Doughnut Vault

The lovely Rachelle Vivian

The premise is simple. Create a permanent menu that consists of old-fashioned, well-made doughnuts. Make a finite amount of doughnuts everyday and keep customers abreast of quantities via a live feed on Twitter. Welcome to the Doughnut Vault in Chicago.

For $14 we got one of everything, which meant seven lovely doughnuts. Three were puffy yeast-raised doughnuts, flavoured with chocolate, vanilla and chestnut glazes. The buttermilk old fashioned was a denser cakey-doughnut that had been dipped in a tangy glaze (it reminded me of the sour cream doughnut made by a well-known Canadian icon). The gingerbread stack consists of three gingerbread infused cake-like doughnuts coated in sugar. 

Inside the box

Our wait in line was no more than fifteen minutes (8:30 on a Tuesday morning). Once you get inside the shop, there is less than thirty feet until you hit the single cashier behind the counter who sells the doughnuts off of a speedrack and can also provide a cup of coffee.

We headed for a park bench overlooking the river in an attempt to consume all seven doughnuts, but they won. The glazed doughnuts are so big that a normal adult probably couldn't eat more than one and a half (but of course we had to keep going and try the old fashioned and gingerbread versions). The good news is that all of the doughnuts, especially the glazed, still tasted great that night and the next morning.

Worth the lineup? Absolutely.

Grahamwich

If I lived in Chicago, I would probably go out of my way to find a job around Ohio and Ontario Streets because I could go to Grahamwich everyday for lunch. Located a few blocks from the flagship restaurant, Chef Elliot has opened a sandwich shop that serves sandwiches, snacks, soda, soft serve and breakfast treats (from Fritz Pastry). In addition to serving great food, they also know that lunch is little more informal, hurried, and above all affordable meal.

Of course we started with a bag of truffle popcorn, which we were served the previous night because it is just that good, and a bag of Yukon gold chips that were coated in cheese and ranch powder with a few bacon bits.

While one hand stuffed snacks into our mouth the other hand was holding a sandwich. If you ever go to a restaurant and there is a Reuben sandwich on the menu, you can just assume that the husband will order it. So, he did here and his only review was the word delicious. The Grahamwich Reuben is made with homemade sauerkraut containing toasted caraway, pastrami, Gruyere, 1000 Island dressing on marbled rye. I had the pulled pork sandwich, which was served on a Kaiser with coleslaw. I remember the sauce being a bit on the sweet side, but not at all disappointing.

We washed our meal down with an orange ginger soda and a root beer. On the way out, I got the vanilla soft serve, which had warm Nutella, caramelized banana and marshmallow fluff.

On an actual work day I would not be able to eat this much, but I can assure you that for $20, you could do a lot worse on your lunch hour.

We drove all day to dine at Graham Elliot

Almost two years to the day, the husband and I found ourselves in Chicago. In this case, our favourite band was not playing Chicago, but the city was on our way to see them in East Troy, Wisconsin. However, this time we brought friends with us – Rachelle and Scott Vivian, the owners and culinary minds behind Beast Restaurant.

Scott and I spent over a month going back and forth with emails with restaurant suggestions before finally creating an itinerary that maximized the number of restaurants that we could frequent in five days.

Our first stop after our marathon drive from Toronto was Graham Elliot. The last time I was in Chicago, our big dinner out was at Alinea – an unforgettable experience. Graham Elliot’s was Scott’s choice and I was really happy with this decision because was unforgettable as Alinea is, it is a very formal dining experience. At Chef Elliot’s restaurant, I truly felt like I was at the restaurant operated by a rock star.

The music could have come out of our own collection. There was a great vibe in the dining room of everyone having fun. One of the components of the servers’ uniforms is that they all wear a belt buckle with Chef’s initials. The food was thought through, beautifully presented and playful.

We were walked to our table and given a glass of sparkling wine and a bowl of Chef’s signature popcorn: truffle oil, chives, parmesan and ground pepper.

Our first amuse bouche was a lollipop made of foie gras mousse with Madeira that was rolled in watermelon pop rocks. The combination of textures of the smooth mousse with the explosion of the pop rocks will remain one of my most vibrant food memories.

Our second amuse was a tomato consommé shot with watermelon pieces and mint with jalapeño oil. Extremely refreshing and I think Rachelle wanted to have another round entirely for herself.

