The Smoking Kitchen

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Salt: Not just for throwing in the eyes of your enemies

From time to time I come across a piece of information that greatly improves my knowledge of food and cooking. For example, I recently learned that I’d been grabbing my knives incorrectly.

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Barefoot Contessa’s Curry Chicken Salad

Earlier this week I turned 27, the same age that such luminaries as Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix met the end of their chaotic existences. I, on the other hand, celebrated this new year by calling in sick to my law firm job and making chicken salad.
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Chicago Con: Please, sir, may I have some corn?

For the past year or so, I’ve contemplated moving from Chicago. Winter in Chicago is never a treat, but this one happened to be the worst in almost thirty years. Also, there was recently a week and a half span that included the following events:

• A Blue Line train got stuck underground for two hours. I was on a train five minutes behind the doomed one. Mercifully, my train got stopped in a station, allowing me to easily get up to street level. The people on the stalled train were not so lucky and eventually embarked on a Goonies-like adventure on foot through the tunnels. Point is, but for the grace of my lack of punctuality, it would’ve been me.
• There was an earthquake downstate. I didn’t feel it, but still - quakes and hurricanes were the only natural disasters I felt safe from in Chicago.
• A 150-pound cougar found its way into the Roscoe Village neighborhood. If this weren’t bad enough, the Chicago Police on the scene emptied their guns on the cat, I guess because, within city limits, a cougar technically is a minority.

Therefore, I’ve decided to document the various reasons I might want to remain in or leave Chicago.
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A Visit from the Future

The following occurred a little over a year ago. I didn’t tell anyone about it at the time because I didn’t want to sound crazy. But certain events have transpired lately that make this incident chilling in its relevance.

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Chimichurri, Marinade-Style

As promised in my post on chimichurri, I used my leftovers to try this out as a marinade. Let’s see what Señor McCurry’s invention tasted like tonight. Continue reading this entry »

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Tofu with Chimichurri and Minted Peas Under Oil

I swear to God I cook meat.

This is now my fifth post without one morsel of flesh involved, and I’d like to assure everyone that this website isn’t the first step in a process that includes such things as leaving informational pamphlets around and prompting “philosophical talks” that are thinly-veiled conversion attempts, and which ends in an inevitably doomed confrontation with stronger, meat-fed federal employees.

In the meantime, here’s some more frigging tofu. Continue reading this entry »

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Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

I have a hard time picturing how things will taste when combined. I’m sure this skill will develop as I cook more, but in the meantime, part of what I find so enjoyable about cooking is that it’s a discovery process. For example, that’s how I now know what leeks and bacon are all about. When I see those two lovebirds in the same place, I just shake my head because I know exactly what’s going to happen. And then thyme “accidentally” walks into the room, one thing leads to another, the footage finds it way all over the Internet, and now none of them can get a legitimate job. Continue reading this entry »

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Alice Waters’s Luscious Grilled Cheese and Minestrone

In my previous life as a lazy cook, I would have grilled cheese and soup somewhere in the neighborhood of once every couple weeks. Generally, this was my fallback meal if I was low on supplies or needed to eat a quick dinner. The grilled cheese would be Brownberry whole wheat bread with muenster and cheddar cheese, and the soup would be canned. It’s not a bad meal, but certainly not one I looked forward to.

This winter has been the worst Chicago has seen in almost thirty years, so if you know how bad Chicago weather normally is, maybe you can imagine the soul-devouring frozen hellscape I’ve been dealing with for the past five months.

If you can’t picture it, here’s a photo I took out my front door earlier today: Continue reading this entry »

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Tofu with Thai Curry Sauce

I almost always have tofu in my fridge for three main reasons:

1. It’s inexpensive.

2. I’ve been brainwashed by Big Protein.

3. I don’t have to take it out to thaw, thereby making it a contingency plan of sorts if I forget to take meat out during my pre-caffeinated haze before work.

Also, I kind of like it, and by “it” I’m referring to the texture, since other than sight, touch is the only sense it stimulates. Har, har, tofu is bland. But seriously, it is. Continue reading this entry »

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The Greatest Carrots in the History of All Known Carrotdom

So my first substantive blog post is about carrots. I don’t even like carrots.

I made a cannellini bean dish last week that required 1/4 cup worth of diced carrots. I went to a different Whole Foods than I normally do, the Gold Coast location. Here’s the charming little market below. Obviously I didn’t take the picture because the day I went, the sun was hidden behind a thick swath of cloudy Chicago “springtime” misery. Continue reading this entry »