Last But Not Least

Thanks for looking in on me this week, btw. Chances are somewhat good we go back to once a week after this. I've started writing a story about a detective who uses Magic 8 Ball in place of Dr. Watson. It's okay though, he smokes a pipe.

Tonight completes the week of recipes. This time I did Lamb meatballs with couscous and Feta. And I want to say how surprised I am at how light this went down and how, though I am full, I am not stuffed or overfed or feel sluggish. I take that as a good sign for doing it right. Anyway that's what I'm telling myself.

If you've noticed anything this week I hope you've noticed that none of these dishes I presented take any more than a half an hour to prepare and cook. Some are even less. This is another half hour masterpiece. The reason for that is pretty obvious from a time perspective but also because I've been getting into simpler/shorter the last few months. This one has a bunch of ingredients, but it's easy.

In a bowl you combine
1 lb. ground lamb
1/4 cup dried apricots, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/4 cup of chopped red onion
salt and pepper to taste

Wet those hands and get in there and make some meatballs. On the smallish-side this time. try to use this mess to make 18 to 20. Smaller will help them cook right, but also look better on the plate.

You put these meatballs on a cooking sheet (I lined with aluminum to help the cleanup). You will put them in the oven for 8 minutes at 425/450. Make sure nothing is pink when you think they are done. A little "burn smudge" is good here and there, but don't let them dry out. Lamb is easy and forgiving. Relax.

Make your couscous. LOOKIT THE BOX yeah?
1 cup couscous for this recipe

In a mixing bowl (small one) mix together
3 tablespoons of olive oil
3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice (remember my citrus juicer? Be jealous)
and around 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper
Set that aside. It will become the last thing you use.

Slice up
2 small tomatoes
1/2 cucumber
1 small red onion

Ready?

When the couscous and meatballs are done you lay a bed of the couscous on a plate and put 4/5/6 meatballs on top per plate (remember, they're supposed to be small).
You fan out some sliced tomato and cucumber aside the couscous and toss some red onion slices here and there.

Now take the Feta (As much as you want. They are saying 4 ounces to spread around everybody) and sprinkle it, crumbled on the each plate. Go ahead. Be generous.

To complete, the little dressing you made is now sprinkled over everything on the plate, especially the tomatoes and cucumber. Notice I did not say put salt on those. It's in the dressing. relax.

But the dressing goes on the meat and couscous too, don't forget.

And that's it. Serve baby serve. I found it a very light-feeling dinner. Held my portions to reasonable and am well satisfied. I think you will like.

That ends recipe week. This one, anyway.

Now... you really want me to cook for you, don't you? Admit it. Well? Come on over. I'd be happy to.

Really.

I LOVED IT!

People on a budget and vegetarians (who can eat mushrooms, sorry Dave) should love love love this VERY filling meatless dinner I made tonight (and practically ate the whole thing myself). This is an Oriental Stir Fry With Peanuts and I could tell at each and every step I took as I made it that I was going to like it. A lot.

This serves 4 but, I have to say, I LIT into this. I'm lucky in that I loves my veggies and so to have a vegetarian dinner is no big whoop for me. Youse that like meat, I could certainly see beef strips or chicken strips in here with no problem. But for tonight, I went the holy way and killed nothing with a face.

But first I want to talk about take out Chinese (this dish is more Japanese than Chinese but it's a lot like the "fried rice" you can get at any take out place.). Did you know that the distribution of the ingredients for take-out (not sit-down, dinner style) is provided by a very narrow channel of providers, like maybe - one all around the country? There are two Chinese take out places near us that we've used back and forth from time to time and BOTH changed their egg rolls to something pretty inedible at the very same time. That kind of made me suspicious, as you'd think here in 'merica they'd be more into competition. But no. The same distributor services both take-outs. And who knows who owns the provider. All I'm sayin'... (insert hidden dragon music).

So okay anyhow...

1 cup of rice gets cooked like a cup of rice. What? Read the damn box.
But here's what you're doing on the side while that's ricing itself...

put
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon of Sriracha (I used Tobasco, same burn different day) sauce
2 tablespoons of fresh lime juice (MrsRW got me a citrus juicer for Christmas and this translates into the juice from one actual, real lime... woo hoo!)
in a bowl and whisk all that together. Put it aside.

