Red-lentil soup inspired my love of the brothy dish, both for its natural flavor and for its unparalleled comforting qualities -- in fact, so much so that my house has become known among friends as the "Soup Kitchen," and friends will randomly text while in the neighborhood to ask what's cooking.
I discovered red-lentil soup rather late in life, during my college years, at Sultan's Market, a small but fiercely beloved Mediterranean spot in Chicago's Wicker Park. Braving the bristly winter weather with a bowl of the soup to-go made my walk home doable, whatever obstacles the weather was throwing my way (and these usually included numbingly harsh winds).
And coming home to a spicy bowl of this stuff warmed was inevitably a body- and soul-warming experience. Although I'm fond of preserving the natural flavor of the red lentil by cooking it up in a soup with sparing ingredients (namely broth, garlic, onion and a touch of cumin), you can't go wrong with hardly any variety of the ultimate soothing concoction. Blogger Whitney in Chicago makes hers with red pepper flakes and chipotle, ups the heartiness factor with the addition of rice, and artfully tops it all off with slivered almond and zesty Feta. You should try her recipe -- I wholeheartedly back her in dubbing it a surefire "cure for darkness."
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Community service has gone to the birds. Or, for some critics, at least the Chicago legal system has after a judge told a defendant he could either do 100 hours community service or bring him some jerk chicken.
When Darrius Logan plead guilty to misdemeanor battery and criminal trespass charges in August, he told Associate Judge Robert Livas that he'd already worked 100 unpaid "community service" hours at Uncle Joe's Jerk Chicken, a South Side Chicago Jamaican restaurant chain. The judge told him to come back in two months with proof he'd completed the community service elsewhere or to bring back enough chicken to feed the court room, the Chicago Tribune reports.
"If you walk in with enough chicken to feed everybody, I'll accept these community service hours," Livas said, according to court transcripts from Aug. 4 obtained by the Tribune. "If you don't, I'm not taking any of them."
A famous Chicago nightclub is facing allegations of racial discrimination after claiming to ban African-American students for violating the dress code while white students wearing the same type of clothing were let inside, CNN.com reports.
Six African-American students from Washington University in St. Louis were allegedly kept outside Original Mother's Bar for violating the dress code -- for wearing baggy jeans -- while hundreds of their white classmates were let in, in one case wearing the very same jeans,
Mother's Bar personnel said the excluded students violated the dress code by wearing baggy jeans, Washington University senior class president Fernando Cutz told CNN.com, but when a white student and a black student swapped jeans and tried to get in, the white student was let through while his black classmate was still banned.
The students filed complaints with the Chicago Human Rights Commission, the Illinois Attorney General, the U.S. Department of Justice and other groups.
Original Mother's bar did not return calls from CNN.
McDonald's at Chicago's Navy Pier. Photo: jwrb,Flickr.
A Chicago man has filed a lawsuit against McDonald's Corporation after he says he swallowed a gold earring in his sandwich.
The man purchased the sandwich on Aug. 11 from the McDonald's at Chicago's Navy Pier, according to the suit filed on Wednesday in the circuit court of Cook County, Ill.
Can a daily dose of chopped beef really make you stupid?
That's what one Chicago food writer claims, after eating burgers for 65 days straight for Chicago Magazine. "The onslaught of red meat did what drugs and alcohol and fatherhood could not: It made me stupid," Jeff Ruby writes in a humorous piece entitled "Burgers Made Me Dumb."
Ruby chalks up the bouts of stupidity with "a mild case of cognitive dysfunction syndrome. CDS (aka brain fog)."
Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug's. Photo: William Couch/ Flickr.
Frankfurter maestro Doug Sohn, the man behind the beloved Chicago eatery Hot Doug's, is a stickler for putting the same care into his hot dog toppings that a top chef would a béarnaise sauce.
Sohn is a trained chef who bypassed life in a haute restaurant to grill haute dogs. He's been on the wiener beat for nearly a decade, and remains an undeterred champion of foie gras in the wake of a since-overturned Chicago-wide ban. His sought-after pups feature tantalizing names like the "mighty hot" Keira Knightley and the "mighty, might, mighty hot!" Salma Hayek andouille sausage.
Chantelle Pabros, a sommelier at Chicago's L20, is widely considered a rising star of the wine universe. Entrenched among oenophiles since leaving high school, at a mere 26 she has worked alongside world-renowned talent including chef Laurent Gras at his seafood-centric eatery. Though Chantelle has few hard and fast rules about pairing wine with food, she offered a couple tips as we head into prime grilling season. We caught up with her this afternoon to talk burgers and vino.
Do you think burgers and wine go together? Yes, absolutely. Though we don't have burgers [at L20], I like pairing wine with them. There is this place here called Kuma's Corner. We normally drink beer there, but I am thinking about the possibilities of wines with their burgers.
