Category — Dining

I spent two days this last week staging at Alinea, an avant garde restaurant in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Gourmet Magazine named Alinea the best restaurant in the Americas in 2006, one year after it opened, and the executive Chef, Grant Achatz, and other members of the creative team have won numerous awards including the James Beard Award. The staff at Alinea describes the cuisine as progressive American, but others have labeled it “molecular gastronomy” for the use of ingredients, equipment, and techniques re-appropriated from the science and food science industry. The name refers to a typographical symbol, most commonly represented as the paragraph symbol, which signifies a new train of thought. And the food at Alinea is certainly different than anything you’ve ever eaten. Alinea offers diners two menus a 12 course tasting menu and a 24 course tasting menu, which they call the Tour. The courses vary in size from half a bit to surprisingly large portions.

In my two days there I helped prep a few items for dinner service, helped organize and clean, and got to lay back and observe the chefs prepare 24 courses. I made honey fluff, a condiment that looks exactly like marshmallow fluff but tastes intensely of honey. The secret ingredient was a product called Versa-whip, which is a concentrated protein powder which acts like the protein in egg whites when added to water. Unlike egg whites, Versa-whip is shelf stable and forms a more stable, long lasting protein network. I also made whole wheat cake. Almost every pastry chef will tell you you cannot make cake from whole wheat flour but they’ve developed a way to do it at Alinea. The sweet, fluffy, whole wheat cake is a real jab at the culinary establishment. The most interesting thing I ate was a dish called “Rhubarb, ginger, basil.” It was an orb of sweet rhubarb juice encased in a ginger flavored shell, placed in a shot glass in a pool of sweetened basil juice. The diner takes the whole thing at once. First you taste the basil juice, then the heat of your mouth causes the shell of the juice orb to break and you get a burst of rhubarb flavor.

The chefs at Alinea work long hours and the Executive Chef, Chef di Cuisine, and Sous Chefs demand perfection and consistency from everyone. It’s an intense job and the restaurant at which I’m most interested in serving my upcoming three month internship.

Alinea’s Website

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On Sunday we threw a barbeque at the house. We scheduled the barbeque for five o’clock and it conveniently starting pouring rain at exactly five ‘o clock. Nevertheless, the rain subsided and we were able to fire up the grill and drink some beers. About a week ago I saw directions to make a watermelon keg on seriouseats.com and I knew it would be perfect for a barbeque on a hot day. I hollowed out the watermelon much like I would if I was carving a pumpkin. Then I drilled a hole at the base a little bit smaller than the threaded end of the outdoor faucet I bought at the hardware store. The faucet screwed into the watermelon. To ensure a watertight seal I put rubber o-rings on the faucet threads both on the outside and inside surfaces of the melon and tightened the assembly by screwing a steel nut onto the threaded end of the faucet. You can find more comprehensive directions here. I juiced the fruit of the watermelon and added some fruit punch and some white rum.

I also made braised short ribs and shrimp quesadillas. Here are the recipes (sorry, no pictures):

Braised Beef Short Ribs with Guinness Barbeque Sauce:

• 1 T. vegetable oil
• 4 lbs. beef short ribs
• 1 large Vidalia or other sweet onion
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• 6 large slices ginger
• 32 oz. Guinness
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 8 oz. Shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)
• 4 oz. rice wine vinegar
• 4 oz. brown sugar
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 2 T. sriracha sauce
• S+P to taste

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Heat a dutch oven or a large roasting pan over medium high heat. Add the vegetable oil and brown the short ribs a few at a time. Brown them in batches. Drain the fat from the pot and add the onions, garlic, and ginger. Cook until slightly browned and tender. Add the Guinness, cinnamon stick, shoyu, vinegar, and sugar. Add the short ribs to the braise and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and finish the braise in the oven. Cook for three hours or until the short ribs are falling off the bone. Remove the short ribs onto a sheet tray and strain the braising liquid. Carefully remove the fat using either a ladle or a gravy separator. Bring to a boil over high heat. Add the ketchup and sriracha sauce. Reduce by half or until the sauce has thickened significantly. Allow to cool to room temperature. When ready to serve, grill the ribs and baste with the barbeque sauce.

Shrimp and Avocado Quesadillas:

• 6 large flour tortillas
• 1/2 lb. rock shrimp, peeled, deveined, cooked, and chopped
• 5 scallions, sliced thinly
• 1 ripe avocado, cut into 1/4 inch slices
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/4 lb. queso fresco
• Sriracha sauce

To assemble the quesadillas, place 3 slices of avocado on one half of the tortilla and top with remaining ingredients. The sriracha is optional. Fold in half and grill for 2 minutes on each side. Slice and serve.

