Chicken Matzo Ball Noodle Soup

March 20th, 2012

Jewish Penicillin

This year here in Chicago, winter has seemingly taken a powder and spring has fully sprung with blooming daffodils, magnolias, robins, and regular temperatures in the 70′s and 80′s. It’s not even April yet when we get our usual 12-24″ sudden blizzard just in time for the Cub’s home opener.

Regardless of the glorious weather some of you may still be suffering the effects of your winter cold or virus in which case I’ve got just the cure. Nothing, I mean nothing is more wholesome, clean tasting, satisfying, and rejuvenating than a heaping bowl of Jewish Penicillin, also known as Chicken Matzoh Ball Soup. I also add noodles and would add kreplach too but then the bowl would be too damn crowded. So get a bigger bowl you’re probably thinking although the truth is I haven’t mastered making Kreplach that aren’t tough as shoe leather… yet. Any good tips are certainly welcome.

I learned this recipe in part from my ex-mother-in-law who would add hard boiled egg yolks to this soup for the annual Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Years) feast. Full disclosure, my dad was a Croatian catholic, and my mom is a German lutheran, so I hail as far away from the land of Israel as Brooklyn, NY is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin but I have always loved the richness and traditions of good Jewish cooking. From braised Beef Brisket cooked low and slow with tomatoes and onions, to my ex’s noodle kugel with raisins and cinnamon. I am also thoroughly addicted to good chopped chicken liver on a fresh poppy seed bialy. All of these foods are as firmly linked to the many holidays and traditions as roasted turkey is to Thanksgiving, albeit with far more religious significance. The great irony in all this is that mom has recently moved into a lovely nursing home run by Orthodox Jews. All of the food is strictly kosher but the administrator, Abe  informs me that if my mom has a sudden craving, he’ll smuggle in some bacon just for her.

When you make this please, please try to find shmaltz. It is the secret curative ingredient that has mystical medicinal properties. Chicken base or bouillon works in a pinch, but trust me, it just ain’t the same, and it won’t get you better.

So here are the ingredients and the recipe:

1 3 lb. fatty whole chicken or capon
3 Tbsp. schmaltz (rendered chicken fat)
1 large sweet onion
carrots
celery
parsnips
fresh dill
fresh parsley
salt, fresh ground pepper
1 pkg. of Matzoh ball mix
1 bag of egg noodles
(serves 4)

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1)  Put the chicken in a stock pot and cover with water and add a decent punch of Kosher salt. Add 3 Tbsp. of smaltz which to the uninitiated is simply rendered chicken fat which can be found in your nearest kosher grocery store. Add 1 whole large peeled and quartered onion, 3 cleaned whole celery stalks complete with leaves, and 2 big whole peeled carrots.

2)  When the stock pot begins to boil, cover, and reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about an hour or until chicken is done and the meat begins to come apart from the bones. While the chicken simmers use a large spoon to skim off the scum which comes to the surface of the pot.

3)  When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the pot, cover with foil and allow it to cool. Strain stock through a fine sieve and discard vegetables, fat, and solids. Refrigerate stock in covered pot.

4) After the stock has cooled, skim solidified fat from the stock and reheat.

5) Remove all meat from the chicken carcass being certain to discard all bones, cartilage and gristle. Cut the chicken into nice-sized toothsome chunks and set aside.

5) Clean 5 stalks of celery, remove leaves and chop celery into 1-2″ pieces. Peel 4 large carrots, halve lengthwise if they’re the fat bulk type and chop into 2-3″ pieces. Peel 3 large parsnips and roughly chop into 2″ square-ish pieces. Finely mince a handful of fresh dill and a handful of italian parsley. Add all vegetables to simmering stock. Taste the stock and correct seasoning as needed.

6) When vegetables are cooked add chicken and heat through.

7) Prepare Matzoh mix according to package instructions and chill. Boil Noodles and then walnut sized Matzoh balls in salted water until done. The matzoh balls will triple in size. Put in containers and refrigerate until needed.

