Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

Pumpkin scones are a little hard to do, compared to other scones that are basically just a biscuit, because of the pumpkin. It throws off the flour : fat : liquid ratio, if you use fresh puree – and I’ve often assumed that commercial bakeries use dehydrated pumpkin flakes, something like the mix & eat baby food I used to prefer when my kids were little; you could add squash flakes or pea flakes to the rice cereal. They also come out of the oven looking kind of un-prepossessing – and kind of need a glaze. Although a sprinkle of big crystal sugar would probably be nice, too.

There’s an off recipe for pumpkin scones floating around – it’s on Epicurious – and I’ve been sent it in my Splendid Table newsletter. This morning, trying to figure out what to do with the carton of squash puree I’d thawed on Friday (thinking pumpkin soup, pumpkin pasta, that did not come to pass – that evening we walked to a brew pub and I had a Cubano and Mark had meatloaf) I thought maybe I should take on that recipe – bet I could fix it. As I was pondering though, I had this vague recollection – Maybe I already worked on this recipe … Sho nuff.

I spiced them up a little differently today – added some diced candied ginger because I found a bag with two slices and a little pre-diced in the bottom shoved in at the back of my baking cabinet, and I used cinnamon, ginger, allspice and mace. And I like dates and pumpkin, so I put in some of those chopped dates rolled in oat flour, that look like little sticks, because I had a bag of ’em in the fridge.

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We just spent another weekend in Chicago, mostly to see Arcade Fire. Here’s some of the food:

Asparagus salad at Acre

Aztec chocolate at XOCO

The rest are on the photo blog – and I didn’t take any pictures at Spiaggia Cafe.

It was almost like two trips – the extremely cold and rainy part, and the sunny & mild part.

We drove to Harvard IL, and took the metra train, arriving in Chicago in the rain, and cabbing to our hotel. We ventured out onto Michigan Ave. just a bit, then got cleaned up and into the outfits we had decided were appropriate for dinner in the casual side of a fancy restaurant, followed by a rock show in a university basketball arena, meaning I wore a tunic over jeans, and Mark & Ethan jeans and shirts with collars.

At Spiaggia Cafe, I toyed with the idea of getting small plates – I was thinking meatballs and a salad, maybe soup … but in the end I had the salad: Rucola – arugula, Capriole Farm goat cheese, Spiaggia balsamico and a pasta: Gigli – Manila clams, garlic, bottarga, parsley, bread crumb – but I had them leave off the bottarga (stinky fish eggs, mashed into a block and shaved onto my noodles – uh uh). I also got one of their Negronis to start, made with Campari, sweet vermouth & prosecco – what a good idea – they always come out so bitter made with gin. Mark & Ethan split one of the other salads, with frise & fennel, and Mark had the tagliatelle with spring vegetables – a few little fiddleheads in there, even. Ethan had the gnocchi with wild boar ragu – leaving me with the uncomfortable feeling that as the smallest person, I ate the most – but maybe not, because I only ate about half of my pasta.

It was really raining when we got outside, so we jumped in a cab – a Scion – and the cab driver actually asked me how to go, and followed my directions. But that kinda backfired when he asked us where we wanted to be dropped off; he made a left and pulled up in front the UIC Pavillion, and immediately got yelled at by a cop – “what are you doing stopping here”. I went back and say that I was the customer and I asked him to drop me off there, but that only got the cop yelling at me – “So what if you’re the customer – I AM THE POLICE”. But he let the driver go before we even got into the building. Shoulda tipped the driver a bit more I guess.

Saturday morning, the start of the sunny & mild part of the trip, was the peak dining experience – we went to Rick Bayless’ new joint, XOCO – Mexican street food, and stood in line for about 20 minutes for our table. Himself was there behind the counter in his whites – so he must like the place too. It was worth it. I got a torta – pork and black bean sandwich that came in a bowl of tomato sauce – good but messy. Mark got a dryer chicken torta, and Ethan had probably the best, at least the healthiest, choice, one of the Caldos, like Mexican Pho, rich broth with stuff in it, chicken and avocados and tortilla strips in this case. And, since the churros came three to an order, it seemed only right to split them. I saved a few slurps of my spicey Aztec chocolate to go with.

Churros at XOCO

Afterward, we walked and shopped and went to the MCA to see Jim Nutt. They had QR codes along with exhibition labels, so you could scan and see the backs of some of the pictures, or hear a curator talk about Nutt’s craftmanship, on your smart phone.