I know that every restaurant offers a version of their Caesar salad and I should know better when the word deconstructed shows up on a menu but you won’t find this dish anywhere else. Torpedoes of lettuce that were dressed and then rolled in lightly grated Parmesan, topped with anchovies and accompanied by a Twinkie crouton that was stuffed with mascarpone with a nice zing of garlic.

Others at the table had the stuffed zucchini flowers with shrimp on braised briny eggplant with eggplant purée. I am not a huge fan of eggplant, but I remember that puree. The husband had the corn bisque and described it as complex: The vanilla marshmallow gave the contents of the bowl a spicy sweetness while the spiny lobster imparted a bacon-y like smokiness. The more the dish mellowed together, the richer it became.

For main dishes, I had the fried chicken roulade, which was served with chicken liver paté, fried okra, coleslaw, puffed dirty rice and gizzard jus. Yes, you read that correctly, the dirty rice was made with puffed rice. Scott’s sweet bread schnitzel was coated in mustard before being fried and was served with braised Napa cabbage, pickled spring vegetables with a chanterelle sauce that was brought together with caraway seeds. The husband had the bison loin, which was described as being a cookhouse style and did not disappoint. The spiced, seared crust around the loin gave it a smoked, spicy feel, in a very subtle way.

I think that if you are going to splurge on a big-budget dinner in Chicago, you have some great options. We spent three hours at Graham Elliot’s and it was simply a more relaxed dining experience that delivered great food at the level of fine dining.

(In the interest in full disclosure, we believe that we received a few extra courses based on Scott’s tweet that we were on our way and they recognized us as industry.)

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream

You should believe people when they tell you that mint will take over your garden. What started out as a two-foot long row of spearmint has now doubled in size. Much to the dismay of my cats it has edged out the catnip in one area of the garden. Luckily I work in a restaurant and for three straight weeks I have provided the mint supply.

Last year one of my co-workers introduced me to the chocolate-mint variety. (Learning from past mistakes, this variety was housed in a planter.) Living up to its name, this is the equivalent of an After Eight in plant form. As part of my personal mantra of consuming everything from my garden this year, I made chocolate mint ice cream.

The Crème Anglaise recipe is adapted from Dorie Greenspan's book Around My French Table. Although the book contains an actual recipe for vanilla ice cream, the Crème Anglaise recipe is very similar to what I use at work for my ice cream bases. I have omitted the vanilla extract from the original recipe and replaced it with the chocolate mint for maximum infusion.

1 cup whole milk
1 cup 35% cream
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup packed chocolate mint leaves, washed

1. Place the milk, cream and mint leaves in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Turn off the heat and allow the mint to infuse the milk.
2. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk yolks and sugar together until well combined and slightly thickened. Slowly whisk in 1/3 of the hot milk mixture until egg mixture is slightly heated, then continue whisking remaining milk mixture into egg mixture. (You can strain out the mint leaves at this point if you find that the leaves are constantly in the way while stirring during the next step.)
3. Return mixture to saucepan and place over medium heat; cook, stirring, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
4. Remove from heat and strain into a bowl or container. Allow the mixture to cool before placing in the refrigerator. (Placing the bowl over and ice bath and stirring until the mixture is thoroughly cooled can accelerate the cooling process.)
5. Refrigerate the mixture for 12-24 hours. Turn ice cream according to the manufacturer's instructions. Feel free to fold in chocolate chips into the ice cream as is comes out of the ice cream.

Unlike the mint chocolate chip ice cream that you buy at the grocery store, this version will not be fluorescent green.

Turning Excess to Success

When the husband and I moved into our house 10 years ago, there were black raspberry bushes growing along the northern border of the property. And that was about it for edible products from the garden.

Last year we decided to try our (dirt-covered) hands at gardening. It was not without help from mom that we were able to dig out and organize our vegetable garden. We planted carrots, beets, runner and bush beans, zucchini, lettuces, tomatoes, herbs, peas and peppers. Some items were a success (zucchini, tomatoes) while others never came to fruition (pumpkins, beets, carrots). So this year we reorganized.

Even though we had successes, they ended up also being excesses because we weren't sure what was going to work. This is why I made a pledge for this summer to consume everything that came out of the garden. So far we have been successful save for a few heads of lettuces that bolted before we were able to eat them.

So here's a roundup of how I used the abundance of garlic chives, green onions, regular chives and rhubarb that we harvested.

