Entries associated with the tag "Vie":

It was a six-act pork circus last night at Blackbird.

I'll probably be accused of some bias when I say our multicourse mulefoot aporkalypse was spectacular, but I was surrounded by exacting, discriminating eaters. After months and months of me telling them that this was a special pig--something you've never tasted before, really, you gotta believe me--70-some folks, friends and strangers, took the bait and put their money down for Slow Food Chicago. All I had to do was look around the room as they took their first bites of Jason Hammel's braised belly to know I wasn't crazy.

It certainly didn't hurt that Paul Kahan had assembled a formidable array of talented chefs to work on these animals. Most work directly for him (or had in the past), and as Mike Gebert and I followed them around over the last week, a palpable sense of family surrounded them. I couldn't have dreamed a better team, and I couldn't be more grateful to them for allowing us to stick our cameras over their shoulders and pester them with endless questions.

I'm going to save description of the prep work of these dishes for later, and let the attached photos of the talented Ron Kaplan do the talking for now. But I have to let you know that Valerie Weihman-Rock raised some incredible animals, who produced more meat than was needed. So if you wanted a seat at the table but missed out, you have a few chances to try some yourself. Brian Huston of The Publican has an extra porchetta he'll be running as a special tonight, along with a surplus of skin for chicharrones. Justin Large, whose head cheese whole-grain mustard ravioli en brodo was my favorite course, has two extra quarts of the filling he'll be using at Avec sometime during the next three days. And Mike Sheerin is going to be curing one of the hams--you'll have to wait about six months for that one, but I'll track its progress.

One of the objectives of the Whole Hog Project (it goes on!) is to take a good look at what it takes to produce real food. Does anything in these photos resemble a living, breathing animal? Of course not. But just five days ago three mulefoots were roaming wide open, green pasture, eating quackgrass, chicken eggs, corn, oats, alfalfa, goat's milk, and Swiss chard. On November 13, in our food issue, I'm going to write about exactly what happened on the way from the farm, to the slaughterhouse, to Blackbird's basement, and finally to the dining room. The chefs have promised to contribute recipes based on their courses, and at this moment Gebert is toiling away with hours of footage he shot for an accompanying Sky Full of Bacon video podcast.

You really need to see Mike Sheerin break down a pig. He's a surgeon.

Blackbird sent along a rough draft of the menu for Sunday's mulefoot dinner. I'm speechless but for the wave of saliva breaching my lips.

Mike Sheerin- Blackbird

Braised "country style" ham with preserved plums, cippolini onions, royal trumpet mushrooms, and butternut squash-miso

Justin Large – Avec

Head-cheese ravioli with whole-grain mustard pasta, cavolo nero, pork consomme, lemon oil

Paul Virant – Vie

Roasted caillette, Tuscan kale sauerkraut, plum and pinot noir jam, country bacon with pickled onions, smoked hock pork jus

Jason Hammel – Lula Cafe

Pork belly and house-cured sardine with local honey, celery, and green apple jam

Brian Huston – The Publican

Ham chop cooked in hay with lobster mushrooms and lentils

Tim Dahl – Blackbird/Avec

Cheese & Chicharrones

Keep in mind things could change after slaughter this week.

The collected Whole Hog Project.

Well, after nearly a year and a half, it's time to see how mulefoots perform on the plate.

Back when we bought our own mulefoot with the aim of following the care and feeding of one of these rare heritage pigs and eventually hosting a public snout-to-tail dinner, I knew there was one chef who'd make the most of it--Paul Kahan. To my great delight, not only has Kahan agreed to cook for us (even in the midst of the frenzy surrounding the opening of his new restaurant, the Publican), but he's enlisted a formidable lineup of talent to help out. 

On Sunday, October 19, Kahan will be joined at Blackbird by Paul Virant of Vie, Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds of Lula, Blackbird's Mike Sheerin, Avec's Justin Large, and the Publican's Brian Huston in preparing a six-course mulefoot pig dinner--and you're invited.

Tickets are $125 (including wine but not tax or tip). It all starts with a champagne reception at 6, followed by dinner at 6:30. Proceeds benefit Kahan's choice of Slow Food Chicago. 

