On Sunday, we had a mostly quiet day, with me sanding our ghastly orange table (with an extremely obdurate paint) and Patrick working on a website for a band. Around the end of the afternoon, though, we grew restless and decided to go out for a long walk with nowhere in particular as a destination. We strolled east on Devon, turned south somewhere before we hit Broadway, and walked down till our straight-south line was broken by the St. Boniface Cemetery around Argyle. It was just on a whim (and the possible hopping-on to the 22 bus) that we turned west, then trod north on Clark.
As it turned out, it was a lucky turn. Just after a few minutes since we'd started our northward march on Clark, a group of about six or seven women stopped us at an intersection south of Andersonville. One of them showed us a square-shaped brochure and explained that they're giving us the ticket for an Andersonville Dessert Crawl, while the rest of the group milled around us, all of them looking cheerfully back and forth between their spokesperson and us. Apparently, a lot of the restaurants and businesses in Andersonville were offering little samples of sweets as a fund raiser for the "good cause."
Though we were a bit surprised, of course we jumped at the opportunity. Free desserts are always welcome in our book. "You have to promise that you'll do this, though," said the spokeswoman, and we graciously promised that we would. Patrick and I thanked her profusely and we parted ways. From a short study of the brochure, it appeared that we missed a few businesses south of us, so we decided to walk all the way to the south end of the area and start from there. The first destination was the Wooden Spoon, a very cute shop selling baking and cooking tools. Inside, the folks from the yet-to-open Cocina de Frida were serving strawberry and pineapple dessert tamales, neatly wrapped up in little corn husks.
After that, we tried dessert after dessert, sweets after sweets in various restaurants and venues.
Okay... this is a trifle horrifying. Did we eat all this? In an hour or so? Well, to be sure, we took home the lemon-iced cookies and pumpkin crumble bar, which were wrapped up in a transportable form, but that's still a lot of sugar and fat. No wonder I was merely an inch from getting a heartburn as we walked back home under the bright moon--out of the sheer sense of caloric duty, for our legs were pretty tired by this point. The scarier thing, though, is that the list is not in any way comprehensive.
We missed the chocolate kahlua mousse from Fireside, raspberry chambord brownies a la mode from Ravenswood Pub and baklava from Taste of Lebanon, which are all served along the Ravenswood Ave., which we decided to be a bit too out of the way for our exhausted legs. We also didn't have the tiramisu from Calo (they ran out), and didn't try the doggie treat at Scrub-a-dub-dub (for obvious reasons). Erickson's Delicatessen had Swedish candies in baskets, but we didn't get that, either. We somehow missed Anne Sather's brownies, too. So, if we'd had time, energy and stomach space for everything on offer, we'd have had 26--that's twenty-six, my dear--different desserts from the same number of Andersonville businesses in a matter of a few hours.
And even scarier than that is the fact that we shared the portions. we had only one ticket, so in most places, we got only one piece of the dessert and shared it. I can't imagine how stuffed (and eventually sick) I would have been, had we had one ticket for each of us. So, if you're thinking of joining the event next year, I'd suggest either sharing a ticket with someone or bringing a bunch of Ziploc containers so you can save for later what won't spoil too quickly. I've got more to say about the Dessert Crawl, but it's running long, so I'll save that for tomorrow.
Last weekend, we had a little overnight trip to Door County. The fall colors were starting to set in in some places, and the lake water was amazingly clear. We drove around, enjoying the crisp, autumnal air, spent a few calming moments on a serene cobblestone beach, admired the Milky Way with our mouths open, and generally got refreshed. It makes me feel old to say that I really loved Door County, but I did.
On the way back to Chicago from the tip of the peninsula, we stopped at a farm market, operated by the Seaquist Orchards, and picked up half a peck of honey crisp apples. They were so sweet and crisp--as their name implies--that they had the same power to tempt us to eat them impulsively as chocolates and cookies do. Though I'm not a big fruit eater in my normal life, those apples made me one, if temporarily. I've had them piled up on the dining table, and they're already down to two-. (Apparently it's the case with other people, too, for we saw quite a few farm markets and pick-your-own orchards on the peninsula emphasizing honey crisps on their signs.)
The apples are so good we've been eating them fresh, but I did play with them once. Using some leftover wonton wrappers, I made appetizer/dessert wontons.