When ready to serve, heat Matzoh balls and noodles in soup and serve with fresh bialys, sliced new pickles and a Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry or Cream soda.

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So there it is. Genuine Jewish Penicillin. Homemade Chicken Mazoh Ball Noodle Soup! Best eaten when you have a bad cold or any other time for that matter, and you will feel better before you know it. Gezunta heit, and may the dogs be with you.

 

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New Years Day CocaCola Ham

January 1st, 2012

Pineapple, Clove, & CocaCola Ham

This ham recipe is as easy as it is delicious and combines classic old school elements with the down-home weirdness of “co-cola” as they say in Atlanta. Plus… it’s easy, and besides basting every half hour or so, practically cooks itself, low and slow.

Start with a ham. Today’s ham is a butt portion, but a shank will work just as good. If you happen to be lazy, you can get any old ham in a can and it will work just as well, although I contend that it takes more work opening the can and getting the ham out without shredding yourself and bleeding all over the place. I also don’t happen to enjoy serving a ham that’s shaped like a ham shaped tin can, although it does have that old school charm, just like Great Aunt Millie used to serve when I was ten. One small  bonus… because the top is perfectly flat it prevents the pineapple slices from sliding off into the roasting pan.

One significant proviso is that the ham be already cured, not fresh. If you wish to use a fresh ham it will need to be brined prior to cooking. Also make sure that the ham is not one of those spiral-cut, pre-glazed jobs.

Preheat the oven to 325°f.

Now start with the ham on a rack in a deep roasting pan. Score the outer surface of the beast with a sharp knife in a 1″ diamond pattern. Press a whole clove, pointy end down into all of the places where the scored cuts intersect. Cover the top with canned pineapple slices in one layer, and secure those that look like they’ll slide off with toothpicks which you’ll remove (hopefully) before serving. Pour one half  litre of Coke over entire ham. Place on a rack in the center of the oven and cook 15-20 minutes per pound until the center of the meatiest part of the ham reaches 148°f on a meat thermometer. Don’t forget to baste with the Coke which has now become a syrup, every half hour or so. Also, if the Coke in the bottom of the pan shows signs of burning or evaporating pour in another half litre. When the ham is done, remove the toothpicks, tent with tin foil and allow to rest for twenty minutes. Slice, serve, and enjoy. Mmmmmm, hammy, old school, home cooked, goodness. Let’s hope this new year bears absolutely no resemblance to last year whatsoever.

May the dogs be with you.

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Merry Christmas… Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!

December 26th, 2011
Lucky Strike Santa

Lucky Strike Santa

 

It’s the waning hours of Christmas night and yes, this year was the longest we’d waited to put up a tree or even remotely feel festive. Sometime during the summer a container full of vintage ornaments fell to the floor and almost entirely bit the dust.

By vintage, I mean ornaments that survived a fire in the basement of my mother’s grandmother. That’s my great grandmother in case you weren’t paying attention. Some, were once passed on to her, so we’re talking a hundred years old here. Some of them scorched. Some faded, but still gorgeous ornaments. Hand-blown relics of my family history. A beautifully delicate pink, scaled fish. Small cloth fabric dolls. A tall felted boy clad in white on a bicycle, a Xmas angel, a small cloth girl with a basket of paper flowers. Finely blown painted glass coffee pots of different colors and designs. An ancient hand-blown bell, the sound of which summoned angel wings.

Last year mom and dementia lived with us. It was one wild roller-coaster ride of a Christmas with my mom insisting every half hour she needed to go for a walk up the street in the snow. When our attention would be turned elsewhere, out the door she would go with the puppy Rufus, leash-less, after her. Now she lives in the loving company of others. Miraculously the most precious things survive. The last suitable Xmas tree on the lot with a bit of creative pruning and a foot or so removed from the bottom  made it into our living room. And once again it’s the perfect tree, festooned in light, in the perfect spot, with the surviving ancient ornaments that survived yet another year.