Blackbird, 619 W. Randolph, is taking reservations now at 312-715-0708.

Note: The Reader's pig, Dee Dee--for a variety of reasons I'll get into in an upcoming post--has won herself a reprieve from the dinner table. Instead Valerie Weihman-Rock will be providing three third-generation mulefoots--possibly Dee Dee's offspring--for the dinner. In the coming weeks we'll be following the pigs and the proceedings--from the farm, to the slaughterhouse, to the kitchen--right here on the blog.

In the meantime, if you want to catch up, see the entries in the whole Whole Hog Project posted in chronological order.

Vella Cafe celebrates the Chinese New Year with a dinner hosted by Cellar Rat Thursday at 7 PM. The six-course meal features shrimp and scallop wontons with chile oil and brown vinegar, ma po tofu, and orange-ginger creme brulee, plus wine pairings. $75; call 773-489-2728 for reservations and more information.

Making your own meal or headed to a BYO for the Chinese New Year, but not sure about the wine pairings? The theme of this week's free wine tasting at WineStyles on Belmont, Thursday from 6-8 PM, is Asian Fusion, featuring wines that complement Asian food.

Journalist turned cattle rancher and conservationist Bill Kurtis of Tallgrass Beef gives a talk at Fox & Obel Thursday from 6 to 7:30 PM about the pros of grass-fed, hormone- and antibiotic-free beef: he says it’s more sustainable, tastes better, and is healthier than beef from corn-fed cattle raised in feed lots. Samples of meat loaf and flank steak prepared from recipes in his Prairie Table Cookbook will let attendees judge for themselves; a copy of the book is included in the registration fee. A book signing, open to those not registered for the lecture, follows. $35.

The Boozehound hosts Kiltwarmer '08, a Glenmorangie scotch tasting Thursday from 6-7 PM at Mexx Kitchen at the Whiskey. The $30 tasting features Glenmorangie Original, Lasanta, Quinta Ruban, 12-year, Nectar d'Or, and a 1977 vintage.

Decades of Decadent Desserts, Friday at 6:30 and Saturday at 4:30 at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, offers sweets popularized over the last hundred years or so as well as champagne, live music, and an architectural tour. Among the treats featured will be brownies from the Palmer House’s 1892 recipe; Baby Ruths and Butterfingers, developed by the local Curtiss Candy Co. in the 1920s; Toll House chocolate chip cookies, which originated in the '30s; and cheesecake, whose graham cracker crust was invented in the '40s. $45.

Culinary arts instructor Clarence McNutt gives a free talk on soul food, with cooking demonstrations, at the Chicago Public Library’s West Lawn branch Saturday at 1 PM. He’ll repeat the program later this month at the Roosevelt branch (2/16, 2 PM), the Woodson Regional Library (2/20, 2 PM), and the King branch (2/23, 1 PM). Registration required.

The Food Network's Hearty Boys (aka Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh) celebrate the release of their cookbook, Talk With Your Mouth Full, Saturday from 7-9 PM with a free party at their new HBTV location, 3819 N. Broadway, 773-244-9866.  

Chefs Paul Virant (Vie), Carrie Nahabedian (Naha), Bruce Sherman (North Pond), Sean Eastwood (Isabella’s Estiatorio in Geneva and the forthcoming Olo on Randolph Street), and Sarah Stegner and George Bumbaris (Prairie Grass Cafe) are teaming up to put on a Slow Food Benefit Dinner Sunday at 6 PM at Vie. Each chef will prepare an hors d’oeuvre and one of the six courses; the menu will include Rushing Waters trout, heritage poultry, lamb sausage, beef brisket, and a dessert incorporating local black walnuts and Prairie Fruits Farm yogurt. $150 (including tax and tip).

Mountains, Buildings and Deserts: One Chef's Journey, a Cuisine Populaire documentary about chef Bradley Borchardt and his travels in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, screens Monday at 6:45 at the Cordis Brothers Supper Club. Borchardt will do a cooking demo, prepare a four-course tasting menu for the guests, and show photos of food, restaurants, and markets in Japan, Thailand, Korea, and China. $95; complete details available here (PDF).

