barbecue. Suggestions welcome...stay tuned.....

Cooking with Kids

David Hammond's recent LTH forum piece about taking kids to restaurants got me thinking about kids and cooking. I try and include my son Henry in the cooking process whenever possible. Besides being something I'm actively engaged in for a decent chunk of time each week, it's something for him to get interested in and excited about. Plus, he's learning about food.

The theory is, I guess, that kids who start cooking early with their parents and become a part of the process will begin to embrace a larger awareness of how food arrives at their plate or what things look like before they're packaged into cardboard and plastic wrap in the grocery store. I could probably launch into a whole dissertation about foods and foodways, how today's consumers lack knowledge about the "farm-to-table" process, and, specifically, all the heavy industry and processing that lays between.

But I won't. Because that's not why I cook with my kid. Mainly I do it because it's fun and it's a good opportunity for us to do stuff together, especially in the winter when going outside and doing stuff is more difficult.

And while I don't actively push the whole "slow food" mindset when I cook with Henry, who's pictured above (that's a chef dress up costume--I don't make him dress like that when we cook), it seeps in, I think. This morning we finished up the granola for breakfast, and he said "granola's all gone...I guess we need to make some more."

Get that? Make some more. Not buy. Make. I like that he assumes that the stuff we eat in a bowl with milk in the morning is something we make. That's big, I think.

He's pretty curious about why we put various ingredients into what we're cooking. He knows what sugar's all about by now, and he likes to crack the eggs and mix. Half of any chocolate, nuts, or cheese that we might be using go straight into his mouth, of course, and sometimes it seems like he's not really paying attention. But I'm amazed at how much information creeps in. Today, apropos of nothing, he says "Corn starch. Daddy, we use corn starch to make things thick."

Uh...yeah. We do. You nailed it, kid. And, to be honest, I'm wondering how many adults with basic cooking skills could enunciate the purpose of corn starch as clearly.


There are negatives, of course. It's much slower going with the kid asking questions constantly and wanting to do everything himself. You'll have to deal with the inevitable battle over washing hands before you start. Thomas trains will be required to occupy their rightful place of honor on the counter. Because "Percy wants to see".

But these are very small concessions to make in exchange for having a kid who's engaged and interested in learning about where food comes from and how it's prepared.

And today's a shut-in day for us here in the Chicago area. The forecast calls for "blizzard-like conditions" and the temperature is supposed to drop sharply, with single digit temps and double digit negative windchills. So as I sit and write this entry, I'm trying to figure out how to keep Henry from going stir crazy and what we should cook.

Any suggestions?