I'd come across an interesting idea of using shichimi, Japanese seven-spice mix, in sweet desserts, and I'd wanted to try it. (Unfortunately I don't remember where I read about that idea.) The spicy kick and the citrusy aroma of the shichimi I had at hand seemed perfect for pairing with apples, so I jumped at the opportunity. For the filling base, I mixed softened cream cheese, some sugar and a pinch of shichimi. To bridge the spice mix and the apple, I decided to fold in a thin slice of ginger in each wonton. After wrapping the shichimi cream cheese mixture, diced apples and ginger slices, I shaped the wontons into small parcels, and deep-fried them till crispy.
The result: I could have used a lot more shichimi. When I taste-tested the shichimi-sprinkled cream cheese before frying, it had an unmistakable aroma and heat of the shichimi. But apparently the frying process made much of that heat and aroma evaporate into thin air, and the finished wontons had only the slightest hint of shichimi left. This was a disappointment, but there was a nice surprise as well: the ginger slices lightened (jazzed up, might I say?) the whole thing fantastically. I thought the ginger would be a nice, refreshing touch in this fat-heavy combination of cream cheese and deep-frying, but the ginger worked even better than I expected. Cooking also brought out the tartness in the apple that wasn't very pronounced when eaten fresh.
We had the wontons as an appetizer, but this would be a nice dessert, maybe paired with vanilla ice cream (drool...). Next time I make this, I'll use a lot more shichimi and see how that works.
Wow, was what I said.
I came across an incredibly easy and fast recipe for custard pudding on a Japanese food blog, and tried it yesterday. According to the recipe, it required one of those fancy Le Creuset pots, which have become a huge fad in Japan in the four years I've been absent from that country. Born rebellious, however, I haven''t felt too eager to jump on that bandwagon (although I'm quite fond of the cute shapes and vivid colors of these pots and pans), so I don't own one. The recipe was to boil some water in a Le Creuset pot, place small cups of custard pudding in the boiling water, keep the pot boiling for 3 minutes and leave it alone for 20 minutes with the lid on. The high heat-retention rate of the Le Creuset would allow the pudding to cook gently at the right temperature, which prevents formation of texture-roughening steam bubbles. So, the pot only needs to be heat-retentive, I thought. I gave my non-stick pasta pot a try. And it worked fantastic.
Since I figured my pot would lose more heat more quickly than the fantabulous Le Creuset, I extended the boiling time to 5 minutes, and left the pot (and the pudding) alone for 20. After a few hours of cooling in the fridge, my pudding came out fantastic. The texture was rich smooth, the flavor largely intact (probably thanks to the shorter cooking time), and contrary to my instinct, it was cooked through. (As a comparison, it normally takes more than 45 minutes in an oven for a pudding to cook.) I didn't have to tinker with the oven temperature during cooking, and I didn't have to do the cumbersome bake-bath thing (where you place pudding cups in a vat filled with hot water, which can spill all over your tender feet). Except for the hassle of carefully lowering the small cups into the boiling water with my clumsy (and trembling) hands without burning my wrists at the edge of the pot, the method was amazingly easy and yet the result was amazingly good. And I'm guessing that this method should work with most pudding recipes with minor tinkering of boiling and resting time.
The only thing I had to be careful about was the water level. Since I had three different kinds of cups, I had to remove some of the boiling water so that the boiling water won't get into any of them. Some water did end up getting into the shortest cup, and that made the surface pretty rough (which is why the photographed pudding has whipped cream and Mexican cane sugar syrup on top to cover up the blemished face). But beneath the surface, the pudding was fine. I'm mind-boggled by the ease and quickness of this recipe, and am definitely be making more puddings according to this, if only to show the Le-Creuset-equipped little madams of Japan. Ha!
It's strange how spotty one's familiarity with her city of residence can be. As for me, I frequent only certain parts of Chicago and feel as if I knew Chicago pretty well. But every once in a while, the city opens up a whole new neighborhood in front of me and grins, challenging my rather arrogant notion that I already know the city. It's a good thing, I suppose, for finding yet another face of this city keeps me busy (with stores and restaurants to explore) and entertained. Albany Park has been one of those blind spots for me--and for Patrick as well. It's fairly close to Rogers Park, but somehow we'd totally missed the area. That changed last weekend, when we decided to bike down California after lunch at a fantastic Georgian bakery on Devon, just to see what it's like along the road.