Our hearts are warm and our belly’s are full and the new year stands squarely and massively in front of us again. Why don’t we face it with hope in our hearts, not fear, and with great “Intention”… whatever that is. And may the good guys, for  @#$%  sake, win for once.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and may the Dogs be with you.

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Pilgrims Riding the Turkey into Purgatory

November 25th, 2011

Pilgrims Ride the Turkey into Purgatory

Black Friday.

Not sure exactly how it got it’s name although I awoke to the news on TV that a mother with two small children in tow arrived at Walmart this morning armed with pepper spray. She even announced to all within earshot that she had it in her purse. Soon the melee began. When caught within the maw of dozens of other “enthusiastic” shoppers all clamoring to snag the “huge savings” on Xbox 360′s, she proceded to pepper spray her fellow shoppers and flee with the kiddies. She later excused her behavior as “competitive shopping”.

Meanhile, Sonya and I had a less conventional Thanksgiving celebration. I got the flu, Rufus had his testicles surgically removed, and Sonya braved the four hour drive with Rosebud down to the farm in Pekin to help her parents. I dined on leftover fried pork chops, tater tots, and frozen green beans with buttered breadcrumbs while I watched the climactic episode of the Harry Potter saga, drank Scotch and ate cherry Jello for dessert. Yum!

No idylic happy family get-together. No crisp, crusted, golden bird. No decadent buttered mashed potatoes and rich giblet gravy. No grandma Stellman’s traditional stuffing of dry bread, eggs, butter, celery, apples, walnuts, pork sausage, herbs and spices. No brussel sprouts. No peas. No glazed carrots. No candied yams redolent with browned marshmallows. No cheese torte! No post dinner, triptophan induced coma. No family tradition. Nothingness.

Nonetheless, I am thankful for many things.

I’ve stopped vomiting. I have a much calmer Rufus who has stopped peeing on everything as if by magic, and my lovely Sonya and Rosy, after grocery shopping for her folks, are on the road back home. Mom is safe in the arms of a loving community at Belmont Village of Glenview, and I have work. One step after the other. One day at a time. Hour by hour, minute by minute we just live our lives and pray that tomorrow nothing awful will happen and we don’t get pepper sprayed in Walmart or on our local college campus. So… on this Black Friday after this pilgrims Thanksgiving in Purgatory, may God bless us and may the dogs be with you all.  Amen.

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Pesce All’Acqua Pazza (Fish in Crazy Water)

November 9th, 2011

Pesce Alla'Aqua Pazza

Here in Chicago, the end of summer marks the time of year when there is a preponderance of fresh tomatoes.

I get a real thrill every year when faced with bushel baskets of pasta tomatoes at my local italian grocer, Caputo’s. I snag a half bushel for under ten bucks and pull out my trusty italian pomodoro “smoosher” and start blanching and skinning them. This paste will be cooked down to produce a true “dopio concentrata di pomodoro”  known hereabouts as “tomato paste”.

While processing the tomatoes is a good time to set aside a pound or two of them and make the “Fish with the Crazy Water”. Why is it called that? I don’t know… ask a Neapolitan.

Of course, on the way home from Caputo’s I stop at Burhop’s Fish Market and get the fish. I eschew Red Snapper for the more sustainable yet considerably more expensive Yellowtail Snapper or Mahi-mahi. If you’re on a budget you can use farm-raised Tilapia or Branzino also known as European Sea Bass if you can find it. Just get the freshest fish you can find and please, please, don’t use Grouper. Although delicious, it is totally overfished and if you’ve ever been eye to eye while scuba diving with one of these gentle giants, you’ll never consume another one.

This recipe is an adaptation of a recipe from Marcella Hazan’s phenomenal, award-winning classic, “Marcella Cucina”. I intend to use this wonderful cookbook until it falls apart, or Rufus (our black and white basenji puppy) eats it and I need to buy another.