I am not sure how the (rather large) patch of garlic chives came to be, but it is actually what prompted me to give myself this challenge because last year I did not know how to use them. This is the plant that generates garlic scapes, which means that there are three distinguished parts of the plants that can be consumed. Growing in the earth are small bulbs of garlic, which I decided to them using my trusted pickled wild leek recipe. I use this recipe to pickle any items in the garlic or onion family because I like the balance of sweetness and acidity. I also pickled the garlic scapes using this recipe from Canning Across America.

The garlic chive stalks were made into pesto. There really is no recipe - just wash the stalks and put them in a food processor with enough olive oil to get them moving. I then froze them in individual cubes using an ice cube tray. To use them I will pull one directly out of the freezer for pasta or to add to soups. I find that the finer the stalks are chopped, the less stringy the end product will turn out.

The first batch of green onions that came up were from last year's plants, so we had a lot of large (not-so-spring) green onions that needed to be harvested with new ones coming in right behind. I decided to make kimchi following Marissa's success. I sent a jar with my mother to our annual neighbourhood BBQ and the woman two doors down proclaimed it the best she has ever eaten.

Another recipe that I got from Marissa over at Food in Jars was for chive blossom vinegar. I must note that I don't grow chives, but my neighbour to the south does and she allowed me to help myself to every chive blossom that she had. I made three pint jars of the vinegar (using white wine vinegar) and then made chive blossom jelly. I used the chive blossom vinegar instead of the cider vinegar to intensify the flavour. It is now my condiment of choice for cheese and crackers.

The rhubarb plants were transplanted at the end of last season and at least two seem happier in their new homes. I was not much of a rhubarb fan as a child, but since becoming a Pastry Chef, I find it extremely versatile. I have bought rhubarb from the farmer's market in order to bulk my own harvest and have made strawberry-rhubarb jam and rhubarb juice concentrate. However, for a non-preserving rhubarb recipe, I highly recommend that you make this cake from Tigress in a Jam.

On the horizon we have black raspberries, red currants and sugar peas that are almost ready for consumption. Keep checking for updates.

APC Cabane A Sucre

If someone were to ask me to define Canadian cuisine, I would send them to the Au Pied de Cochon Cabane a Sucre. That was the thought that stuck out as we drove away from the cabane, back to our hotel in St-Eustache. This seasonal restaurant combines the nostalgia of elementary school spring field trips with the bold flavours and casual dining that I experienced at APC in Montreal.

Turning off the country road after passing four other cabanes a sucre, we parked on the dirt driveway and entered the dining room. With the sun setting behind us, we sat down on the benches surrounding our communal table and ordered a beer and a cider. The food is served family style and in abundance. The playfulness found in several dishes also extends to the dining room: the stools are lined with fur and some of the servers wear coonskin caps. Although heavily influenced by traditional Quebecois custom, I believe that the dishes explore a variety of offerings from the entire country with a maple syrup theme running throughout. East coast oysters, local pork and chicken, as well as lobster: a nation explored in 13 dishes. Rather than provide a detailed explanation of each dish, I will let the photos do the talking. Please note that there is one dish missing -- the optional tourtiere, which we are glad we did not get because we left with 3 take-out containers and did not need the extra meat pie.

Amuse: Saint Simon oyster with maple gelee

Appetizer: tempura fried créton sushi
with maple-soya dipping sauce

Appetizer: greens with mustard dressing,
cubes of cheese and ham, walnuts,
topped with pork rinds

Appetizer: split pea soup
with foie gras and lardo

Appetizer: smoked sturgeon with
buckwheat blinis and maple creme fraiche

Entree: baked beans with
cottage cheese

Entree: maple wood-smoked pork with
roasted carrots and parsnips

Entree: lobster omelet
with potatoes

Entree: maple-glazed roasted
chickenwith gnocchi

Dessert: traditional maple sugar pull

Dessert: hazelnut ice cream bombe
with maple cotton candy

Dessert: apple tarte tatin 

Dessert: duck fat fried pancakes
with maple syrup

The APC cabane is only open for a few months at the beginning of the year. Reservations open in December. We emailed our request on the second day of December and approximately 2 months later we were given a reservation for May 1. Due to the sheer amount of food for the price ($54 excluding tax and drinks) I would recommend taking as many friends as possible.

2011 Toronto Farmers' Markets

Last week The Globe and Mail created a list of all of Toronto's farmers' markets for the 2011 season. Click here to see the list, which is broken out by area. If you are looking for a list organized by day of the week, check out my post from last year.

Finally, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, a list of 10 things you should never say at a market.

I will be at Montgomery's Inn on Wednesday. See you there!