You have cut
2 organic carrots (hard outside skin shredded off with a peeler)
and
1 red bell pepper, seeds removed
into thin, narrow slices that are not chunky and hurt your cooking time.

You have also cut
7 to 8 ounces of shitake mushrooms (stems removed and tossed)
and 2 scallions
into thin, smaller-than-bite-sized chunks

You have drained
a can of bean sprouts in a strainer

You chop
1/4 cup of Planter's Dry Roasted peanuts

With that...

Heat a big wide pan (or wok if you got) to the point where putting
1 tablespoon of canola oil
can heat perfectly for what is to follow.

First the carrot and pepper strips... 3 minutes constantly stirring
Then the mushrooms and bean sprouts 2 to 3 minutes constantly stirring
[NOTE: People who can't eat mushrooms because of allergies are one thing, but I've always held that people who simply don't like mushrooms never had them prepared right. Cook too long and they are rancid. Cook not long enough and they are rubber.***** I challenge anyone who doesn't like mushrooms - allergies aside - to have mine in something I've made and we'll see what you think then.]

Put in the scallion bits in that whole mess just at the last minute. Stir and stir and keep stirring.

Add the soy sauce/hot sauce/lime juice mixture at the very last and just stir it around to coat.

That's it. You're done.

Fluff out your rice on a plate and scoop the goodies out of the pan and place on top.

Like I said - people who can't live without meat would have an easy time putting beef, chicken, even shrimp in here. I wasn't into faces tonight.

Also - NO SALT. Between the salt in the rice and the soy sauce you're good. If you put more, in my opinion, you ruin it. But at least taste before you add any table salt.

We put FAR too much table salt on our stuff EVEN BEFORE WE EVEN TASTE IT FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!.

This should take about 20-30 minutes tops and serves 4. Unless you were hungry like me...

***** THAT'S BACKWARDS. Too long is rancid, too short is rubber. Sheesh...

This One Sounded Very Weird

Just about everywhere I've read about this, though, the most usual comment is "deceptively simple." But there's nothing deceptive about it. And you can't get more simple. To be honest I felt I was taking a chance on this because I never heard of such a thing and it doesn't have some great, fancy Italian or French or Greek name. But since you use mild Italian sausage for it I'm going to say it's Italian. But who knows?

Put just a little olive oil in a pan and heat it to just right. Then you take
1 1/2 lb of mild Italian sausage and you brown it - JUST BARELY. Just enough to get the pink off.
In a bowl you put
2 lbs of seedless red grapes (you heard me), removed from the stem
sprinkle lightly (don't overdo this) with thyme and olive oil.
Toss that like a salad.
Heat the oven to 475 and go find an oven-safe bowl that will be big enough to hold everything yet small enough so that you can jumble everything up.
Put a layer of grapes on the bottom.
Set the Italian sausages on top of that.
Put in the rest of the grapes.
Shove it in the oven for 20-30 minutes depending on how you like your sausage. Occasionally mixing the contents.

And... um... that's it. I had that on a plate with some Italian bread on the side and a nice red wine. Here's the deal...

This is just about as inexpensive as you can get and still feed yourself some very complex flavors. Don't use brand new grapes (this was my mistake), but try and use grapes that have been around for a few days so that when it hits the heat the skins break on some. Or, if you've got new grapes, lightly mush them up a little bit (a LITTLE bit). The taste of the grapes changes under the heat, and when the resulting kinda-sauce melds in with the fatty juices from the sausages you've got something really unique.

I've never tasted that before and I cleaned my plate. It's called Italian Sausage and Red Grapes. Duh. You can just have it with bread or put some noodles on the side; whatever you want. You get points from me if you try this and report back.

I dares ya.

Recipe Week!

Well the book with no name is done. It is making the rounds, currently out and about like the veritable waif it truly is.

On top of that MrsRW is on a week-long business trip far far away.

And there's nobody watching me. I can do anything I decide to do. So there's only one thing I can think of doing right now and that would be...

EATING!!!

And tonight I did a take on that healthful alternative to hamburgers we all love to hate despise. The TURKEY BURGER. I can hear you now, oh joy this cretin is actually going to talk about burgers made out of turkey? Well yes I am. Because I am sitting here below 200 lbs for the first time in years and I am determined to achieve that one resolution I made this year; "Get below 200 and stay there."

And I hate turkey burgers. I truly hate them. I can't stand them, in fact. So why am I making them, you may ask. Because I found a recipe that makes them not only very good but potentially sought after. I kid you not.