I’ve added a little dry white wine judiciously to her recipe which brightens and “lifts” the flavors a bit. My favorite white wine for cooking is, believe it or not, Cinzano Dry White Vermouth. It adds a crisp, rustic quality to peasant cooking like this, plus it’s cheap and always in the bar as it only takes a drop or two to make a killer, dry martini which you can drink while you cook.

Here I will quote Marcella verbatim as she introduces the recipe because it makes my mouth water like “crazy” every time I read this:

“Water is what brings together all the seasoning ingredients, the tomatoes, garlic, chili pepper, salt, and olive oil. They simmer in it for a full 45 minutes, exchanging and compounding their flavors, producing a substance that is denser than a broth, looser, more vivacious, and fresher in taste than any sauce, in which you then cook the fish.”

So here are the ingredients and the recipe:

1 1/2 pounds fresh, ripe, pasta tomatoes
(blanched and peeled)
4 cups water
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 – 5 large garlic cloves
(I lean toward 5)
2  Tbsp. parsley
(very finely chopped)
Dried red chili pepper flakes
(1/8 tsp. or to taste)
Salt
A 1 1/2 to 2 lbs. Yellowtail Snapper, filleted with skin left on
Serve with a fresh crusty, rustic italian or sourdough loaf
(serves 4)

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1)  Set a stock pot full of water to a rapid boil. Submerge the tomatoes and blanch for a few seconds then transfer immediately to ice water. Blanching will cause the skins to slip off easily when you peel them gently with a vegetable peeler and discard. Chop the peeled tomatoes roughly retaining all of their juice and seeds. You should have about 2 cups.

2)  Select a large saute pan that will later hold the fish in one layer without overlapping. Put in the water, garlic, chopped tomatoes, parsley, chili flakes, olive oil, and salt. Cover the pan, turn up the heat to medium and simmer for 45 minutes.

3)  Uncover the pan, turn up the heat, add the white wine, and boil the liquid until it has been reduced to half its original volume.

4)  Add the fish, skin facing up. Cook for 2 minutes, then gently turn it over, using two spatulas. Add a little more salt and cook for another 12 minutes or so.

5)  Serve immediately with the bread.

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So there it is. Pesce All’Aqua Pazza. It’s crazy delicious! Serve with a nice chilled Pino Grigio or your favorite Sauvignon Blanc. May the fishes bring good wishes and may the dogs be with you.

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Fan Mail – Anthony Bourdain & Burt’s Place

June 28th, 2011

Happy Birthday Tony,

Being from Chicago, I was thrilled to see you include Burt’s Place on that episode of your terrific show, No Reservations. Although, technically in Morton Grove, Burt is a true pizza genius and his wife Sharon, is a lovely, and consummate hostess. Point of fact, Burt’s original pizza collaboration, Gulliver’s, is on the northern-most border of Chicago and is just around the corner from my house, so I’ve been smelling the fruits of Burt’s labors for over 20 years. Also worthy of props is Pequod’s Pizza another recipe created by Burt that’s practically around the corner from Burt’s Place.

Your trip to Spain is probably my favorite recent show. My wife Sonya, a sculptor, and I, watched the chocolate egg molding and melting sequence with slacked-jawed dumbfoundedness.  It was a wonderful, and transcendent demonstration of the artistic process in all of it’s quirky and serendipitous complexity.

Although on occasion  your show’s “nose to tail” emphasis, regrettably, tickles my gag reflex,  I do wholeheartedly agree that we should always be conscious of where our food comes from, and when possible, use every last delicious, bloody morsel of the tasty creature one’s harvested for one’s own sustenance should that be one’s inclination.

Your shows have also revealed an admirable social consciousness that resonates lately. Most notably, the “Haiti” episode. I sympathized with your failed yet courageous attempt to feed “everyone” and suffered along with you at the futility of attempting to do just that…

Although I would certainly appreciate “more shows” as I’m sure would your network, and your agent, I am acutely aware of the toll this “rolling smorgasborg” must take on your digestive constitution, not to mention your private time alone with your family, so Tony, I’ll watch as many shows as you give us, and enjoy reading whatever you care to write.

