The beer pioneers over at Half Acre announced today that their next limited edition ale, Sticky Fat, will go on sale tomorrow afternoon at the brewery. The name comes from an old fable they attempt to recount on their blog: It's something about a bear that ambles down from a mountain, and eats the farmer's hops, and then there are some school children involved somewhere. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What you need to know is that Sticky Fat is a wet hop, American Dark Ale, brewed with whole cone sticky hops and, of course, a whole lot of love. It's only available on draft at the brewery, so you can bet it won't last. [via]
As Kaitlin reported, City Provisions' delicatessen officially opens tomorrow -- but the deli held a soft launch today. Seeing as my office is a block away, I couldn't help but have a look. (Also, I was hungry.)
The space is clean and inviting, and shows the time and care put into building out the space. The environmentally conscious design was designed to be as energy efficient and carbon neutral as possible, using reclaimed wood (including some from a pre-Chicago fire Lincoln Park home!) and other materials. As you walk in from the corner door, next to the Brown Line tracks, you're greeted by a wall of regionally produced spirits and microbrews, with a view of the meat counter in the back.
Last summer City Provisions announced its plan to create a local, sustainable deli in Ravenswood. After attending one of the catering company's monthly Supper Club events, I've been hooked and have been anxiously awaiting the opening of this deli.
City Provisions Delicatessen will open its doors on September 3 and will feature a wide array of fresh ingredients, most coming from a 200 mile radius of Chicago. Chicagoans will be treated to prepared meats (made in-house) and cheeses, homemade salads and sandwiches. Off the shelf fare includes jams, jellies and spreads from local food artisans, bread from Nicole's Bakery and Bennison's, ice cream from Ruth and Phil's and Nice Cream, coffee from Crop to Cup, spirits from Koval Distillery, Death's Door Spirits and North Shore Distillery, plus regional small batch beer and sustainably produced wines. The raw meat case--with made to order cuts of meat (smoked on site)--contains meat raised from within a 200 mile radius of Chicago, and butchered on site.
"I believe it is important to know where your food comes from and what goes into getting it to your plate," said owner, Cleetus Friedman. "We want to be a focal point for the community and be a source for education about the local food movement."
I'm especially excited about the fresh-smoked meat, cheeses and ice cream. What more could you want from your neighborhood deli?
City Provisions Delicatessen
1818 West Wilson Avenue, Chicago
Ready to join -- at least temporarily -- the locavore movement? Green City Market will kick off its annual Locavore Challenge on September 8, encouraging Chicagoans to center their diets around foods produced in Illinois, its border states, and Michigan.
Locavore Challenge resource kits and pledge sheets will be available at the Lincoln Park market's information booth on Saturday, September 4, and online thereafter. And throughout September, the market will feature locavore-centric events, including a resource fair, a cook-off, and a community dinner.
For tech-friendly resources that can help you in your quest to eat locally, click here and here. And for an online roundtable discussion of the merits and pitfalls of eating locally, click here.
If you ever point to your hand when describing where you grew up then you undoubtedly know that Leo's Coney Island is only "like, the best place EVER". Well Michiganders turned Chicagoans, get ready to increase your weekly intake of Coney Dogs and Greek Salads (dressing on the side) - rumor has it Leo's just might be expanding into The Loop.
Food writer Jonathan Gold gave some grief to local celebchef Rick Bayless over Red O, the Los Angeles outpost of Frontera Grill. After a brief Twittered skirmish, the two have kissed and made up.
I'm not a great hostess. Years of throwing out an overly complicated appetizer at the last minute and throwing together a cheese plate have eventually taught me that, while my cooking talents are at least modest, my menu planning and execution skills for social gatherings are at the most fair-to-middling. I'm okay with it -- and more than happy to help YOU cook and bake and stir and braise if YOU're hosting a party I'm at. But I had to do some measured risk-taking to provide my guests with SOMEthing to eat and drink at a recent backyard garden party. Cheese plate, obvi. Spiced crunchy chickpeas were, sadly, less awesome than I'd anticipated. Chips and salsa! Beer...wine... margaritas, served in coffee mugs because I forgot to buy plastic cups. Mugaritas. And in a culinarily successful experiment, strawberry margarita jell-o shots. Classy, yet accessible. And most people seemed to actually like them.
I borrowed some inspiration and concocted the following:
Strawberry Margarita Jell-o Shots
1 lb. strawberries
1/2 cup water
1 lime
1/2 cup sugar
4 envelopes gelatin
1 cup tequila (blanco, or whatever you prefer to make your margaritas with)
1/2 cup triple sec
Lime zest
Salt
Stem, core and puree the strawberries in a blender or food processor until juiced (but not too frothy) -- add up to a 1/2 cup of water to get 2 1/4 cups total of liquid. Transfer over to a sauce pan on medium heat. Slice your lime in half and squeeze the juice from each half into the strawberry mixture, heat until just boiling. But don't throw the lime away! While the juice is heating up, stir the sugar and powdered gelatin together in a small bowl, and then stir slowly into the boiling liquid. Keep stirring for about 5 minutes until all of the sugar has dissolved into the juice, then turn the heat off and let it sit for a bit to cool down before adding the alcohol (about 15-20 minutes). If you were so inclined, you could just pour it into a baking dish now and have some really fresh-tasting non-alcoholic jell-o...if you're into jell-o, I guess. If you're more into booze, wait until the mix cools down a bit and then stir in the triple sec and tequila. Pour into a baking dish and stick in the fridge. After about an hour, grab that juiced lime and microplane as much zest off of it as you can, the finer the better. Sprinkle onto the jell-o, which should be mostly set at this point, and return to the fridge for at least another three hours, or overnight. Right before you serve, sprinkle a bit of kosher salt over the tops of your shots for the full margarita experience, slice, and serve. (You could also do the college-style individual paper shot glasses, if you were so inclined. But for me, at this point, my power had been out for two hours through a totally unrelated circumstance, and I was pretty much over it.)