On Sunday afternoon Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini had just finished a lunch of rare wholesomeness at a long, sun-dappled table behind a log farmhouse just outside of Champaign, and was expanding in Italian upon the themes of his new book, Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, and Fair. Craig Svozil, a young chef from Vie, sidled up to to his interpreter and asked if the august gastronome had tried the lamb prosciutto. “I made it,” he whispered.

Petrini took in the news and his eyes widened. “Eccellente!' Complementi!" "In Italy they call it a violin," he continued through his translator. "They hold it like a violin when they cut it.”     

The visit to Prairie Fruits Farm, which took place the day after Petrini's speech before more than 500 at Northwestern Law School, was arranged by Slow Food Chicago, and a set designer couldn't have manufactured a more perfect pastorality for the Illinois stop of his book tour. Four baby goats frolicked on the lawn, while on the other side of the table a plump speckled Sussex hen clucked and pecked in grass. In attendance were some of the local celebrity farmers championed by the group. There were John and Connie Caveny, Monticello producers of Bourbon Red turkeys and Rouen ducks. Henry Brockman, a fixture at the Evanston farmers' market was there, and Stan Schutte--named 2006 Farmer of the Year by the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service--was grilling brats with his son on a giant rig beside the driveway. Hosts Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell make the only farmstead cheese in Illinois, which means it is made on the premises with milk from their own goats. These farmers were the real deal. One had arrived with an ugly purple lump on his lower lip, the result of a kick from one of his sheep.     

Petrini was accompanied by a small entourage of young organization staffers, including Erika Lesser, director of  Slow Food USA. The day before she sat with her hands folded, translating, while Petrini wandered the Northwestern stage, addressing the audience as much with his hands as with his words. An Italian woman later described his oratory, heavily inflected with the idiom of his Piedmont hometown of Bra, as like that of an politician from the 70s, colorful and a little old fashioned. “Cursed be those that reduce gastronomy to the spoon and pot!” he declaimed, meaning those who imagine gastronomy as a narrow focus on recipes and cookbooks rather than the multidisciplinary science he proposes will save the world from itself.    

The farm visit was the sort of exercise in “taste education”--going out to meet the people and visit the places that produce good food--in which Petrini thinks everyone should be taking part. Before lunch Leslie Cooperband led the group through the the farm's cheesemaking operation, housed in a converted machine shed. Before entering the cheese cave (a walk-in cooler), a woman broke off from the group, poised her nose next to a bale of hay, and inhaled. “I love the smell of hay,” she sighed. Petrini posed for pictures standing next to Cooperband and Jarrell with a plastic container full of aging blue. Then it was time to meet the goats, who obligingly proffered their heads for scratching.    

Petrini's visit to the United States hasn't all been baby goats and heritage turkey enchiladas. A book signing at San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market was scotched when vendors there objected to a section in Slow Food Nation relating an earlier visit, and the scuffle blew up on the blogosphere. In what could have been just an undiplomatically translated bit of soul searching, Petrini addressed a common criticism of the local, organic, and sustainable products he celebrates: they can be be prohibitively expensive to the eater of average means, let alone for the poor. In it he described a farmer at Ferry Plaza who claimed he earned enough from selling high priced squash in two monthly trips to the city that he could support his family and spend hours surfing. Petrini went on to liken the market's customers  to “actresses, [who] went home clutching their peppers, marrows and apples, showing them off like jewels, status symbols.”    

At lunch Petrini, who had visited our own boutique Green City Market, said he wasn't trying to be critical. “He is not against the fact that it is expensive,” said Carlo Bogliotti, the Slow Food staffer who translated. “For him, when the farmer earns money it is always right. The problem in the the U.S. is not that you have expensive foods in farmers' markets. The problem is that food is too inexpensive. The food is too cheap and cannot be quality.”     

Petrini believes that taste education will bring quality to the mainstream. Once people know what is good and are willing to pay fairly for it, he argued Sunday, a host of small farmers will respond and a host of small local economies will develop to meet the demand.