Soon we switched to the bike path along the river, and found ourselves on Lawrence. Remembering that we'd seen a short, heavily Middle-Eastern stretch on Kedzie in a neighborhood that otherwise seemed mainly Latino and Korean, we decided to bike down Kedzie from there. Within a block or so, we saw the long, green awning of the Al Khyam Bakery and Grocery. Inside this dimly lit Lebanese grocer were row after row of Middle Eastern ingredients: grape leaves conserved in olive oil, bags of semolina flour (this seemed to be under their own name, along with many other grain-based products), myriad jars of spices and spice mixes, colorful boxes of sweets (which, of course, includes many flavors of halva), and various teas, just to name a few. In the back, huge chunks of zabiha/halal beef and lamb sat quietly in a large glass case, along with bucket-sized containers of different olives and pickles.
The largest attraction of them all was, however, along the street-facing windows. By a tall, ancient iron oven, there was a few long showcases full of Middle-Eastern sweets, all of them gleaming with dewy honey. Some looked like familiar baklava, and some sported shredded philo dough delicately warpped around some divine mixture of nuts and honey, while others were shaped like flowers, with twisted philo dough gently cupping a few pieces of pistachios in the middle. They all looked absolutely gorgeous, but my eyes were pegged to a large, round, flat cake that I'd never seen before. When I asked the dark-haired guy behind the counter, he confessed that he didn't know how its name (that sounded like "kenafa") is spelled in English.
"I know it in French, Française," he said and smiled. He pointed at the cake in a large, shallow pan: "It has cheese inside." Wow. Cheese in Lebanese cake? I never knew.
"I'll probably be able to look it up online," I said. Certainly Française would be beyond me. Trying (in vain) to remember what crooked, colonial relationship Lebanon and France have had in the recent history, I jotted down "kenafa" in my notebook and asked for a small slice. (Later, through some googling, I found out that it was knafe, a Lebanese specialty made with fresh cheese called kenafa, semolina and honey.) Patrick asked for a piece of baklava.
"That's not baklava," the guy corrected. "It has cream in it." Cream? Wow.
Al-Khyam Bakery definitely extended beyond my limited knowledge of Middle-Eastern baking. Using dairy products (other than butter, I mean) in pastries was of course novel, but that was not all: they also had sublime butter cookies called "grhybe" or "ghoraibi." (It took me quite a while to figure out the correct spelling from what I scribbled in my notebook from the kind baker's pronunciation: goravy.) Both knafe and the cream-filled baklava impostor were very, very good, but the grhybe was a notch or two above them. I'm not sure how they make these awesome cookies, but it seemed to have two layers: the rough, nutty inside and the incredibly delicate, melt-in-your-mouth outside that resembled snow ball cookies. They were sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Mary Luz Mejia of Suite 101 says that good Lebanese pastries can stand up against the world-renowned French pastry making, and I have to agree with her. The grhybe I had from the Al-Khyam was nothing short of excellent.
Al-Khyam had a small restaurant attached to it, and I'm curious to try their food in the near future. Also, according to this article, Al-Khyam's thin, Lebanese-style pita is a favorite of many Middle-Easterners living in the Chicago region. I have to try those, too... A day after we explored a bit of Albany Park, we went back to the area for a nice Persian dinner, but I'll write another post for that one; I suppose this is long enough.
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Al-Khyam Bakery and Grocery
4746 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago, IL (just south of Lawrence)
773.583.3099
Pitting a quart of cherries is a lot of work, is what I learned yesterday. Well, "learned" may not be the best word, for I'd figured that would be the case, but still, I didn't realize how much time it took to cut these beautiful, ruby-red orbs in half and dig out their pits embedded in the soft, translucent flesh. The tart cherries were so juicy that the bright-red liquid ran down my fingers, past my wrists all the way to my elbows. I had to periodically stop the work and go wash myself in the kitchen sink.
We'd picked up the tart cherries at, yep, you've guessed it, the Green City Market. One of the farmers said it was their first cherry crop, but I couldn't believe it; the market was literally piled with cartons of plump cherries of varying shades of red. The morning light that danced on their glossy, round surface was a photographer's delight. If they'd been only starting, I couldn't imagine what it'd be like when the cherries are in full season. Eying at the beautiful display of tart cherries in a stand, Patrick reminded me of the Dufour Pastry Kitchens' frozen puff pastry dough we'd picked up a few months ago at Whole Foods.
