Entries associated with the tag "Michael Ruhlman":

I spent some time earlier this week catching up with Chungjun "Ben" Li of Chinatown's Double Li Szechuan restaurant, which I wrote about back in November. He's finally translated his entire menu into English, and he's talking about opening a new place somewhere in the suburbs, maybe in a year or so. But the big news was that late last month his girlfriend, Cindy, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy, name of Ray.

He told me all about the semitraditional postpartum treatment mother and child were undergoing at the hands of a woman he'd hired to cook and care for them. In Chinese culture this confinement period, sometimes known as "doing the month," is usually managed by the grandparents, but as both sets live out of town, he had to advertise for help. I say the treatment is partly traditional, because Cindy isn't forgoing showering, laughing, and rising from the birth bed like she might back in China. But she is staying indoors for about a month, and she's on a special diet which includes, among other things, a lot of soup.

Ben's task was to pick up a chicken, specifically one of those white, fluffy ones with black skin, known as silkies, which are highly valued in China for various medicinal purposes. Ben's silkie was destined to be simmered for broth for the new mother, its meat and bones discarded. So we headed off to Wing Ho Live Poultry & Retail, a little shop on 26th that stocks guineas, hens, turkeys, geese, ducklings, rabbits, pigeons, quail, and partridges, all in the most pristine state of freshness possible--which is to say, still scratching and clucking. Along the way Ben extolled the fresh flavor and rugged texture of these birds, "raised wild," as he said, and insisted I get one of the red free-range chickens to make my own soup. He'd provide the recipe.

Have you been to a live poultry store? For those who don't hunt or have access to their own animals or abattoirs but want to experience what Michael Ruhlman recommends as "one of five things you should eat before you die . . .  the meat of a freshly slaughtered animal, preferably having witnessed the slaughter," your local live poultry shop is the place to go. It won't smell good, it won't be pretty, but there you can meet your meat while it's still breathing, look it in the eye, and take measure of your omnivorousness. And what you take home is as fresh as it gets. My first experience in one of these places involved two cute little white rabbits who definitely didn't want to be stew and were violently vocal about it. It was sufficiently traumatizing for me to back away for a time and brood. I like to think I'd have been more stealthy had I done the deed myself.

The birds at Wing Ho might spend their lives free ranging, but they certainly aren't after they get to the shop, where they wait in crowded cages to be selected by customers, have their throats cut, feathers plucked, blood drained, and carcasses butchered. This definitely is not the place to wax poetic about the bucolic, carefree existence of pasture-fed animals. But they go quickly. My chicken and Ben's silkie were dispatched, cleaned, and cut up within ten minutes. The whole business happened so fast I had trouble keeping up with it, but I took some pictures (attached), and here's a pretty fair description of what happens to a chicken in one of these places.

And here's Ben's recipe for chicken soup. It's not the postpartum special his girlfriend is getting, but just a simple clear broth infused with that fresh chicken flavor. Initially the gentle sweetness from the dried dates and longans (a relative of the lychee) was a little disorienting, but it grew on me, and the flavorful and textured meat from the chicken that nobly gave its life beat the hell out of Perdue.

Ben's Li's chicken soup 

1 freshly killed free-range chicken, plucked, cleaned, cut into pieces (feet included)

4 quarts water

1 knob of ginger, peeled and sliced

3 green onions

1/3 cup rice wine

fistful of dried longan

fistful of seeded dried dates

1 tsp. salt 

In a large wok or pot, cover the chicken with cold water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, drain, and wash it under cold water. Return to the pot and add the water and all the ingredients. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to the barest simmer for three hours. Say thanks to the bird, and enjoy.

If there's one local chef I'd like to see a cookbook from it's Paul Kahan. In yesterday's New York Times magazine, in a story about the charitable work of name chefs, Michael Ruhlman included an adaptation of Kahan's Sauteed Sweetbreads with Beets and Molasses. It's not the sort of thing anybody's going to whip up after a hard day in the mines--it requires lots of soaking and draining. But if you make the time for it (and I plan to) it looks like a valuable lesson in what to do with the fifth quarter [via]. Kudos to the NYT for giving a practical nod to what Chris Cosentino calls the "whole animal ethic."