This is called TURKEY BURGERS WITH CREAMY ROMAINE SLAW. And it looks like that picture up there in the corner. Here's how it works:

You combine
1 lb. of ground turkey (preferably dark meat if you can find it)
1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard
Just under 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme, and
2 little scallions chopped up really good
in a bowl. And you wet your hands and you get in there and patty that mess up into four burgers. Four little turkey quarter-pounders. You season each side with salt and pepper and set them aside.

Now you take
2 big leafs of Romaine lettuce and chiffonade the heck out of them (that means you roll them up like a cigar and cut the "cigar" so that you make little strips like cabbage in a slaw).
1 medium carrot gets the living heck chopped out of it
and you combine the lettuce and carrot in a bowl.

Then you take
2 tablespoons of mayo (I used Light because I want to stay under 200 pounds now)
1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
and you whisk this together in a separate bowl.

After that you heat up some olive oil in a big flat skillet and just when it's perfectly hot you put the turkey burgers in there for 6-7 minutes a side.

While this is going on you toss the romaine/carrot mixture with the mayo/wine vinegar mixture to make a creamy slaw.

Toast 4 soft rolls (with seeds on the top like in the picture) and when the turkey burgers are done they go on the bottom slice of the bun. THEN you take your romaine slaw and cover them suckers up with it and smush the top half back on and voila - a turkey burger people will ASK for again.

The trick is in the slaw. But the combination of thyme in the burger and white wine vinegar in the slaw makes it very savory. And the whole thing takes about 20-30 minutes. And, in truth, if it takes you more than 30 minutes you really need to just go out to a restaurant and quit torturing people m'kay?

The picture shows sliced pickles and potato chips but, you know, I want to stay under 200 so I just popped in a baked potato.

Seriously, though, the dreaded turkey burger (which I can't stand) just made it into my rotation. Well, THIS version anyway.

Bone your aperitif... or whatever they say here...

The Girl and the Pookie

I wanted to publish some pictures of our visit to the Girl and the Goat but for one thing I kept eating all the stuff they brought out before I remembered to take the pictures and in the second thing my camera was a bit under-charged and most of everything was blurry. Plus all the pictures of me sadly displayed my pronounced gut. Of which I think we'll have to go back to addressing pretty soon around here.

Let me say that I enjoyed myself immensely. Every last thing that came out was great, except maybe the liver spread for the fat bread. But if you're a liver-lover you'd like it. But that's it. The chickpea fritters, the baked cauliflower and the steak strips with house pickles and beets were out of this world. We also enjoyed the cocoa nib donuts with pomegranate seeds we had for dessert - and they even brought that out with a candle for me. Thankfully though, no hand clapping Happy Birthday chain restaurant bullcrap.

I did see Stephanie Izard there but, you know what, I didn't try to grab a picture of her or try to snake into a picture with her either - though people were doing that.

I've seen some "celebrities" in person in public and one, Carlton Fisk, was basically him and me in an airport and he would have had no problem with it. But I just didn't. I didn't take any pictures with Bill Veeck - who I easily could have because we were sitting at Murphy's having a couple of beers at a booth. That was different anyway; we started a conversation in the bleachers and just moved it on, by his invite, to Murphy's. So that didn't count for "bugging a celeb."

I never grabbed a picture with any "celeb" I saw in person. Ever. I don't know. It feels too intrusive. I think a lot of times they're, you know, just people and they can't always be "on." I give them their space. In Stephanie's case, she was working up and down the kitchen. OK, standing outside the kitchen but moving up and down the open window to all the stations.

And people came up and they were all "oh hai we love you amen" and she smiled nicely and accepted people putting arms around her and all but I just said - you know what, she's busy and that just looks incredibly uncool. And I would rather die than appear to be uncool. But, more to the point, I just think it's kind of rude in a way. So anyway I don't do it.

Oh. That's a picture of Soupy Sales and Pookie up there. I don't know why I put it there. I never met Soupy Sales or Pookie. I just thought about that early 60's kid show this morning. No idea why. When the weather starts to turn my mind just gets all nostalgic or something. I don't know. And then things I hadn't thought of in 15 years just pops up. Weird.

I did put some pictures of the restaurant up on Facebook, but they're blurry, and none are of me and my gut. But I am going back as soon as I can. MrsRW is not a big fan of gastro-pubs and did the best she could to look like she was having fun. So I'm taking my two daughters next, who will explode over it I'm sure.

