Chicago Dogs and Hot Dogs in General

Recently I went on a trip to Chicago ( really Wilamette) and as with most of my trips I thought about food and decided to focus on searching for the quintecinal Chicago Dog. My understanding is it is the hot dog, a poppy seed bun, a pinch of celery salt, some tomato slices, mustard, a pickle wedge, onions and perhaps that crazy green relish ( no ketchup). As always when I visit my brother and his family we started at Irving's for Red Hot Lovers. I originally thought that the place was was a trashy lingerie type place and could never understand what it was doing in such a nice area ( of course I grew up in Washington D.C. across Wisconsin Avenue from the Good Guys).
Inside there is a long counter and lots of guys taking orders and making hot dogs. At Mustard's End in Evanston there was the same thing and as any good restaurant guy could figure out you have to serve alot of hot dogs quickly to make money, and since the food cost is low you can have more labor to make up for it. The hot dogs were a little different at each place but slowly I realized that for me the grilled dog was much more interesting than the steamed or boiled. The bun was important but I usually added ketchup, a huge no no.
On atrip to Washington D.C. and Ben's Chile Bowl it was the griddled half smoke with chile cheese and onions and while the setup was similar -- lots of people making lots of dogs, chil, burgers and fries fast, the dogs were very different but both were really good, complete meals on a bun and only 800 calories and you don't even feel full.
And I learned one important thing, I'm glad I don't live near any of these places because the hot dogs are really good and too easy to eat. Chile fries need ketchup and when you finally have the money to eat what you want your conscience and your weight won't allow you to do it.
But I still am searching for the Chicago Dog ( we took a trip to the Dawg Haus but the people in the picture had already waited an hour and my nephew didn't have the patience nor the hunger for adventure to wait that long) to end all Chicago Dogs and I'm hoping someone can name some places for me to try on my next trip back.s

McGrathFarms Customer Appreciation Day, Our Farm Tour Continues

Phil McGrath, farmer, friend and visionary invited us to participate in his first ever customer appreciation day at his family's farm in Oxnard. We've known Phil for years and have bought his produce espescially his beets forever.His farm's produce is legendary and Phil has always supported the dinners we have held on various farms as well as at the restaurants and many times joining us for meals. Maybe this was payback.

Anyway when he invited us to make some food for his first annual customer appreciation day it was an offer we couldn't refuse. After all it was only about an hour and 45 minutes to the Central exit on the 101 in Oxnard and it was only 50 - 75 people, okay maybe 200 - 300 people. It sounded like fun in a Huck Finn kind of way.

I drafted Adam as a volunteer and we kicked around some food ideas. August is a great time to visit a farm and we wanted to highlight the vegies and have some fun at the same time. Drawing on our earlier summer farm trips we hit on grilled pizzas, grilled sweet corn, warm roast beets and wilted dandelion greens and srawberry shortcake with a sweet vanilla cream.

Phil got the wood grill and the mesquite, supplied the vegies and we drove to Oxnard to cook the food. Pizza is such a great way to highlight great veggies and grilling them is such a wonderful rustic way to cook them. Fresh tomatoes, grilled zucchini, bell peppers and red onions, dandelion greens, fresh herbs, a tomato jam made from Phil's heirloom cherry tomatoes and add some mozzarella and burrata cheeses, these pizzas were great. The sweet corn, just picked and thrown on the grill. We made a chipotle lime butter ( the chipotles came from Windrose farms) and slatherred it on the corn which didn't really need to be cooked since it was soo fresh and sweet. The beets were roasted and peeled and we heated them over the fire and wilted the dandelion greens in another pan and tossed them together with a simple dijon red wine vinaigrette, a touch of walnut oil and sprinkled with a horseradish creme fraiche.

And finally Mark's strawberry shortcake with McGrath Farms macerated strawberries, the shortcake, a huge hit and a spoonful or sweet vanilla cream. A menu that seemed simple and rustic, very representative of our food yet alot of work for two people to put together. But it was fun with the Herzog Kosher Zinfandel from just down the street ( besides the wine they brought a bruschetta with the heirloom cherry tomatoes, cannelini beans and lamb bacon(?!)), and most importantly the people. A. Weiser was there ( anywhere for a party) as well as members of the McGrath family and their customers many of whom participate in his very successful CSA program. The Market they built on the farm has really developed. And at the end when everyone left it was the feeling you get from being around people who appreciate the farm and the food. You hug people goodbye that you just met and as one person put it once you've eaten food like this it's hard to go back to the grocery store

Summer on the Farms

It's been a while since I've blogged and it's not that I haven't had things to write about, or a desire to do it, rather time has been precious. Business wise it's been a tough year and as the owner I'm the only one that can work for free and so my labor has been in high demand. But there still has been time to cook in the outdoors and visit some of our favorite farmers and farms.