They looked...kind of like ahi tuna squares. They tasted good...though quite strong (I went with two full cups of each kind of alcohol. It seemed like a good idea at the time.) If I make them again, I might include a few strawberry slices mixed into the jell-o before it sets, just for that church-picnic kind of textural excitement. They were, overall, worth making again. Hostess win!
When he's not cooking for the President, brewing beer with Goose Island, and playing judge to undoubtedly the greatest amateur chefs in the country, Graham Elliot Bowles is prepping his forthcoming restaurant "Grahamwich." Today, after an entire summer of relative silence, Elliot reignited interest by tweeting a photo of the concept art. Despite multiple delays, this is the surest sign we've seen in months that progress is being made and that Graham Elliot knows, well, at least what the storefront is going to look like. We like it, Graham! [via]
Your homeboys over at Aviary are making up another feat of chemistry! Plymouth gin with distilled lemon juice with ice cubes of distilled sorrel and finished with distilled strawberry juice ice cubes. As the cubes melt, it seasons with flavor rather than dilute the constantly clear drink.
While you could shell out 150 bucks on a one day pass you may want to consider making better use of your hard earned cash by dining out at specified restaurants between Aug. 30 and Sept. 26 to earn a free ticket to the event. All you need to do is order from the prix-fixe menu at any five participating Dine Around restaurants, save the receipts, and present them in a special receipt holder (available at any one of the restaurants) at registration.
Former Carnivale employees (and married folk) Mark and Liz Mendez -- Mark was the executive chef; Liz, the wine director -- are opening a new restaurant, and they've started a Windy Citizen blog to document their experience and reflect on the process. They've only written three entries so far, but one common thread running through them is that they're barely thinking about the food right now: "It's funny," Mark writes, "that now when I go into a restaurant the food is usually the last thing on my mind. I'll ask my wife what she thinks of the space, what the check average is, how many seats, what do you think the gross sales are, do you like the look, is it a good location..."
If you feel like wandering the streets of Korea, but don't have enough dollars to convert into won, Lincoln Park upstart Del Seoul Restaurant will help you get your vicarious travels in when they open up their "Korean Street BBQ" joint on the corner of Clark & Wrightwood.
The restaurant has been gaining a head of steam even before it opens, garnering over 500 Facebook friends, a mention in Chicago magazine, and even notice in the New York Times, as the Korean street food fad sweeps across the nation. Del Seoul is the latest restaurant from the Jeon family, proprietors of Senoya Restaurant in Niles, and will be run by the brother-and-sister team of Pete and Irene Jeon.
With their decidedly youthful approach to Del Seoul, the Jeon progeny will be offering up a menu where one can get their bahn mi, bibimbap, or dumpling dinners all for less than $10. The main focus of Del Seoul though will be their four unique varieties of their take on the Korean taco: soju-soy marinated beef short rib; spicy Korean red-pepper rubbed grilled pork; grilled garlic-soy marinated chicken, and the killer of them all, hand-battered panko shrimp with sesame-chili sauce.
Del Seoul is slated to open in late September/early October at 2568 N. Clark St.
Paula Deen's Lemon Blossoms: easy, inexpensive to make, and completely unhealthy. But they're summer to me--flavorful, sweet, and dense (they're like a little donut--ah!). As warm days come to a close, you'll need something to help you hold on to the memory of barbecues and picnics of 2010. So let me help you by making these blossoms--and experimenting with different flavors of pudding and cake mix is recommended; the chocolate and strawberry varieties are heavenly. Okay, I need to be alone now.
I've been anxiously awaiting autumn for a few weeks now and last week I made one of my favorite recipes that uses fresh summer ingredients but tastes just like autumn. This recipe is my mom's and it brings back a lot of memories from the late summers of my youth - trying to soak up every minute of daylight before going back to school, wearing my little kid apron and helping my mom mix the ingredients, picking zucchini from the garden for this special bread. I made a loaf last week and it never tasted better.
Beat eggs, sugar, zucchini and oil. Add remaining ingredients; mix well. Pour into two greased and floured loaf pans. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
This article was submitted by freelance writer Carrie Miller. The Velika Gospa is to the 100,000-plus Chicagoans of Croatian descent what St. Patrick's Day is to the Irish. It celebrates an unlikely 1715 victory over an impending horde of Turks... Read this feature »
The beer pioneers over at Half Acre announced today that their next limited edition ale, Sticky Fat, will go on sale tomorrow afternoon at the brewery. The name comes from an old fable they attempt to recount on their blog: It's something about a bear that ambles down from a mountain, and eats the farmer's hops, and then there are some school children involved somewhere. Anyway, it doesn't matter. What you need to know is that Sticky Fat is a wet hop, American Dark Ale, brewed with whole cone sticky hops and, of course, a whole lot of love. It's only available on draft at the brewery, so you can bet it won't last. [via]