We ate an early pre-theater dinner at a place called Acre, nice neighborhood joint, used to be Charlies, I guess. The asparagus was the best. Then finished the night at The Book of Liz, a funny play written by Amy Sedaris. It was at this tiny indie theater way out on Irving Park Rd., tickets were only $18 each. Turned out Google maps knew what it was doing when it said to walk to the L – the 22 Clark, even though it was direct to our just off Michigan near North hotel, took longer because of all the traffic. Still, not a bad way to spend part of a Saturday night – watching the nightlife on Clark St. from the bus.

Book of Liz poster

This year I guess I’m not celebrating Passover. Just sort of worked out that way. On Monday when I could have been having a first night sedar, I had a few friends over for a glass of wine and crackers & cheese (yes, they could have been matzoh crackers but they weren’t), and then we went to hear Billy Collins. Last night, Mark and Ethan were just back from their college visiting trip, and we had the ice-rain-sleet-thunder storm at evening rush. Tonight I had had a long and dreadful meeting-filled day at work, and we ate pizza bagels and carrot sticks & wheat thins with  ranch dip, along with strawberries and grapes, and the last few of the limoncello macaroons that I had made for Monday. They actually are loosely kosher for Passover – no flour, but powdered sugar, that has cornstarch that some oberservant Jews do not eat on Passover.

So I’m feeling tired and out of sorts and craving pretty food and pretty pictures of food, Passover-related or no. I trawled around a bit in my files and on the web, and hit the  jackpot at Smitten Kitchen – chocolate flourless cake roll – cool! I want to try that. I have a lemon Passover spongecake roll, that I swear I photographed at some point, but I’m not finding it.

And, oh, yea, the bread – so last week was national library week, and the library school library always has a silent auction. I put in an offer of loaf-of-bread-a-week for 6 weeks, and tomorrow’s going to be the first delivery. Or pick up actually – the person who was the highest bidder is coming to get her bread. I walked through the library at one point and one of the student staff was on the phone saying, “Hello, you’ve won the something or other in the auction”, which I thought was an odd way to put it – you don’t really win an auction, do you? You bid the most, and end up purchasing the item. Anyways, when the bread person got in touch to collect, she said she’d “won” the bread – so I guess it’s going around. Maybe the bread will be pretty enough to photograph. It’s multigrain, with King Arthur Flour Pompanoosuc Porridge in it. One loaf for me and one for her.

Here's a nice set of multigrain loaves from an apparently now defunct bakery in the UK - Bread Naturally

My multigrain bread

Multigrain bread

I’ve been wanting to make Heidi’s quesadilla unda style. Good breakfast, but my version but was tad bland. I didn’t have much in the way of the garnishes she uses: chopped herbs (tho I realize I do have some cilantro I could’ve chopped, damnit), fried capers, creme fraiche with lemon zest. But now that I’ve re-reviewed the recipe to get the link, I see that what I really didn’t do is let my tortilla get brown enough. And I left out the salt. Anyways, I made mine with an egg with a forkful of leftover lasgane filling beaten in, that is, mostly ricotta, seasoned with a bit of nutmeg & lemon and parmesan. Fried in a little butter – could’ve used salted – and topped with a few thin slices of cheddar. Doused with cholula for serving.

Quesadilla, unda-style

Planned Parenthood of WI is celebrating its 75th birthday with 75 house parties in Wisconsin – and I decided to host one. (I’m a huge philanthropist – in December, I give $25 here and $50 there to lots of organizations, up to the max I can deduct on my taxes, and Planned Parenthood is always one I give to – so they sent me an email asking if I’d host.) It was fun – about 15 people, coming over after work on a Thursday. We ate & drank, and watched an 18-minute movie that PPWi sent me to play.

PPWi didn’t ask us hosts to solicit donations at the parties, but I ended up with almost $200 to send back to them, along with the sign up sheets that they seemed to really want, to build their contacts list. Must’ve been because I gave everyone such good stuff to eat they felt generous.

We had:

Hummus & muhamarra (red pepper dip) and warm pita wedges – grilled in my panini press
Marieke gouda with fenugreek and cheddar cheese with cracker and chutney
Pizza pockets – (in the freezer since the super bowl)
Bacon dates – (in the freezer since the cookie party)
Tiny World Peace Cookies – so cute compared to the big ones I usually make
A big fruit platter with grapes, strawberries & clementines