"Do you want a cherry pie?" I teased asked him.
"Cherry pie! Yummm!" was his answer. Watching the familiar, tastiness-induced smile spread over his face, I finally got over the apprehension that I might ruin the special pastry dough that carried the hefty price tag of almost $12 a small package. (I'm a much better--and experienced--cook than a baker.) But the day of fear was over. The dough needed to be used before it went stale anyway, so now was the time. Cherry pie it was. We picked up a carton of tart cherries, wandered around some more in the breezy market and went home.
I didn't bake the promised cherry pie right away. For one thing, we went out to a prairie preserve in the afternoon, and I was exhausted by the time we got home in the evening (though I did cook dinner, using the fresh produce from the farmers market, for which I gave myself a pat on the back). Sunday was not that different, though our destination was more urban than natural. By Monday, though, I was restless; the cherries must be quickly losing their sweetness and flavor even in the fridge. The pie had to be made. I couldn't waste both the pastry dough and the cherries. I put aside whatever premonition I had over my not-so-great baking skills, set up a pitting station by the computer monitor, put on Mr. Incredible, and started pitting. (The animated feature turned out to be a mediocre choice for the task; it relied more on visual information than I'd remembered it, and I quickly lost track of what was going on in the retired hero's world as initial dialogs were supplanted by loud thuds, thumps and ka-booms.)
As the milk for the custard slowly warmed up on the stove, I studied the dough package. The ingredients list was positively promising: the first ingredient was butter (which was verified by the 120 calories coming from fat out of 170 in one serving). The rest were wheat flour, water, salt and lemon juice. Very clean. When the custard was done, I unfolded the pastry dough on a floured cutting board and cut them into four large rectangles. I'd said "pie," but it was going to be turnovers (for my lack of patissiery skills). I slapped on the custard on one side of each rectangle and placed halved cherries in neat rows on top. Some of the egg whites left from making custard, which only calls for egg yolks, was used to seal the folded pastries. Even with the day's cooler temperature, the pastry dough behaved surprisingly well. It didn't stick to the cutting board, knife or my hands, and didn't lose its shape as quickly as it could have. This seemed even more surprising when we bit into the finished turnovers--I had no idea how a dough so buttery and delicate could stay so obliging for such a long time.
When they came out of the oven, I couldn't believe my eyes (and my nose): the pastries looked like they'd been baked by a professional patissier, with its sides almost bursting out in golden strata, little dribble of hot-pink cherry juice still bubbling here and there. And most of all, the fresh, buttery aroma of the pastry shell itself. I regretted my decision to bake them when Patrick was out at work--it would have been such a treat for him to inhale that fresh-off-the-oven goodness. When he came home, though, we shared a turnover, reheated in the toaster to perk up the slightly moistened shell. We had one each this morning, for a sumptuous breakfast. I'm guessing that we'd have to fight hard to decide who's going to get that one remaining turnover on the counter. They turned out to be as tasty as they looked. You might believe it if I told you that I got them from some expensive, fancy bakery tucked away somewhere in a up-and-coming neighborhood. But then again, they did come from an expensive bakery (in New York, of all places)--the dough was professionally and expensively made, the cherries grown by dedicated local organic farmers, and the eggs and milk in the custard also organic, if not local. Each turnover probably cost us about $4 or so just for the ingredients. But was it worth the price? Absolutely. I'd pit those cherries again and again, and stir gallons of custard till my arms hurt, if only to fill that amazing pastry shell.
...I have to admit, though, I'm in complete awe of those people, amateur and professional, who not only pit their cherries but also make their own pastry dough from scratch. That's just a lot of work!
Yesterday, I posted a super-easy recipe for shiratama dango, dessert rice dumplings from Japan, on Gapers Block Drive Thru, here, but I wanted to follow it up with a slightly more complicated presentation of the same versatile dumplings. (For the explanation of the shiratama dango and how to make them, see that post.)