How does one go about pairing the two? With pairing, things that you think would go well don't always go. It's trial and error. I start by thinking about the classic burger, cooked medium rare with really fresh lettuce, tomato, onion and a really intense mustard. Chantelle's five under-$25 burger-friendly wines after the jump.
While President Elect Barack Obama's dining budget may have scaled up a tad since '01, the then State Senator was already a passionate fan of food. Enjoy this clip of the soon to be Foodie-in-Chief on a never-aired episode of WTTW's "Check Please," extolling the virtues of the johnnycakes, peach cobbler and Southern sampler at Chicago's Dixie Kitchen and Bait Shop.
The "lost" episode will air on WTTW twice on January 16th, again on the 18th and once more on January 20th, the day of Obama's inauguration.
A weekly look at the draft selection at beer-friendly bars across the country.
This "What's On Tap?" column wouldn't even be necessary, and I could take my Wednesdays off, if more bars took a page out of the playbook of Chicago's beer-centric pub, The Map Room.
This Bucktown bar is one of a growing number of establishments keeping updated draft lists online. As of yesterday when I compiled the list for this post, the online beer list had been updated... um... earlier that day. Maybe I just got lucky, but I doubt it. Owner Laura Blasingame says the list is "updated every few days -- 3 or 4 times a week." And not just the drafts: The complete bottled selection is online too, updated a mere four days ago. I counted 50 selections, was still in the "C's" and stopped, preferring to leave the actual number up to the imagination. The website says, "We always take beer very seriously," and I don't doubt them for a second.
Another big plus, you gotta love a pub that encourages you to call ahead for the most current drafts, despite the online list being at best a few hours old! This is my kind of place.
After the jump, let's take a peek at what The Map Room is currently serving up to patrons in the Windy City.
My friend Nicole swears by Ethel's Chocolate. Seriously, she said, "They are the greatest chocolates I have ever eaten." That's high praise as Nicole loves her chocolate.
I checked out Ethel's online and their chocolates are gorgeous, like, audible gasp-gorgeous. These are obviously the best host gift (or loved-one gift, or self-gift) chocolates for this holiday season. Their holiday-themed packages are stunning, and even the regular sets, as you can see, are colorful and exciting. That's right, I said "exciting." They're also affordable; a 12-piece box is just $16.
Ethel's actually has lounges in Las Vegas and Chicago (and surrounding areas), which I certainly did not know. They cater to those passionate about chocolate who want to explore and experience "one of life's greatest pleasures." There are drinks. I shall consider these lounges chocolate brothels. And I want to go.
If you're not in Vegas or Chicago, like most of the world, Ethel's chocolates, in a stunning array of colors, are available online here. Check out our gallery for some great holiday gift ideas!
Everyone knows that every night, somewhere, people are drinking for free. Various bars have promotions from liquor companies, nights when they want to pack the house, and special events that result in totally free drinks, and often free food, as well!
Whether you're visiting or a resident, visit My Open Bar for free drinks in:
New York City
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Chicago
Honolulu
Miami
My Open Bar lets you know what time, what's free, and where it is. All you have to do is show up! They even have mobile and RSS feeds.
Special thanks to my friend Brandon A. for the tip.
Give a bunch of super-crafty DIY types the theme of "indulgence," allow time for their creativity to fester, and what do you get?
You get Sugarcraft, more than a month of sugar chandeliers, felted ice cream cones, watermelon earrings, and any other food-cum-craft project that you could dream up. The designers range from Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane fame, who crochets food items complete with googly eyes and facial expressions, to the UK's Alison Tennant, who makes confections out of polymer clay - at a 1:12 scale.
Any way you slice it, these artists have some great ideas about indulgence and how it is represented in various mediums (sand art, sugar, paint, needlepoint...the list goes on and on). Go ahead: indulge yourself in a few photos from this year's Sugarcraft. And if you want to see them in person, get over to Chicago - it's going on through August 9.
I'm posting images of sausage counters the world over each weeknight (and occasionally weekend) witching hour (until I run out), so please use the comments section to post links to your Flickr or personal site faves, and perhaps you'll see 'em posted here late some evening.
On last night's episode, we finally learned which four contestants will attend the show's finale in Puerto Rico. As a result, the episode really focused not on whose dishes were great or the best, but rather which contestant was not as good as the others. It was a bit like a game of musical chairs, where it didn't matter where you sat, as long as you weren't the last one standing.
I'd heard the rumors that bacon and chocolate where getting together. But now we have gorgeous, photographic post that the rumors are true. And really, how could something that looks so, so right be wrong? Have any of you tried this devilish combination? I admit that I haven't had a chance to check it out yet (although I have gotten to try both bacon vodka and a particularly good Blood Mary made with the stuff).
My friend Nicole swears by 
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