Foodie Lawyer

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

We had a really quick trip to Evanston, IL last weekend.  Evanston is the first suburb north of Chicago located on Lake Michigan.  It’s also the home of Northwestern University.  It has a cool little downtown with a couple of high-rises, lots of shops and tons of great restaurants.  Beautiful public beaches are just a short walk from downtown.  It’s a great little city and we had fun exploring it.

The eating portion of our Evanston tour began with lunch on a patio (the weather was glorious there last weekend — we ate every meal outside) at a tapas place.  Dan researched the restaurant before we went, so we felt compelled to follow reviewers’ recommendations to try the bacon-wrapped dates, even though it’s not something we typically would order.  The perfect match of savory and sweet, they were our favorite bite of the entire lunch.

The next stop on our food tour was a charming little Italian “trattoria.”  Although we both enjoyed our entrees (Dan had the bronzini and I had the shrimp risotto), the hands-down best food of the evening was the homemade meatballs appetizer.  Rich (but not too rich), meaty flavor with a sweet (but not too sweet) tomato sauce — the meatballs were just right.

Even though we were still full from a late breakfast, we couldn’t leave Evanston without trying the highly-recommended Edzo’s burger.  In addition to the regular (fresh, never frozen) beef that is cut and ground in-house each morning, Edzo’s offers beef “upgrades” of locally-raised and/or grass fed beef that you can order either “griddled” (thinner patty cooked on a griddle) or “char”  (cooked on a grill.)  We split an upgraded char burger with classic garnishes (cheddar, lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion.)  It was one of the best (if not THE best) burgers we’ve ever had.  Perfection.  We’re just bummed we didn’t have the time or belly room to try one of their many varieties of fries (garlic fries, “angry” fries, buffalo fries, “crazy” fries, oh my!) or hand-dipped shakes (nutella, oreo, peanut butter, as well as other specialty and seasonal flavors.)  I just noticed on their menu that they also have hot dogs and sandwiches that are probably pretty amazing too.  No wonder this little burger joint is touted as one of the best restaurants in town.

We arrived back in Big D to find our first crop of home-grown okra so far this season.  A couple of them should have been picked a little earlier (you can tell they are over-ripe if they make a loud crunch when you cut into them, which means the texture will be too woody to eat), but the other two were still good and made a nice (tiny) addition to our zucchini and tomato medley that we cooked with our parchment-roasted tilapia this week.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Inspired by this post from Michael Ruhlman, we tried a new (to us) method of preparing eggs for breakfast.  We are fans of Le Creuset and use our Dutch oven at least twice a week, so we couldn’t resist purchasing a set of these mini cocettes.  (In case you’re curious, “cocette” means small fireproof dish in which individual portions of food are cooked and served.  It also means prostitute or promiscuous woman.  Insert bad dirty joke here.)  The dishes are stoneware and oven-safe.  Cooking the eggs this way was really easy — we just put some thinly sliced ham in the bottom, cracked 2 eggs over the ham, added a bit of green chile sauce leftover from dinner the night before, topped it all off with grated cheddar cheese and baked it in the oven heated to 325 degrees for about 15 minutes.  The cocettes cool down surprisingly fast, so there is no need to transfer the finished eggs to a plate — just serve them in the cocettes.  The eggs were really good, although there was a bit of extra liquid in the finished dish, perhaps from the green chili sauce.  The cocettes came with a cookbook, so we plan on trying other recipes in these tiny one-pot-wonders, in addition to other variations of egg dishes.

Speaking of green chiles, it’s one of our favorite times of year again — Hatch green chile time!  As usual, our Central Market goes all out, hosting their own Hatch festival, complete with recipes, specialty foods made with Hatch chiles, and of course, the chiles themselves — hot and mild, fresh and roasted.  You may have noticed from our weekly menu last week that we incorporated Hatch chiles into just about every dinner, and we didn’t get sick of them at all.  The chiles will be available from Central Market through August 20, so we’ll be back to stock up on our supply to portion out and freeze for use throughout the year.  And if there is a Chuy’s restaurant where you live, be sure to stop by for Hatch green chile food (and drink!) specials during their festival from August 19 to September 8.

Dan had a quick trip to San Jose, CA this week for work.  Any time we go to that area of the country, we are always impressed by the perfect weather, picturesque scenery and laid-back vibe.  The distance from our family and friends, as well as the high cost of living preclude us from ever seriously considering a move there, but we always enjoy visiting.  And “trying on” a different city in another part of the country to wonder whether we could love living there is a fun thing to do.

While out and about last weekend, we stopped by Gordon Biersch for a late lunch and discovered a new favorite “small plate” offering called Mediterranean nachos:  flatbread chips topped with artichoke spread, tomato, olives, cucumber, roasted red pepper, pepperoncini, feta cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.  Creative AND delicious.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

If you follow this blog much, you might be aware that we have an annual tradition of meeting my parents in Houston over Labor Day weekend for what we fondly refer to as the “Baseball Extravaganza.”  A new tradition was born this weekend, when we meet my parents and brother J in Minneapolis to watch the Astros take on the Twins.  Although the ‘Stros lost, a good time was had by all and we hope to do it again next year and beyond.  As we’ve mentioned before, Minneapolis is a surprisingly (to us, the first time we went) nice city and if you’ve never been, we highly recommend you go (but probably not in the winter.)  In the summer, Minneapolis is a pretty glorious place to be.  When we were there, the high temperatures were in the 70s (about 30 degrees cooler than what we are currently experiencing in Dallas) with sunny skies and blissfully cool evenings.  Downtown Minneapolis is clean, with lots of flowers and greenery in planters along the buildings and streets.  And if you like food at all, Minneapolis is crawling with tons of amazing restaurants.  We had a hard time deciding among so many great options, but ended up having dinner at Crave, brunch at Hell’s Kitchen and breakfast at Manny’s, all of which were excellent.  The ballpark in Minneapolis is also quite impressive, and serves a mean hot dog, as well as one of the best (and only) “slow-roasted pulled turkey” sandwiches we’ve ever tasted.  Many thanks to J for hosting the first-annual “Minneapolis Spectacular!”

The upside to the Astros losing on Friday night was the post-game fireworks show that we could see from our hotel room window (while sitting on the window ledge and craning our necks to peer between buildings, but still — fireworks!)  It was an impressive display.

We’re always looking for new week-day breakfast options that are healthy, quick, easy and delicious, with a bit of protein to help keep us full until lunch.  This homemade egg, sausage and cheese sandwich fits all these criteria.  It’s healthy because we used turkey kielbasa (leftover from our chicken & rice), mostly egg whites, low-fat cheddar and whole wheat English muffins (we almost always have these in our freezer, ready to toast, no thawing necessary.)  And our mini, nonstick skillet makes it easy to cook the eggs in the perfect, sandwich-friendly shape.  Crack the egg in the hot skillet (no butter or oil needed) and season with salt & pepper, while heating the sausage with cheese on top to melt in another skillet and toasting the muffins in the toaster, and you have a better-for-you “McMuffin”-style breakfast ready in about 5 minutes.

Gladiolus (“gladioli?” “gladioluses?”) are in-season, which means they are plentiful and cheap.  I bought 10 stems for about $5 at the grocery store last week, which gives us pretty orange blooms in several different vases throughout the house.  In addition to trimming the bottoms of the stems to get the right height for your vase, if you trim the tops (the flowering part of the stems) by cutting them at the top-most bud where you see some color, then the existing blooms should open up a lot more than they would otherwise.  True story:  for a long-ago career day as a kid, I drew a picture of myself working as a florist.