You just wish you were one of my daughters, that's all I'm saying. Well... no you probably don't. Because they couldn't get away with anything when they lived here because whatever they did I probably did worse at some point and you couldn't fool me. I was good at checking eyeballs without looking like I was.

Okay that's enough for now. If you are a vegetarian the Girl and the Goat has Top Chef-style dishes just especially for you. Plus fish of all kinds for that kind of taste. If ever in Chicago - you simply have to. That is all.

EDIT TO ADD I meant to say, with wine and I think we ordered six plates plus dessert we got out of there for much less than we've spent at other "high profile" places. It's not inexpensive, but when you compare it to the older, established places in this town - which is decidedly a restaurant town to be sure - it's more than reasonable. OH... and the coffee, per my coffee-drinking expert wife, was the one thing that was totally out of this world.

ChivitOH MY GOD

Uruguay. One of the more interesting places we never think of. Not like you wake up in the morning and go "Hmmm... Uruguay" or anything. Looking in on the place it is, apparently, a Spanish American culture with, according to the books, an overlay of Italian influence here and there. It has one of the higher standards of living in all of South America, a bustling economy, and thrives on almost 100% literacy. And it doesn't have the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or the Republican Party. Which is probably a direct result of all that literacy. Plus maybe a lack of trailer parks. That right there is a good enough recommendation. But - and here's the thing - there is also FOOD!

The other night I manufactured (because words like "cooked" or "made" just aren't adequate) what looks like the national dish. You Bourdain fans watched Tony power down on one of these in a street side cafe. There are varying ways to make it but I grabbed the basic parts from here. You be the judge, I think mine looks amazingly similar. Here's the construction basics.

Oh... vegetarians? You may want to hide from here on. The books say Uruguay is noted for an abundance of MEAT in the diet. And this baby is no exception, but rather the rule.

From left to right... You put a couple of strips of bacon in a pan. I know, with microwaves nobody does this anymore. But you're going to need the resultant grease that the bacon is going to shed. Ahem. Fry it up, set aside. Take a piece of filet mignon (they didn't have, so I bought some "sandwich steak" and marinaded it overnight. It's an "okay" substitution) - only about 1/4" thick - and brown it up in the bacon grease. With me so far? the third picture is the bun. You need a big one, round if possible, and check this - you need the filet to end up roughly the size of said bun.

The bun is toasted and we then compound the cholesterol by spreading mayonaise on both slices. Yes that's what he said. You put the filet (see I bought mine too big and had to cut it in half... slovenly kitchen skills I know) right on the mayo'd bottom half of the bun. On top of the filet - because we don't have enough meat yet - we pile on some Black Forest Ham. Make sure it is "black forest" style and not boiled or whatever. Get it from the deli, specifically.

Oh hello what's this on top of the black forest ham? Why it's a thick slice of mild provolone! Gee, that'll give it a little heft because, you know, so far it's kinda puny. Ahem. Oh wait - what's in this picture next to the provolone one? Why it's an egg fried "sunny side up" put right on top of the cheese. The recipe says YOU WANT THE YOLK STILL LIQUID ENOUGH TO RUN. You'll see why later. And then - oh yeah - don't forget the bacon.

In an effort to mollify the heart problems you will encounter about half way through this we begin the roughage contingent. Lettuce! Finally! And then a couple slices of tomato (luckily I have a lot of these next to that head growing in my garden). This is topped off with some raw Spanish onion. It gets pretty high right here, so you put the top part of the bun on all this and smush...

So that the yolk runs down the side and melds everything together kind of like a glue. I guess. You can't eat this like that though, you've got to cut it in half. Here's my proudest part because it kinda looks just like the picture in the recipe. Notice the yolk residue there. Yeah well in Uruguay you add a mess of fries covered in pepper to hide it. Kinda neat the way our plates match the table and chair set no? We were pretty proud of that. Add some South American red and you've got something as authentic to Uruguay as you can get. But there's nothing "ito" about a chivito. Just sayin'. I did not need breakfast this morning.

Seriously.

Enjoy that heart attack!

Ow....

Old Fashioned Restaurant Review Just Like When You First Met Me

Long long ago in a kingdom by the sea the first thing you saw of us was a cartoon couple that looked quite amazingly similar to those two creatures of the bistro gazing at you drunkenly on the right, in a world once known as Chasing Vincenzo.