Last month Michael Ruhlman opined that "one of five things you should eat before you die is the meat of a freshly slaughtered animal, preferably having witnessed the slaughter," linking to a New York Times op-ed by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

"Because we do watch," wrote Klinkenborg. "That’s part of the job. It’s how we come to understand what the meat itself means. And to me, the word 'meat' is at the root of the contradictory feelings the pig-killing raises. You can add all the extra value you want—raising heritage breed pigs on pasture with organic grain, all of which we do—and yet somehow the fact that we are doing this for meat, some of which we keep, most of which we trade or sell, makes the whole thing sound like a bad bargain. And yet compared with the bargain most Americans make when they buy pork in the supermarket, this is beauty itself."

To get an idea of just how crazy that makes people, take the case of Efrain Cuevas, a former Ghetto Gourmet chef who's now fronting his own outfit, 24 Below. Right around the time readers of the above statements were mulling them over he was putting out word about his latest shindig, a birria dinner made from a goat he slaughtered and butchered himself. Cuevas says he's done the deed before--when he was growing up in Aurora his father used to kill and prepare goats for Mexican weddings. Cuevas bought a goat named Tony from a farmer near Joliet, and was planning to transport the beast to the city and dispatch it the day before Sunday's dinner. He posted notices of the event on LTHForum, the Reader site, and his own, inviting people to witness the slaughter.

Then he got an e-mail from a concerned functionary at the Illinois Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Meat and Poultry Compliance asking some very pointed questions about his plans and referring him to the state Meat and Poultry Inspection Act, which forbids the sale of meat that doesn't come from a USDA-licensed slaughterhouse. Cuevas told the woman the dinner had been cancelled, but planned to go ahead with it anyway.

Then someone turned on the Heat. Cuevas got an e-mail from an officer with the Chicago Police Department's Animal Crimes Unit, saying that the Humane Society (and apparently many others) had complained. Cuevas was warned that if he went ahead with the dinner he and his guests would be subject to arrest for animal cruelty, and the restaurant he planned to hold it in risked being shut down. Over the phone the cops told him activists were planning to walk up and down 18th Street attempting to catch him in the act. I'd have to check with Alan Dershowitz on the legality of arresting dinner guests, but that was enough for Cuevas, who scotched the slaughter and used federally approved meat instead.

As for Tony, it was only a brief reprieve--this week he'll join the unhappy queue at a USDA-licensed slaughterhouse.

It may be run by Levy Restaurants, but Fulton's on the River still tries to have an adventurous side. It used to be home to Mark "the Oyster Whisperer" Mavrontonis, who's now based out at Mike Ditka's Oakbrook Terrace and just last month took up Michael Ruhlman on his pork-belly Caesar challenge (I'm told the salad's no longer on the menu, though you could always make a request).  Now Fulton's has sent new executive chef Rick DeLeon to the Florida Keys for the first day of stone crab season, which started yesterday. The Web site Flight of the Crab provides links to YouTube videos of DeLeon and his Orlando counterpart Ron Cope onboard the Key Limey, a fishing boat manned by a British expat and his crew. DeLeon's the silent type, and Cope's not exactly articulate ("Look at this big boy"), but who knew that pig's feet were effective as crab bait?

Tomorrow at 6 PM Fulton's hosts a four-course dinner featuring stone crab and wine pairings; a benefit for Chicago Parkways, it's $95. 

Mark "The Oyster Whisperer" Mavrantonis has taken up Michael Ruhlman's Chicken Fried Pork Belly Caesar Salad challenge and added it to the menu at Mike Ditka's in Oakbrook Terrace.

Ruhlman is offering a free copy of Reach of a Chef to the first person who reviews Chef Mav's version here.

Anthony Bourdain loves Ratatouille. Says Bourdain (who was a consultant on the film) to Michael Ruhlman:

"I think it's quite simply the best food movie ever made," Bourdain wrote today in an email.  "The best restaurant movie ever made--the best chef movie. The tiny details are astonishing: The faded burns on the cooks' wrists. The "personal histories" of the cooks . . . the attention paid to the food. . . . And the Anton Ego ratatouille epiphany hit me like a punch in the chest--literally breathtaking. I saw it in a theater entirely full with adults--and the reaction to that moment was what movie making was once--a long time ago--all about: Audible surprise, delight, awe and even a measure of enlightenment. I am hugely and disproportionately proud that my miniscule contribution (if any) early early in the project's development led to a 'thank you' in the credits.  Amazing how much they got 'right.'"

