Egg noodles with shrimp with vegetables at Sun Wah--love that mix of crispy and squishy noodles, the slightly sweet and creamy sauce, the crunch of the veggies. Even better cold this morning as breakfast.

Blown Z wrote:Whiskey,

What is your recipe if you don't mind sharing it?

Sure, it's nothing much. I researched about a half-dozen different online recipes, and this is pretty much the easiest one I found.

12oz. breakfast sausage (I just used Jimmy Deans)
2T flour
2C milk

black pepper and crushed red pepper.

Cook sausage until no longer pink. Don't drain the fat! Add flour & stir until it's incorporated. Add the milk & simmer until it's the consistency you desire. Add pepper to taste. I added them at the same time I poured in the milk, so they could have time to flavor the gravy.

See how simple that is? Why haven't I been making this for years? I mean, a lot of pork fat never killed anyone, right?

If I may add my own sausage gravy recipe that has been a family favorite for a long time. Easy, rich and delicious, though certainly not heart-healthy:

1 lb. whole hog sausage stick (I like Tennessee Pride or Po Folks) medium spice (not sage or hot)
1/2 gallon whole milk
1/2 stick sweet cream butter
1 TBSP Frank's Red Hot sauce
1/2 cup AP flour, sifted into the skillet (if you have a sifter, if not - no biggie)

The key to full-flavored, rich and think sausage gravy, IMHO, is cooking the sausage low and slow in a heavy and deep cast-iron skillet so as to fully render the fat. I use a bread-dough cutter or an old mezzaluna to make sure the sausage gets crumbled well. You should have very dark and crispy crumbs/small chunks of sausage when fully cooked. Add the butter and allow to melt, add the Frank's (some family members ask for a little more Frank's for more kick), stir, and add the flour. Contine to cook low and slow making nice caramel-colored roux. Add the entire container of milk as you continue stirring the mixture. Increase heat to medium and cook until just below the boiling point (when the gravy starts to swirl in the skillet). Serve immediately over fresh-from-the-oven buttermilk biscuits and you have a breakfast that will stick to your ribs half the day! The Frank's serves as a spicy background note and balance for the richness.

Davooda wrote:If I may add my own sausage gravy recipe that has been a family favorite for a long time.

Here's a link to the one I use, Nick's Hunting Camp Biscuits and Gravy. Rich, peppery and decidedly not heart healthy.

Pumpernickel rye bagel from New York Bagel & Bialy, toasted lightly with their home made cream cheese on top. I want another right now.

Mike G wrote:Tomato-goat cheese quiche and vanilla cannele, Floriole Bakery, Green City Market.

They don’t get as much attention as some of the other bakeries that pop up at Green City but I am always very happy with both sweet and savory stuff I get from them. Today it was a gooey custardy scrumptious quiche, about three times as tall as your usual quiche, full of goat cheese and tomatoes. And for a sweet, a thing called a cannele, called that because it’s made in a mold like a candle, a vanilla-flavored batter baked until it has a tough outside and a custardy interior. I heard the woman who was running the stand say that the owner has been working on it for a year, but the recipes were old and rather vague, and only recently has she felt like she reached the point where it worked. She was right, it does. Not bad for $7.50.

The above described Cannelés de bordeaux is a textural marvel. The inside of the mold is lined with beeswax, which gives it the unique, slightly crunchy and deeply caramelized exterior. Inside is a rich, eggy, custard-like pastry that's somehow light and chewy at the same time. I'm not a pastry guy, but this morning's bite into one of these might turn me around.

Pecan sundae with extra hot fudge at Margies. Their fudge is perfection.

For lunch today, a large Mediterranean Salad with toasted flatbread/pita from Larsa's on Dempster in Skokie.

This time of year, when the tomatoes are good, this concoction of ripe tomatoes, cubed cucumbers & red onion slices with their wonderful viniagrette & then sprinkled with flat parsley & mint is just very, very good. And the dressing requires a sop-up from the pita.