We chased Vincenzo through three or four of the restaurants he worked in and - alas - lost sight of him altogether some years ago. It was a happy, apolitical, life-centered time of light-hearted comrades and scintillating conversation - if a little on the tipsy side.

Alas those days are far behind us, for no other reason than anything that contrived will always run its course. There really was a Vincenzo and we really did keep finding him in different restaurants. But we've since moved on to other ventures; shedding readers and associates liberally as we moved through the blogospecteramourspher in quite the haze.

But hark, even though the regular restaurant reviews have gone by the wayside (largely because we just wanted to eat, and taking pictures of the food was getting in the damn way) it doesn't mean we've ceased being denizens of that world.

Last evening we visited an absinthe bar ridiculously located in the far west / by northwest / suburbs. South Barrington by name. This is not an ordinary 'burb as in the past you would find such types as financiers, football stars, real estate moguls, and radio personalities in residence there. So though a French restaurant in our part of America truly belongs in the city if it wants to fight for street cred, it is understandable that it may also be located out here where there is an awful lot of discretionary capital going around.

Even with that, however, it isn't any more or less expensive than any place you would find in the city. Our full tab last night including a half hour at the bar beforehand + a champagne flight and tips was about $150. The main difference is that in the city we'd be squeezing our way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds just getting to a table, and last night when we walked from the bar out to our table on the sidewalk we were the only couple out there, and while in the bar we could hear the conversations of the three or four couples in the dining room if we really wanted to bother.

I've mentioned, you notice, the bar a couple of times now haven't I? It could possibly be because they serve a handful of authentic absinthes there, not the least of which is the Pernod kind. Oh and what do you know - Pernod is the original walkin- one and only according to their literature.They invented/created/introduced or whatever that devilish concoction of wormwood, thujone and fairy dust. The fun part, I have to admit (beyond the sipping) is the fact that we sat right before a crystal water-dripper apparatus that allowed us to inhale as we watched the drink go through its metamorphosis. MrsRW had champagne, which theme she continued out on the porch when she ordered a flight (3 small champagnes all in a nice tidy row there).

My bill of fare read as follows: A nice ceviche with shrimp and squiggly little tentacles and avocado and such. Then came the watermelon-ginger soup; a cold bowl that was refreshing and just a little exotic in taste (the ginger finish was pleasant but unexpected - in truth I've never had anything like that before) but perfect for a warm summer evening. And then - moving on to a Shiraz (which rarely fails with game) I had a combination plate that included quail, elk and lamb. Green onion stems and barley and I must say every individual meat was done per the book. This was all swarming in a chocolate sauce that left a really nice, ever-so-slight, hint of bitter cocoa reminder in your head.

Oh look, here's an actual picture of the very thing!



MrsRW started out with a plate of mussels and then moved on to a potato-leek soup. Her entree was what she described as a heavenly plate of osso buco - from which she pulled that marrow right out of the bone in her best Bourdain fashion and spread it on some bread... and then shared! What a gal.



In the interest of full disclosure this was our second trip. We went a second time because MrsRW loved it that much the first time. I myself was very disappointed by the rabbit I ordered the first time there. It was over cooked, quite frankly, and left a bad impression in that - ok if you're going to call yourself a bistro there's a couple of things you should do well - frites and rabbit. And they did neither well at all. However the rabbit was off the menu this time, making me want to believe that was a case of righteous self-editing rather than just running out of the dish; and I promptly gave them the benefit of the doubt.

The pedigree of the brains behind l'Eiffel Bistrot would tend to say that the fellows know what they're trying to do, and so I take the editing as a sign they weren't happy with the rabbit dish. I hope.

The other feature of the place you should know is the crepes. Creperie is the second part of their name, if in minor case. We haven't gotten to the crepes yet. But if the line of trajectory displayed from our first visit to last night's they should be grand.

One can only hope they picked the right location. If this place was in the city the crowd would be large until it either sank or swam on its own merits. Out in the bucolic, over-funded far burbs of Chicago it has located itself where the resources are, to be sure. But only time will tell if the locals recognize it is there amidst the Coldwater Creek, Kinga's European Children's Shoes, and Toms-Price (Stickley) Home Furnishings stores of this brick-walked shopping center.

Wow.... that was just like old times!