The traditional way to enjoy shiratama dango (which roughly translates to "white pearl dumplings") is to dress them with a mixture of soybean flour, sugar and a touch of salt, or with the ubiquitous sweet red bean paste. I modified the sweet red bean paste for this recipe.
Shiratama Dango with Roasted Jewel Yam Paste, Orange Ginger Syrup (for three to four people)
First, roast the whole jewel yam in an oven for 5 hours at 200 degrees. Slow-roasting the yam will bring out its sweetness and condense its otherwise subtle flavor. When it's cooked through, peel it by hand and mash through a strainer into a small saucepan. On a low heat, mix 3 tablespoons of sugar into the yam paste, and let the moisture escape for a while, stirring constantly. Cool the paste in the fridge.
For the syrup, heat 1/4 cup of water in a small saucepan. Throw in sliced and crushed ginger, dried orange peel and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Simmer down until the liquid becomes syrupy. Cool the syrup in the fridge.
When the paste and the syrup are nice and cool, start the dumplings. Mix water into the shiratamako (sweet rice flour) little by little. The best way to mix them is to use your hand, and when the dough is "tender as earlobe," stop adding water. (The above amount is just for an idea. Adjust the amount for yourself, aiming for a dough that's not powdery but doesn't stick to your hands too much. Drier dough is easier to handle.) Meanwhile, boil 2 cups of water in a saucepan. When the dough has the right texture, form it into small balls--about 1 inch in diameter--and flatten them between your palms. Make a dent in the middle so the dumplings will cook evenly.
Drop the dumplings one by one into boiling water. They'll sink to the bottom at first, but they'll float to the surface when they're done. When they come up to the surface, take them out with a slotted spoon and cool in a bowl of cold water. (Don't put them in the fridge, because excessive chill makes them toughen.) Assemble the dumplings, yam paste and ginger syrup in a nice dessert bowl and serve. The dumplings have a tender yet resilient texture, and retain the subtle hint of its rice origin in flavor. The kicky heat of the ginger is pretty nice in this otherwise sweet dessert. Best with hot green tea!
The overall best bakery in Chicago may be the Red Hen Bakery--or it may be the bakery section of the M. Henry. And I'm sure there are other hidden gems, like that elusive baking genius who purportedly sells his divine bread on the streets of Chicago (I searched for this guy, but couldn't find the article...) But when it comes to turnovers, the winner is the one that keeps a low profile.
The bakery is in a desolate stretch of car dealers and strip malls in the Lincolnwood suburbia. Tucked between a Mercedes-Benz dealer and probably a small factory of some sort, it looks like a small factory itself. And that's not too far from the truth: Rolf's Patisserie, the awesome bakery in question here, is basically a baking facility with a nondescript store attached to the front. Even the store section doesn't show much attention in the decorative department: white linoleum floor, fluorescent lights, no cutsy baskets with red-and-white checkered cloth. But that's okay, because their turnovers are to die for.
The filling is nice; tart, sweet and cinnamony. But the true charm of Rolf's turnovers is the crust. It's flaky, but not dry and crumbly. The crust still has the resilience that's a proof of a good pie crust. Just one bite into the buttery crust is enough to tell you of the high quality of the butter they use (and of the generous amount of it, I presume). There's just enough icing on it to give it a sweet kick. I've never had a better turnover in my four years in Chicago, if not in my whole life. My another favorite is the twisted and pretzel-shaped almond pie with lots of sliced almonds and thin thread of icing. Patrick loves their chocolate croissant.
Rolf's seem to do a lot of business outside of their storefront shop. I've seen their out-of-this-world butter cookies and a few European-style cakes in Whole Foods, and can easily imagine other gourmet grocers and restaurants doing business with them. (Come to think of it, I think I first visited their store after utterly amazed by the butter cookies I got from Whole Foods.)
When we go there for the pastries in the morning, we often encounter local elderies chatting away with their pastries and cups of free coffee (when you buy pastries) in front of the large glass window. The store women usually congregate behind the counter filled with colorful cakes, chatting and giggling as they bag cookies and pack cakes into large boxes. Customers come and go, often picking up their special order of birthday cakes and trays of petite fours for get-togethers. It's thoroughly low-key, thoroughly unpretentious--and thoroughly delicious.
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Rolf's Patisserie
4343 Touhy Ave., Lincolnwood, IL
847-675-6565
© Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved. Don't even think about trying it!