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Today was the annual Taste of Ann Arbor food festival on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor. It was like the Taste of Chicago in that you purchase tickets and exchange the tickets for small portions of food. Most participating restaurants were from the Main Street strip and included Melange, Cafe Habana, Cafe Felix, Gratzi, Real Seafood Co., and Shalimar Indian Restaurant. The Shalimar tent had some fantastic tandoori chicken which inspired me to make my own (I have the chicken marinating as I write and plan on publishing a post about it sometime soon). Cafe Habana had great Cuban sandwiches (roasted pork, swiss cheese, pickles, mustard) and ropa vieja, which is a braised beef in a spicy tomato sauce. Gratzi had a delicious mini burger made from kobe beef and topped with fresh mozarella, roma tomatoes, and fresh basil. Some of the dishes were expensive but the portions were pretty good and everyone got to sample from all of Ann Arbor’s great restaurants.

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Since I was young I always enjoyed Japanese food. I have fond memories of going to various Japanese restaurants in Mount Prospect and the surrounding towns and eating bento boxes. At first I wasn’t the biggest fan of sushi but as the years passed I came to love it. I’ve been making nori maki sushi pretty frequently in the last few months and have been getting better and better at it. Still, my maki rolls are not nearly as nice as those served at the many Japanese restaurants in Ann Arbor. I love Japanese cuisine because of the simple, delicate flavors and the minimalist philosophy. Throughout history, Japan’s climate has been such that fresh seafood, meat, fruits, and vegetables were readily available year-round. As a result, Japanese cuisine does not use many overpowering seasonings and spices (like European countries did in the Middle Ages to disguise the flavor of spoiled foods). This Monday I cooked Japanese foods for my friends.



We started the night off with some miso soup. Earlier in the day I made some dashi, which is a traditional Japanese fish stock made from dried kelp and dried bonito flakes, which are made from thinly sliced dried fish filets (they look like wood shavings in the grocery store package). Dashi is made by simmering the dried kelp in water for a few minutes then adding some bonito flakes and letting the mixture steep for a couple of minutes before straining. If you ever watched any of the original Japanese Iron Chef episodes you’ve probably seen this done. The result is a flavorful but delicate stock used throughout Japanese cuisine in soups, sauces, and main dishes. To the dashi I added shiro miso, a sweet, lightly colored miso (miso is a fermented soy bean paste), some cubed tofu, and some dried Wakame, or “sea vegetable,” which is a type of seaweed. I let the mixture heat on low for about 15 minutes until the Wakame had rehydrated significantly. Here is the finished miso soup.

Next up on the menu was tempura. I had made tempura before and blogged about it here. The recipe I used was the same but I made a more traditional dipping sauce from dashi, mirin (sweet cooking sake), and shoyu (soy sauce).

Then came the big ticket item…fresh sushi. Back home in Illinois I was lucky enough to live by an enormous asian food store called Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa sold all sorts of exotic and hard to find ingredients, including fresh Japanese produce and sahsimi quality fish. I finally found a store in the Ann Arbor area that sold sashimi grade fish. Tsai Grocery in Ann Arbor has a good selection of imported products and fresh sashimi grade fish. I knew I wanted to make a spicy salmon roll, so I bought some fresh salmon. I made a mayonnaise from scratch and added sriracha sauce to it. Sriracha is a Asian hot sauce that has become very popular recently. I would be very surprised if any store nowadays didn’t sell it. It’s fantastic on pretty much everything. I combined the spicy mayonnaise with some cubed salmon to make the spicy salmon mix. Then I pressed some sushi rice that I prepared on to a sheet of dried nori, sprinkled it with five spice powder, flipped it over onto my bamboo sushi rolling mat (which I had covered in plastic wrap) and added some sliced avocado and some of the spicy salmon mix. I carefully rolled it up, pressing the roll firmly with the bamboo rolling mat to ensure a solid seal then sliced it with my new GLOBAL knives. I finished the spicy salmon roll with a dollop of sriracha mayonniase on top of each slice of the roll. I also made rolls from cucumber and pickled carrot(which I pickled myselft) and just plain salmon, and included a bit of wasabi in each roll. Here’s a picture of the maki rolls arranged on a plate with pickled ginger and wasabi.

The meal was delicious. I enjoyed some warmed sake throughout the meal and I have to give a shout out to Cara and Bridget for helping out with the meal. If you’d like to cook some traditional Japanese food I would suggest the book “The Japanese Kitchen” by Hiroko Shimbo, a cook book I’ll soon be blogging about. Peace and sayonara.

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