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Coffee Table

Swedish Cardamom Sweet Bread

May 15, 2021

Fragrant with the lovely scent of cardamom, this golden, Swedish-pearl-sugar topped braid has been part of the Good Templar Swedish Day festival tradition for decades. But what—or perhaps who, is a Good Templar?

With an organizational structure modeled on Freemasonry (but open to both men and women) the Stockholm-headquartered International Organisation of Good Templars (IOGT) was one of many temperance organizations founded in the 19th century promoting a lifestyle free of alcohol and drugs. And it has some strong North Shore connections.

Good Templars who immigrated from Sweden to Chicago set up lodges for their gatherings all over the city.  Hoping to preserve Swedish traditions, lodges on the north side came together early in the 1900s to sponsor a large Swedish festival at Linden Park in Evanston. Because the festival was so well received, in September of 1911, Chicago Good Templars expanded the party to become the annual “Svenskarnas Dag” (Swedish Day) at Ravinia Park, celebrating Midsommar—the longest day of the year.  By 1924, with festival attendance topping 10,000, the group started scouting for their own property. They bought a pretty, 66-acre site near the Fox River in Geneva (now known as Good Templar Park) and kicked off the first Swedish Day there on June 30, 1925 with more than 14,000 celebrants.

This year’s summer solstice happens on Sunday, June 20th –Good Templar’s 96th Swedish Day at the park .There will be traditional music, a Viking reenactment, Maypole dances, and plenty of Swedish food—including this lovely cardamom bread. The vintage recipe, from Beatrice Ojakangas, allows you to chill the dough after mixing, eliminating some of the time and effort. It’s very best fresh out of the oven, with a little butter on top. Continue Reading…

Special Seafood

Salmon Coulibiac

May 15, 2021

Truly the cuisine of royalty, salmon coulibiac (koo‐LEE‐bee‐ak) was Prince Philip’s favorite dish. It is to fish what the Wellington is to beef. An elaborate layering of herb-seasoned rice, spinach, and mushroom duxelles, encased in the golden glory of puff pastry, one slice is a beautiful meal in itself.

Armand Plumerey, writing in the 1833 L’art de la cuisine française au XIXe siècle, tells us that in St. Petersburg, the pie was usually made with salmon or pike, replaced with sturgeon on state occasions. Reflecting its Russian origins, back then the fish was layered with herbs and duxelles over buckwheat, rather than rice, before being tucked into the pastry. Nearly 150 years later, in his 1976 write-up for the New York Times, American culinary icon Craig Claiborne called coulibiac “the world’s greatest dish,” bemoaning the fact that this “celestial creation, manna for the culinary gods” could rarely be found in restaurants. But, as Claiborne pointed out, you can make it at home…and that’s still true today.

Our recipe includes fragrant spices along with the herbs in the rice. We’ve omitted the layer of boiled eggs, and simplifying things further, we’ve used ready-made puff pastry, easily found at a good grocer. Also a help: You can prepare the mushroom duxelles, the seasoned rice, and the spinach the day before, if you like, leaving the baking and assembly until right before you wish to serve the dish. Either way, salmon coulibiac–both delicious and beautiful, is worth reviving for your own special occasions. Continue Reading…

Muffins

Glorious Morning Muffins

May 15, 2021

With the weather gorgeous and school ending, we are ready to be outside. These oh-so-tender little morning muffins are a great grab-and-go to get you there. They taste like a cross between carrot cake and zucchini bread—for good reason: They’re packed with cinnamon, apple, carrot, zucchini, toasted nuts and fresh squeezed orange juice—and they’re made with organic whole wheat flour, which is high-protein, to boot. P.S. This is a great way to use up that extra apple, zucchini and half-bag of mini carrots you’ve got hanging around. Continue Reading…

Easter

Portuguese Egg Bread

April 2, 2021

With ginger, mashed potatoes and some of the water you used to boil the potatoes in the mix, this beautiful bread bakes up into nicely textured loaves with deep-orange hued crusts. I like to braid and curl the dough into rounds topped with little quail eggs for an Easter-y spring celebratory brunch. Continue Reading…

Spring

Naturally-Dyed Eggs

April 1, 2021

Well, here’s a Jacob Grimm you may not have heard : ) As a philologist studying Germanic folk customs, Grimm speculated that the custom of Easter eggs may have stemmed from springtime frolics in honor of Eostre—the Proto-Indo-European goddess of dawn.  If so, it’s just one more in a longtime legacy of eggs and the ancients. 60,0000 year old decorated ostrich eggs have been found in Africa. Rituals connecting eggs and rebirth go back 5000 years or more in Egypt, Sumeria and Mesopotamia. And historians tell us Christians in the latter culture were the first to dye eggs ritualistically, coloring them red as a reminder of  blood. Continue Reading…