This years farm tour began in Tehachapi at Weiser Family Farms where we cooked a dinner for 18 people in the foothills of the Sierras. Alex Weiser and his family supply us with lots of great produce from potatoes to the wonderful melons we are featuring now on our menus be it Sunday Brunch at Eastbluff to the Scallops at the Coast. The dinner was a wonderful get together and featured beets, sweet bermuda onions, zucchinis and squashes, tomatoes, carrots, lettuces, strawberries and grassfed ribeyes and sausages from the J&J Beef ranchers as well as interesting wines and beer.

There were two small grills and a few picnic tables and wine and beer and the setting was memorable. Cooking dinners in situations like this allow us to be less than perfect because the environment of the dinner alone makes for an unforgettable evening. Fortunately we were able to pull off a wonderful dinner in the rustic style I have practiced for years. One dish that really stood out was a grilled little gem lettuce salad with roast garlic vinaigrette made from the Weiser's green garlic. This was garnished with shaved parmesan cheese and crostinis made from a roast garlic and asiago cheese bread. The dinner finished with a strawberry shortbread dessert and the revelation that I didn't have to camp out, but was able to get a room at the nearby Best Western.

A few weeks later we rolled onto our yearly trip to Coleman Farms and our Outstanding in the Field dinner. This was our third dinner with Jim Denevan and his roving farm dinner series. It was a Sunday night, the summer solstice, father's day and Romeo Coleman's birhtday. Joe Davis was bringing his wines and this year we had great draft beer from a local brewery Telgraph ( the left over hops and such go into the compost pile at Coleman farms) and my friends from the Spanish River Kitchen in Florida, Henry and Michelle joined us in cooking the meal. We developed the menus for these dinners trying to source out everything within a hundred mile radius of the farm or in some cases our restaurant. While the dinner is alot of work for us, 150 people eating at one long table family style on the farm, it is also rewarding in that it gives the people that travel with us to the farm a chance to better understand what I am trying to do at the restaurant.

This year's dinner began with grilled pizzas. We had been experimenting with these and they turned out great, vegetables from the farm, burrata cheese, an heirloom tomato jam we created for the dinner a few years ago and some of the sausages made from the grassfed beef from the J&J ranch.

Next, after everyone sat down, was a "shooter of sea urchin" with sweet onions, persian cucumbers,cilantro and a yuzu vinaigrette with a little kick. The Sea Urchins were caught off the Ventura coast and the vegies were from our friends the farmers at the Santa Monica Farmers Market.

The real deal meal started with a dish which came about because we had 50lbs. of Santa Barbara Spot Prawns and needed to make a dish that would allow us to serve them in the shell (we didn't want to clean them all ourselves). Steve Moore supplied the prawns and they were alive and squirming when we started cooking on Sunday. The dish consisted of a tomato water steeped with verbena and then simmerred with shrimp heads, local white sea bass poached in the liquid, an herb polenta, chopped Italin Parseley and a nice exta virgin olive oil all garnished by fried prawn heads in a tribute to Bill Coleman's Phillipino heritage. Lots of bread to sop up the liquid.

Next came pig. We had a great wood burning barbecue to finish the pigs in a chipotle glaze with a pinot jus and our grilled corn and zucchini salad with slow cooked greens. This turned out better than we practiced and made me wish I had a reason to buy a grill like the one we were using.

Finally more grassfed beef. This was going with a porter beer and a syrah. We marinated the beef in beer, garlic, mustard and herbs. The cut of beef was a sirloin and we wanted to grill it and cut it relatively thin to make sure it wouldn't be hard to eat. We served it with our grilled little gem lettuce salad, this time with a hard sheeps milk cheese from Rinconada farms, which we perfected after our dinner at Weiser farms, and roasted sweet Bermuda onions-- wonderfully carmelized.

Dessert was macerated Pudwill farms berries, and a skillet blueberry corn cake with a sweet vanilla cream. The dessert was served as the sun set and then dinner was finished. As always it was a great time, the setting was spectacular and hopefully everyone had a great dinner.

The trip itself was highlighted by the lunch we share with Colemans where Dehlia makes her "soul" food which always brings me back to meals my mom made when we were kids always with big servings of rice. The cold beer and wine we shared while we're cooking the dinner. The feeling of finishing a dinner which you can plan over and over in your head but need to finish it in order for people to see and feel the picture. And finally there was the trip to La Super Rico Taco in Santa Barbara before we drove back.

The farm tour continues this summer with a trip to McGrath Farms in Oxnard to cook with their great produce for their customer appreciation day and then finally another farm dinner on September 12th, this one closer, in San Juan Capistrano at South Coast Farms to help raise funds for the Ecology Center. Look for our Santa Barbara fisherman's soup and grilled pizzas as well as some new dishes we are creating to utilize the summer vegetables from the farm.

We hope to see you soon so you can share some of the dishes we've perfected this summer as well as others we're still working on.