Still in ecstacy over the most amazing egg salad sandwich in the world. Get it at Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park.

There is a God. And he's touched that sandwich .

A white peach from a Rhode Island farm stand.


What made it so wonderful was that it lived up to my very first taste of a white peach (in 1985). That momentous event took place at one of Michel Guerard's restaurants in the Landes area of southwest France.
Since that moment, I never dared hope that it could ever happen again. But it did.

Sunset Orchards
(Dan Polseno)
Gleaner Chapel Rd. (off Rt. 101)
North Scituate, R.I. 02857

Edited to include photo--JH

Dropped into Royal Malabar Catering last weekend (Saturday, I think it was).. they had a few different items ready on the day to be picked up as usual. One of them was the Pork Fry, fairly fresh off the stove, which is what I went with - and that would qualify as the best thing Ive eaten lately.

The word "fry" is a misnomer to start with IMHO - implies something silly, almost like taking a cut of meat and just dropping it in oil Doesnt sound particularly appetizing at all.

The Kerala-version, however, is completely different - and very very good. Its a mixture of fatty and lean cuts (a couple recipes Ive seen online suggest using pork-belly as half the meat). Aggressively spiced, cooked with onions, garlic, ginger, chiles, turmeric, masalas - and then eventually, I believe, sauteed with slivers of coconut and curry leaves. Malabar caters almost excusively for the Keralan community - they dont dumb down the spices or the heat, as most other Indian restaurants with a more varied clientele seem to do. The dish was complex, spicy, and occasionally nicely mouth-tingling hot.

My tastes are somewhat biased towards spices, and towards a spicy "heat" in my food -YMMV. Even so... Ive been to Honey One, Iam a regular at Uncle John's (probably 8-10 times this summer so far).. and, when fresh (at least on this particular day), if there is a finer pork dish in the city, Id like to know what it is.

c8w

Royal Malabar Catering
911 Greenwood Rd
Glenview, IL 60025
847-998-5630

The Thai-spiced shrimp appetizer at Jane's Restaurant.



a half pound of large shrimp (about eight), sauteed in a reddish sauce of thai chiles, garlic and ginger. Very nice spice level, not burning but savory-delicious. For cooling off, fresh slices of mango and cucumber and sprigs of cilantro accompany. It went very well with a glass of Mosel Riesling.

My mother-in-law just came back from New Glarus, WI with a big bag of landjager, to be divvied up amongst the families. Wonderful stuff: pairs of hard sausage with the proportions and shape of a giant-size Butterfinger, and the flavor of an ur-SlimJim.

The sausage is relatively coarse in texture: little blobs of fat and chunks of meat, dried to the point where the whole skin is snappy and oily. I can't say what the spicing is, but it had a significantly different flavor from the chubbier version I'd had from F&O a couple weeks ago.

Corn on the cob. Man, it's all good right now.

winesap raspberries from mick klug's farm at green city market. these are hands down the sweetest, most delicious raspberries i've ever tasted. the name refers to the slightly winey undertone which adds complexity to the sweetness. incredible. justjoan

The great duck at Sun Wah is a matter of course, but one thing that people don't talk enough about is Sun Wah's soups. These are few of the greatest things I've eaten recently. There is a great soupsmith is Sun Wah and she knows she's doing. Just try their plain noodle soup just for kicks and taste the clear, savory soup, crisp and fresh. The subtle taste of shrimp and pork mingle together like old friends. From there, try out their other (affordable!) soups. I recommend the chicken and corn, then hot and sour, and the seaweed soup. For those who like the congee, try the lean pork with egg. It's not explicitly noted, but the egg mentioned is a century egg. I recommend to let it sit for a while to cool and set for a unique texture.

Special Eggs "Benedict" served over crumbled bacon with baby farmers market heirloom tomatoes at Prairie Grass Cafe.