St. Patrick's Day

Colcannon

March 13, 2021

Yes, my hair is red. And yes, that means some Irish ancestry. Namely? A great-great gran named Ira Lake who was a steamboat captain. Oh—and there are O’Sullivans in the mix too : )

But on St. Patrick Day, everybody gets their green on to celebrate, no matter their heritage. In that spirit, here’s an easy, delicious recipe for colcannon! A buttery mix of potato and cabbage with melted leeks or onion, and (if you’re a meat eater) some bacon over the top, colcannon is delicious. From the Gaelic term “cal ceannann” (white-headed cabbage) it’s been the “food of the common man” in Ireland since the 1600’s. Glad to have that in common here. So, lá fhéile Pádraig sona! (Happy St. Patrick’s Day!) Continue Reading…

Oven Barbecue

Texas Slow-Roast BBQ Brisket

March 6, 2021

Yes, you can use the oven to make a good Texas Slow-Roast BBQ brisket! It’s not quite the same as the melt-in-your mouth meats that came out of my Aunt Barbara’s backyard smoker in Jacinto City, Texas. But slow roast anything for a good long while and add a sauce with soaked and pureed ancho and chipotle peppers and you get delicious eats. To make this brisket, you’ll wrap the meat in bacon, which then becomes part of the thick and zesty sauce. If you have brisket left over, chopped fine and served with the extra sauce it makes great BBQ sandwiches. Continue Reading…

Deep Dark Rich

Stovetop Steak + Stout Stew

February 27, 2021

One of my boys loves deep dark flavors. If you want that in a good stew, steak and stout are the perfect ingredients. And when using a good grade of meat, you don’t really need the super long slow roast that you need with lesser cuts, so you can make this on the stove-top in a Dutch oven. With the pandemic still lingering, we may not be able to gather in crowded pubs right now, but this hearty stew is a pub-worthy comfort that will bring cheer to your home crew. Made with Guinness, sirloin steak, and carrot and onion to mellow the stout, it’s full of deep rich flavors. Continue Reading…

Vintage Veg

Russian Salad

February 26, 2021

I laughed when I saw it. Delightedly chortled, more like, to see that the New York Times was running a recipe story featuring that thousands-of-renditions Slavic home food: Russian Salad. I’d just confessed my love for the stuff the day before to a friend, as if whispering a guilty pleasure. And now the Times had legitimized it. Classically a mosaic of colorful and carefully diced carrot and potato, plus peas and ham, bathed in mayo, I’d long ago found making variations on the Russian Salad theme to be a “treaty” way to eat veg. I make it using everything from trimmed stalks of broccoli (steamed the tiniest bit to tender them) or with celery root, jicama, radish, kohlrabi, and maybe a little cheese, skipping any meat inclusions entirely. But the classic version is good, too.

Near my house, Russian Salad is everywhere. Just travel up the road in Skokie-Evanston to the various mom-and-pop grocers and you’ll find it ready made both plain and fancy. Layered in clear bowls with piped swirls of cream on top, the fancy versions look like frilly parfaits.

As it turns out, fancy is actually a throw-back: The salad’s genesis was quite gourmet. Food historians place its origins in Moscow where a French chef named Lucien Olivier served it starting in the 1860s at the Hermitage restaurant, mixing in everything from caviar and crawfish tails, to capers and veal tongue. Oh, and Lucien slathered his in Provencal dressing. Post Russian Revolution, the salad took on the proletariat stylings that survive today.

With a nod to Olivier, my version of the current classic dolls things up a bit with home-made mayo, sour cream, dill, and quail eggs. Plus, pickled beets that you mix in at the very end. 

My recipe also relies—as the NYTimes version does—on careful, even dicing. Trimming and cutting the ingredients to uniform size makes for good balance, mouth feel and presentation. P.S.—Don’t hold back on your own variations! Let me know what you come up with—I’d love to see. Continue Reading…

Celebrity Recipes

Frank Sinatra’s Favorite Spaghetti

February 17, 2021

In a 1973 interview with long-defunct Mainliner magazine, Frank Sinatra said, “Everything I know about cooking, I learned from my mother.” Mrs. “Dolly” Martin Anthony Sinatra lived in a home Frank built for her on the grounds of his Palm Springs estate. Her simple tomato, garlic and herb spaghetti sauce recipe was Frank’s favorite. We’ve tested it and see why he loved it—meatless, but full of flavor, it’s become our family favorite, too. Continue Reading…