I close by stating how much I’ve enjoyed your recent contributions to Treme, my favorite show since Deadwood. I’m still trying to figure out the NY restaurant where the Sazerac is  thrown (Per Se, perhaps?), but I suspect Janette’s boss chef is an amalgam of several. Your prosaic voice in these scenes is a welcome addition to our Sunday evening’s favorite hour.

Anyway, please  relax and continue to enjoy all that life offers, and I will await future output as it arrives. Screenplay, perhaps?

Thanks, cheers, and may the Dogs be with you,

Dani Dudovick

"pizza for grown-ups"

Burt’s Place can be found in the Village of Morton Grove on a nondescript side street, is closed on Monday and Tuesdays, and accepts only cash. Reservations are mandatory at lunchtime (11:00a – 1:30p, Wed. – Fri.) and probably any other time as well unless you arrive at 4:30p when they open for dinner. They close at 9p. I’d give you the phone number and address but then I’d probably never be able to get in the place again.

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Father’s Day, Milwaukee 1965

June 17th, 2011

me and dad in the front yard

So here’s Dad and I posing next to the juniper bush in the front yard. More than Father’s day it was Son’s day. Being an only child, on this day of all days I got my full measure of father. Before he was distant or absent but today he was fully present and basking in his earned or unearned prominence, resplendent with gifts. That year it was a clay plaque proclaiming “Worlds Best Dad? You bet!”. Mom’s gifts were a Hallmark card, a home-cooked meal and whatever intimacies they shared at the time.

I would traverse the A&P parking lot behind our house every day at five o’clock to meet him as he got off the bus and for those brief ten minutes or so before we walked in the back door, the time was ours before the distance and his emotional absence would descend again inside our little frame house on Euclid avenue.

Looking at this photo I’d say that here I was giddy being with my dad. In his right pocket he’s reaching for his briar pipe and tobacco pouch and frozen in time we are Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and the Juniper bush is, well… just a Juniper bush but we’ll harvest the berries  later and make gin.

Dad passed September 15, 2008.

May the Dogs be with you

 

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Happy 89th Birthday, Mom.

June 16th, 2011

Joe and Dorothy have a picnic

When I look at this photo of my mom and dad in the days when they were “courting & sparking”, I can’t say that I would have ever used the words “cool” or “hot” to describe my parents before, but here, my dad (Joe) is fit, tan, and obviously happy. And there’s my “sassy” mom (Dorothy); tré chic shades, saddle shoes, bobby socks in a crisp, cotton dress. I can only guess what she’s saying to the camera. There, in the cool summer grass, is captured on film a photograph of “splendor”. There’s heat and fun there between the two of them and they eventually made me.

Today is my mom’s 89th birthday and today I can say I’m glad that I’m here. I’m not sure how she feels about still being around, but I’ve never seen the likes of my mom in this picture, nor my dad for that matter (at least when I was in the room). Fortunately, I was also spared the common adolescent trauma of catching them in flagrante delicto.

Somehow things had changed by the time I came along and things were a lot more serious. It would be many years before I learned why. Every once in a while however, I would see a glimmer of the newly minted couple pictured here reflected in old Kodachromes of them with others.

Today mom has good days and bad but now she is among a high class posse of friends attending “drum circle” and “Movies, and Wine Nite”.  She prefers white zinfandel in the jug. I know she will always be impeccably dressed and won’t go anywhere before her makeup and wig are “just right”.

Happy birthday mom, and may the Dogs be with you.

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Purity & Abstinence = Health & Happiness!??

June 14th, 2011

Public service billboard, San Miguel, Belize

Shot on a small island in Belize while on vacation with Sonya. We were tooling around town in our rented golf cart and noticed this billboard on a prominent corner. I can’t imagine any resident of the island could miss driving by this message at least four times a day.

