Homemade Chicago recipes?

What do you think of as typical "Chicago recipes"? I'm not talking about pizza or Italian beef or other restaurant foods, but homemade dishes that are typical of Chicago cooks, as served at family dinners, potlucks and church suppers and brought to succor the sick or the bereaved.

Equivalents would be Minnesota hot dish or Texas chili, although I don't think we have anything quite so ubiquitous.

I think of Melrose peppers as a Chicago dish, although it's probably only made by Italian Americans. There's a dish that goes by the unfortunate name of "barbecue," which seems fairly common -- it's basically just loose hamburger in barbecue sauce and called "sloppy joe" in other places -- that may not be distinctive enough.

Of course, adding giardiniera to anything -- even hominy -- automatically makes it a Chicago recipe.

As it's harder for the folks who've lived here all their lives to pick out uniquely Chicago items, this is especially a question for those of you who moved here from elsewhere -- are there local foods that you first encountered at a friend's dinner table? Or, for natives who've spent time living in other towns -- what did you have trouble getting ingredients for or make at home that surprised your neighbors?

Chicken Vesuvio and Shrimp DeJonghe are two dishes that I had never seen on any restaurant menu until moving to Chicago. Thereafter, I saw both on dinnertables too. The hot dog stand style tamale (sealed in wax paper) was also something I had never seen that seems pretty common here. I've learned to like the vesuvio and the tamale, especially mother in law style. DeJonghe has never struck a positive chord with my tastebuds.

I moved here from Atlanta in about 1991. Eastern European food was very new to me unless it was also cooked in the Jewish tradition. Pierogies? Never heard of them. Now that I am nearing almost 20 years in Chicago, I still think the Eastern European bent of the city is the biggest difference.

Chicago is a very "meat centric" town. This was new for me and difficult to get used to. The vegetables that were available seemed very undercooked to me. I guess any type of brocolli salad that left the brocolli still crispy would have qualified as an oddity.

My first year of work here, I had to have the concept of a "sweet table" explained very slowly and patiently to me. I don't remember ever hearing that phrase when I was growing up. Finally I understood this meant putting a bunch of desserts on one table. Lightbulb!

The first time I saw someone drinking a beer openly on the Metra train, I thought the sky was going to fall. Of course people drink in the South, but seeing someone in a suit on a commuter train popping open a brew and drinking it in front of everyone and no-one blinking an eye was shocking to me.

grits wrote:My first year of work here, I had to have the concept of a "sweet table" explained very slowly and patiently to me. I don't remember ever hearing that phrase when I was growing up. Finally I understood this meant putting a bunch of desserts on one table. Lightbulb!

The sweet table has been a fixture at every bar mitzvah and Jewish wedding I've ever been to. I'm surprised to find out it's not common in the South. It's certainly not confined to Chicago. I have seen sweet tables throughout the Midwest, as far south as Cincinnati and all over the East Coast.

I won't go so far as to say it's an Italian-American tradition, too, but sweet tables have certainly figured at all of the Italian weddings and other big events that I've been lucky enough to be invited to.

LAZ wrote:

grits wrote:My first year of work here, I had to have the concept of a "sweet table" explained very slowly and patiently to me. I don't remember ever hearing that phrase when I was growing up. Finally I understood this meant putting a bunch of desserts on one table. Lightbulb!

The sweet table has been a fixture at every bar mitzvah and Jewish wedding I've ever been to. I'm surprised to find out it's not common in the South. It's certainly not confined to Chicago. I have seen sweet tables throughout the Midwest, as far south as Cincinnati and all over the East Coast.

I won't go so far as to say it's an Italian-American tradition, too, but sweet tables have certainly figured at all of the Italian weddings and other big events that I've been lucky enough to be invited to.

Oh yea, we had stuff like this. I just don't remember anyone actually calling it a "sweet table." It was one of those deer-in-the-headlights moments. Kind of like figuring out out that "pudding" in England means any dessert and does not actually refer to some sort of custard. (That last one took years, including two visits to England. I may have avoided reality since I do really like puddings and was impressed there was a country that shared my love.)

grits wrote:Kind of like figuring out out that "pudding" in England means any dessert and does not actually refer to some sort of custard. (That last one took years, including two visits to England.

Grits,

Thanks for that nugget of info, answers a question from our last visit that has been noodling away in the far back reaches of my mind.

Enjoy,
Gary

The "sweet table" at the Italian-American weddings I went to in NYC was called the Venetian Hour. In addition to the array of desserts were bottles of cordials. Aaaaaahhhhhh, Venetian Hour.....

"...adding giardinera to anything -- even hominy -- automatically makes it a Chicago recipe."

I would have found this hard to believe, but a couple weeks ago we were visiting our daughter in Pittsburgh, and visited our favorite destination, 'The Strip", which has the food importers, specialty-food places, funky restaurants, and other shops that are the most varied in the city.

I needed some hot giardinera for a recipe we wanted to do. We hit everything on the Strip, including some restaurants, and not only didn't anybody have it, none of them had ever heard of it.

This week we're in Reno, and our son, who is a pretty enthusastic cook, says nobody here has any idea what it is.

I guess it is pretty local to Chicago.

Not food, but alcohol. A stone sour. I've lived in several states and been bartender, waitstaff, and manager. Only in Illinois does anyone order (or make) a stone sour. I suppose it may have worked it's way over into near Indiana or Wisconsin, but it wasn't in the places I worked in Minnesota, Texas, or Arkansas. Rumor has it that a bartender at the Olympia Fields Country Club developed it long ago. When I worked in my family's restaurant in the seventies, I think every third drink ordered was a stone sour. Usually vodka, but sometimes amaretto, sometimes whiskey.

Oh, you just add some OJ to the sour mix and the alcohol and whiz it in the blender so it's frothy.