rhubarb sorbet

I got some rhubarb from the parents when i was last at the homestead, and I intended to make a pie as I always do in June. But I am so busy, and I never managed to muster the energy for a pie, but Gourmet considerately provided a rhubarb sorbet recipe, so I made that instead, with the addition of a bit of alcohol for texture. It’s a vaguely mauve color, and tangy sweet. It got a little frozen on the innards of the icecream maker, so i wonder if perhaps I didn’t use enough alcohol — the triple sec in the apartment smelled a little cheep-boozy, so I didn’t want to use too much. But deelishus, and easy, and less fattening than pie anyway. Mmmmmm….
(again, sorry no photo. But I served this to H&J on the roofdeck, and we have learned another useful thing: rhubarb sorbet is made even better when served with 2% greek yogurt sweetened with a bit of sugar. The yogurt with sugar reminds me a lot of skyr, possibly the single most spinetinglingly delicious Icelandic food product. And every time I have had a rhubarb dessert involving dairy, it has been over the top delicious. So I think that now, just as I pretty much always have some cheddar cheese with my apple pie, I will pretty much always have some sweet dairy with my cooked rhubarb. And then I will pretend I am in England in the spring. *giggle*)

cheap smoked salmon!

Treasure Island is a Chicago foofy-food store that seems to be similar in concept to Trader Joe’s except not as cheap. Decent but not comprehensive selection. They had good chopped liver spread in their deli case, but the real find is the smoked salmon trim — 8 bucks for a pound of smoked salmon bits. If you don’t care about having a nice pretty side or uniform slices for presentation, this stuff is just what you need. Good quality salmon, great price. I put mine into pasta with dill, shallot, black pepper & a bit of the creme fraiche. Yum yum, fantastic summer dinner and still a big pile of salmony goodness left for the rest of the week. I had a photo of it, but i never downloaded it and I’m off for vacation soon, so sadly y’all are gonna have to live text only for now.

Portillo’s italian beef

On the way home from a client today I stopped for a quick lunch at Portillo’s in Addison IL. It wasn’t bad, nice tender meat and crunchy spicy pickled peppers & carrots on a standard-issue french bread roll. I see now what sets Johnny’s Italian Beef above the rest though — their gravy is more herbal, more savory, and you can adjust the amount of it so you can really soak that sucker down into a mushy puddle of flavor, so that the WHOLE SANDWICH oozes that dreamy flavor without the intrusion of any bread blandness whatsoever. Plus it has loads more atmosphere — Portillo’s was one of those annoyingly self-aware “retro” places with lots of random mid-century reproduction signs and an old gas pump, etc. as decor.

food people are just nicer

I’m sitting here watching The Next Food Network Star, and despite the fact that it should be either Hans or Susannah winning this shindig, I have to say that it is striking how much nicer these people are than your average reality/competition show star. I’ve been catching bits and parts of StripSearch, where studly boys duke it out to be part of the next Vegas male-stripper revue, and almost none of them seem in any way like someone you might want to meet, and they’re already scheming and whining. These food people have been nothing but nice, both in general and to each other, even in the middle of what is clearly a giant stressfest. I hope that more than one of them ends up with a cooking show within the next year. Add this to the fact that food bloggers seem to be across the board warm and friendly folks, and you have to wonder — are cooks just better people?
(ps — the eventual winner of the contest was consistently the most annoying through the entire contest, but yet their pilot was completely great and I would totally watch their show. What did the judges see that the program editors didn’t show us?)

Fluorescent Orange Goodness


The Utz cheese balls have made their triumphant return to the ‘Co — 35 ounces of glorious orange crunchy goodness in what appear to be 3 gallon plastic barrels.
Our first experience with these orange nuggets of delight was purely by chance. Foodnerd was hosting a “big food” party centered around bulk packaged food. I think every item was at least as big as your head. (bigger than a breadbox, certainly.) A one-gallon can of nasty dinosaur-shaped faux “spaghetti-O’s” seems to stand out in my mind, but the clear champions of the evening, able to rise above the petty name-calling and in-fighting between its over-processed and supersized brethren, were the Utz cheese balls.
Light and crunchy is to be expected. But it’s the butteriness that allows these balls to truly rise head and shoulders above the rest. The fact that there are NO hydrogenated oils (partially or otherwise), like for real as opposed to that Frito-Lay nonsense, is just gravy.
Utz cheese balls: a true champion.
Oh, and on the subject of excellent things orange and cheesy, you oughta check out this. (Which I stumbled across surfing around Flickr.) F’ing awesome.

coke zero: dopey name, boon for dieters

Coke Zero, the new product attempting to mimic Pepsi One, does not suck at all. In fact, though as a loather of Pepsi and daughter of a diehard Coke-head, it pains me to say so, Pepsi One did not suck either — it tastes just like real Coke with sugar and caffeine. I often yearned for it to be in the vending machines as a commonplace, just as ubiquitous as the mostly crappy but tolerable Diet Coke. I will probably continue to yearn just as much even though there’s now a Coke option as well that has no calories but still tastes damned close to The Real Thing ™, but a girl can dream.

kitchen lessons

beets with tarragon, not so good. the flavor is weird — tarragon is better on chicken and in moosewood-style gazpacho.
yukon gold potatoes with dill & creme fraiche, really really good. YUM.
indiana buffalo ribeye, strongly flavored but quite tasty.
beet greens with onion & mustard seed, fine but meh. only used mustard seed because bizarrely there is no mustard in this house, but it didn’t lend much flavor. I probably should have thought of it before i started cooking, so i could have toasted the seeds in oil.
have you guessed? I went to the farmer’s market. *grin*

japanese teatime treat



Our friend T returned recently from a trip to Japan, and he brought us a present of some sort of dessert. It was beautifully packaged and well labeled, but exclusively in Japanese, so we had no idea what it might be. Last night we busted it out to go with some of the A-number 1 tip-top grade green tea that tallasiandude brought back from China.
The dessert present turned out to be crumbly white filling wrapped inside a thin layer of sweet pink ume paste, wrapped in a sweetened red shiso leaf. These were accompanied by a block of the same pink paste, with a cute little serving knife, so you could cut off thin strips and lay them over the little leaf packets. They were fantastically delicate and delicious, with the strongly perfumed shiso blending with the sweet and fruity plum paste and almost almondy dry filling, and they were perfect with the grassy green tea. Now, I like a gooey choco-treat every now and again, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes right down to it, I prefer Asian-style sweets much more. They’re subtler, less cloying, and often more interestingly flavored.