I love the multi-sized and colored all caps typography. Helvetica Extended or possibly Eurostyle. I also love using small illustrative icons. In this case a doctor with a huge hypo, a wedding couple, and a minister at his pulpit. Could the message of this missive be any more clear. Propaganda made perfect.

Let’s break it down…what follows is the dictionary definitions:

Purity – (noun) Freedom from immorality especially of a sexual nature.

Abstinence– (noun) The fact or practice of restraining oneself from indulging in something, typically sex or alcohol.

Health – (noun) The state of being free from illness or injury (also used to express friendly feelings toward ones companions before drinking).

Happiness – (noun) State of mind related to pleasure, satisfaction or contentment.

Your thoughts???

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This food dictionary is a word masterpiece.

June 9th, 2011

The second and fourth editions.

Whether you’re a master chef, a home cook, a food freak, or just a master at crossword puzzles, you will become addicted to The New Food Lover’s Companion now in it’s fourth edition.

This gem has been carefully researched and written by Sharon Tyler Herbst, someone who clearly loves her some food. The book’s second edition cover reads, “Comprehensive definitions of over 4000 food, wine and culinary terms”. The current fourth edition has swelled to 6000 definitions. Herbst is a past president of  the International Association of Culinary Professionals and knows her subject matter nose to tail. So far, she has penned no less than eight food and wine bestsellers one of which has the delicious name Never eat more than you can lift.

The New Food Lover’s Companion includes an appendix brimming with useful information like weights & measures, emergency ingredient substitutions, and butchering diagrams for Lamb, Pork, Veal, and Beef. I was mildly disappointed at the omission of Poultry although once you know “breast, wing, leg, thigh, neck and back” you’ve got birds covered.

One thing that troubles me is the design change that has occurred in the new edition. The earlier version of the book’s cover is simply more… well “bookish” and much more iconic than the new version. It is illustrated with a whimsically loose Milton Glaser-esque colored pen and ink drawing of a crossed knife, fork, and spoon tied in a bright yellow ribbon with a strawberry impaled on the fork. The typography is simplicity itself. Clean, classic, stylish and extremely legible. The new edition, regrettably has none of the charm or wit of the original and the cover photography consists of a collection of commonplace herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables meticulously arranged on what looks like a textured, Tuscan tabletop, practically lit, and competently photographed. This coupled with it’s red, and green color palette mistakenly suggests a compendium of “Italian” food items found in nonna’s pantry, not the definitions of 6000 food terms spanning the entire culinary universe. The headline typography is large, lackluster, and an example of “style by Photoshop”.

OK, so what’s the difference you might ask. The primary difference between the two is the latter cover’s pure lack of thoughtfulness. It is probably also a classic example of design “in-sourcing” which due to economics hires an in-house department of “digital experts” not designers. This coupled with a muscular (read “bullying”), marketing expert “directing” the creative process and you have a product that invariably will sell from a budget bin but never evokes the wonder, and wisdom of the literature found between the covers. It is dull, and “decorated”, not “designed”. A poor, sad, costume for this blissfully, rich and enduring word cornucopia. May edition five go back to it’s roots. It is truly a classic book which deserves a classic design.

As much as I long for the “good old days” of Herb Lubalin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast (some of my design gods and mentors), I believe that what is seriously lacking in design today is simply a lack of literate, tasteful thinking, or probably just a lack of time (based on the bottom line). There are plenty of great, smart, talented designers out their that purely design but can’t begin to code Flash, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML5 AND CSS3. One company seen yesterday on the internet seeks an award-winning designer and “expert” at HTML5 and CSS3 and these standards are less than a year out of beta. BTW, they’re probably paying 10-20k per annum. There is no budget to buy brains and talent anymore, just more output for less money. And to that my friends I must wield my motto, “Good, Fast, or Cheap. Pick two.” and may the Dogs be with you.

 

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