Tree ripened freestone peaches from Flamm's Orchard in Cobden, IL. Sweet and sooooo juicy. If you're going down to Carbondale or passing through the area, Flamm's is on old US Rt. 51 just north of Cobden. About 15 miles south of Carbondale. They probably will have peaches for a few more weeks. Try the overripes. They also have quite a few varieties of apples which were just starting to come in when we were there.

Fried zucchini blossoms filled with fontina cheese and sitting in a pool of tomato sauce at Piccolo Sogno. Awesome way to start a meal.

The off-menu quail egg ravioli topped with a lovely shower of white truffle from Schwa. I had read so much about it that I thought that it may be overrated, but one thing is sure. You could not overrate this dish.

The grilled lamb chops in mole at Mixteco, a new dish.

fresh raspberries and fresh goat milk ricotta sandwiched by Floriole bakery brioche that was egg battered and fried.

Grapes from somebody (Klug? I always forget unless I take a picture, dammit) who had five different types out. I bought two but they were all wonderful, just three-dimensionally flavorful, like wine you could eat. Don't miss these.

Mike G wrote:Grapes from somebody (Klug? I always forget unless I take a picture, dammit) who had five different types out. I bought two but they were all wonderful, just three-dimensionally flavorful, like wine you could eat. Don't miss these.

yes, that was Mick Klug. And yes, they are wonderful. In addition to eating out of hand, I puree them with some reduced reisling and churn into refreshing sorbet that lasts all year.

Kennyz wrote:fresh raspberries and fresh goat milk ricotta sandwiched by Floriole bakery brioche that was egg battered and fried.

A raspberry Monte Cristo... A Monte Kenny

Kennyz, had you posted about the grapes already? I thought someone did, but I couldn't find it.

Also really good from Klug today: "bubble gum" plums.

just a passing non-specific mention of local grapes here. I was indeed referring to Mick Klug, who on Wednesday had only one of the five varieties he was selling today..

Grilled corn.

I removed the husk, brushed the ears with a little olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and a few snips of fresh thyme. I had thrown a few chunks of hickory on the charcoal. The hickory infused the corn with a subtle smoke flavor which was absolutely delicious.

Jyoti

Tomato season. Finally.

Actually, I could have had some outstanding tomatoes a week and a half ago, except that I had forgotten that my heirloom tomato plant was a yellow-orange variety, and I kept waiting for the darn things to turn red. It was only when I went out to pick some of the less-wonderful red "Big Girl" type that I saw some rotting on the vine and realized that what's there is all extremely ripe, kind of a yellow-pumpkin color with a blush of red at the bottom. Sweet, low acid, meaty and juicy.

So yesterday's dinner for 8 included a salsa fresca made with yellow and red tomato, green jalapeno (also from the garden, and the hot dry weather lately has pumped up their heat nicely), purple and white onion and cilantro. A dash of salt and pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar and they were perfect.

Another couple got sliced with some basil and fresh mozz (plastic-packed from Jewel), splash of olive oil, salt and pepper.

Garden Fresh had some nicely ripe, huge california avocados (looked like Haas on steroids, while Jewel had nothing that was ripe at all), combined with salt, lime, cilantro and a couple minced chipotles in adobo, nice foil for the salsa.

Some skirt steak and chicken marinated (separately) in red wine, lime juice, worcestershire sauce, massive quantities of garlic, some cumin and chile powder, then grilled and sliced, served with the above salsa and guac, refried black beans, jack cheese, flour tortillas, and sauteed (not enough room on the grill) red bell peppers (also from the garden), white onion (not), and sliced jalapenos (yes). The jalas gave the onions a nice kick even for those who stayed away from the hot peppers, and the red peppers are hundreds of times more flavorful than grocery store ones.

And that's not all: earlier in the day MrsF made dark chocolate cupcakes with an orange-flavored cream cheese filling and chocolate buttercream frosting. Eaten with some of the 25-year port from our anniversary.

A meal for kings and queens.

The vanilla custard at Marcus Samuelson's burger kiosk in Macy's on the seventh floor. They actually make milkshakes out of it, so you can have a burger, fries, and milkshake in the loop.