Still, critics of the Slow Food movement, wonder how a dismantling of the agro-industrial complex capable of producing lots of cheap, low-quality food will feed the world. As befits the name of his organization he's not in much of a hurry. All of this will happen slowly, he said, at a manageable scale. He's not advocating a Pol Pot-style agrarian revolution--these are market-driven solutions, after all--though some of his rhetoric contains a revolutionary whiff of the late-60s Italian left from whence he came. “We need to increase the number of farmers,” he pronounced. “This is how we will prevail over the capitalist-industrial system!”     

After the meal he stood and praised the food produced by the farmers and the chefs in the group. “I was really curious to see how these goats were being raised,” he said. “I've decided if I get to have another life I want to come back as a goat here.” He then posed for a group photo, kissed the women goodbye, and headed back out on the road.

Unfortunately, the two most interesting food events going down this week are sold out. ChicaGourmets set up a meal with Batali's mad genius mentor Marco Pierre White--in town to promote his memoir, The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef, Saturday at Ambria, AND brings Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso together again for the 25th Anniversary update of the Silver Palate Cookbook, Tuesday at May St. Market. Oh well. That MFK Fisher talk looks good.

Tonight at 5, Quebec's Unibroue presents a tasting of all its beers at Warehouse Liquors, 634 S. Wabash. It's free.

At 6 PM tonight Fox & Obel, 401 E. Illinois, hosts "Quicker than 30 Minute Meals" with Linda Champagne of Stonewall Kitchen. It's $45. Call 312-410-7301.

Also at 6 there's a free rose tasting at Provenance Food and Wine, 2528 N. California.

The Kilbourn Park organic plant sale begins at 4 PM Friday and continues Saturday morning at 10 at 3501 N. Kilbourn. Great heirloom tomato seedlings at this event. Call 773-685-3359.

Also at 4 PM Friday, Williams-Sonoma, 900 N. Michigan hosts David Joachim and Andrew Schloss, authors of Mastering the Grill. It's free.

Jimmy Bannos of Heaven on Seven, 111 N. Wabash, leads a cocktail party cooking class with recipes from his new book Big Easy Cocktails, Friday at 7. It's $75. Call 312-224-8858.

Plenty of Mother's Day deals on Sunday, among them a seasonal prix fixe menu for $55 at Vie, 4471 Lawn Avenue in Western Springs, that includes a free jar of house made aigre doux for each mom. Call 708-246-2082--and see our roundup of city farmers' markets in the paper (not online yet) for some more recipes from Vie chef Paul Virant.

Tuesday at 6:30 PM Jonathan Goldsmith of Spacca Napoli leads a pizza demo at Fox & Obel with Chicago Magazine’s Deputy Dining Editor Jeff Ruby. $45 admission gets you a free copy of Ruby and Penny Pollack's Everybody Loves Pizza.

Quince, 1625 Hinman in Evanston is hosting Italian winemaker Giovanni Puiatti for a five-course menu with pairings Tuesday at 7. It's $65. Call 847-570-8400.

NoMi's Cellar Notes tasting series continues continues Tuesday at 5:30 at 800 N. Michigan with sparkling wines and champagne.

Back at Provenance, there's a "Chicago Farmer's Market Class," Tuesday at 6:30 that promises to teach students how to pick, store, and cook the season's bounty. It's $30.

And speaking of farmers markets, the crown jewel, the Green City Market, returns to Lincoln Park at 7 AM Wednesday. Sarah Stegner and George Bumbaris of Prairie Grass Cafe give the first cooking demo of the season at 10:30. 

Wednesday at 6 PM Fiddlehead Cafe, 4600 N. Lincoln, hosts "An Introduction to Wine and Wine Tasting." It's $30. Call 773-751-1500.

Celebrating two years hawking bon bons to the masses, Ethel's Chocolate Lounges are giving away 10,000 free four-piece boxes of chocolate Thursday, May 17, at area stores.

Paul Virant of Vie is one of Food and Wine's best new chefs of 2007. Sad to say, I've never made the trek to Western Springs to eat at his restaurant. A vet of Trotter's, Everest, and Blackbird, he's all over the local/seasonal produce action--but he's taken it a step further by becoming an avid pickler, putting up his farmers' market finds  to carry his kitchen through the off season.

You don't see a lot of pickles in fine dining. But maybe that's about to change. A girl can dream.