(See Ruhlman's blog for more responses from the foodigensia.) 

Frank Bruni, on the other hand, pipes up to protest the film's depiction of food critics as mean, joyless, shriveled egomaniacs.

ETA: Pat Graham weighs in over at our film blog with his own (mildly) dissenting opinion.

Some miscellaneous impressions from last Sunday's discussion at Steppenwolf between Grant Achatz and Michael Ruhlman:

The audience was a who's who of foodigentsia that by all appearances left the kitchens of Chicago empty (Look, there's Michael Carlson! Wait, isn't that Elaine Sikorski?) -- or at the very least left the Internet unmanned.

Much of the discussion tromped over ground familiar to anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with the Alinea Story: Achatz's childhood washing dishes in his folks' Michigan restaurant; his formative years at the French Laundry, which taught him everything there was to know and then some about classical technique; the epiphany sparked by a five-day stage at Ferran Adria's El Bulli -- and the apparently amiable, but painful, rift it caused between him and French Laundry chef Thomas Keller. Eating at El Bulli, he explained, provoked an emotional reaction stronger than anything he'd ever experienced. Sitting with Keller through a 37-course meal ("Thirty-seven courses! You guys think I'm bad.") he struggled to control his excitement, not wanting to disrespect his mentor. When he got back to Yountville, he said, "I was running around making hot gelatin and trying to melt sugar all over everything, and Thomas was like, 'Whoa -- this is the French Laundry,' and I realized I couldn't cook there anymore."

If there was a theme to the conversation, it was this idea of structuring a meal to generate a particular reaction. Achatz sees himself as a conductor, leading diners up and down an emotional scale from anticipation to excitement to bafflement, accomplishment, and pleasure.  He, like many of his peers, hates the term "molecular gastronomy." "It's not about science," he said of his cooking, "it's about emotion." 

There were a few surprises. Achatz's disavowal of "molecular gastronomy" may have grabbed headlines (and for a thorough dissection of what exactly he meant by that, see Ruhlman's own postgame analysis). But Achatz -- who turned down Iron Chef America and has so far steered clear of celebrity cheffitude (though he is working on a book) -- shocked everyone, including his interlocutor, when he admitted he'd still kinda like to do TV. "If we decided to do a TV show," he argued, "I think we'd do a pretty darn good TV show."

When asked if he'd like to go the Robuchon route and open another Alinea in New York -- or LA, or Tokyo -- Achatz, who admits that he only recently realized he didn't have to be in the kitchen all the time, was less than enthusiastic. While he didn't dismiss the idea out of hand, he seemed adamant that, if he were to branch out, he'd like his next project to be something very different.

Still, he didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to go anywhere else. He's working in a city of innovators, he said, and "the next five years are going to be superinteresting in Chicago." 

Guest blogger Anthony Bourdain weighs in on the Top Chef talent over at Michael Ruhlman's blog--and though I'm down with the Mike love, I can't agree with his assesment of the finalists. Ilan is a tool. Foam on Marcel! (Hey, I've avoided blogging about Top Chef all season--cut me some slack.)

There's also some pretty entertaining audio in which the pair expound on the glories of the Cleveland food scene and do their mutual fear and loathing shtick. It's basically a 15-minute sequel to the notorious Vegas episode of No Reservations and, presumably, a preview of what the forthcoming Cleveland episode of NR--complete with drag-racing scene--might promise.

I've never been able to fully embrace eggnog. Childhood memories of the holidays invariably include overdosing on that unctuous, hyperemulsified, carrageenan-laced stuff that got carted home from the store with the cello-wrapped mistletoe. And even in its gourmet and homemade manifestations the 'nog seems dicey. All those raw eggs. Hello, salmonella. So at first glance there seemed little nastier than this recipe for aged eggnog, in which you let the eggs and cream, etc, hang around in your fridge for three weeks. But then again, all the best things--cheese, salami, wine--get stuffed away in dark corners for years. So maybe I'll give it a whirl.

Via Michael Ruhlman's blog, where he continues to be obsessed with pig.