Two Days in Chicago/Smut

Two Days in Chicago

Last weekend we drove up to Chicago to see friends (John and Peggy, in Hyde Park) and an opera (Iphigenie en Tauride, at the Chicago Lyric). Unfortunately, the opera began at 7:30, and if you need an hour to get across town (which we did, due to traffic and rain), this screws up dinner. So we had good bread made by a local baker, brie, and wine before the performance, and John went out to a local place and got us Italian food for afters: fried calamari, salad, and penne all'diavolo with lots of garlic. More wine, of course. John has turned a closet into an insulated wine cellar, and it is stuffed to the rafters with un-wimpy wines. The memorable ones this weekend were rich, tasty Australian shirazes: Marquis Philips, its Roogle mascot now sadly extinct, and Jacob's Creek 2003 reserve.

The next day was the Dorchester Street Block Party, a sparkling event despite both starting and ending with a sudden thunderstorm. The street was blocked off with a '65 Dodge Dart (turquoise, but reminded me of my own '66 Bronze Bomb), providing room for games for both young (Battleship, junior basketball, what Cincinnatians innocently call Cornhole) and old (chess and a cutthroat penny-ante poker game). Drinks and food were generously shared, and we got to taste a flight of small-batch bourbons (mainly out of the Buffalo Trace distillery) that could hardly be believed. Our party provided a humongous Greek salad for the potluck, just the normal tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, red onions, and green pepper. There were four kinds of sausages, which is what you would expect in Chicago, but also an outstanding eggplant dish (quasi-parmesan but sans mozzarella), several interesting bean things, and a Chinese neighbor's fried rice with hot dog slices, an intercultural melange unique in my experience. The pièce de resistance was a 20-pound salmon that had been flown in from Alaska, stuffed with butter and herbs and grilled in a box of coals that looked like a small coffin. Of course, there were desserts, brownies, sweet breads, chocolate cake, etc., but the heavens opened just as we were getting to them. Still, our congratulations and thanks to the friendly residents of Dorchester Street, and we hope we can manage a return engagement next year.

Smut

Give me smut and nothing but . . .
As Tom Lehrer said. The continuation of the ketch-up series of dinners.

We went on from Chicago to spend two days with Jon and Lois in Champagne (the town) and champagne (the drink).

Jon is one of the best cooks I've ever met. We arrived and they fed us on a heavenly dilled salmon mousse washed down with mimosas. There were also about 5 kinds of cheeses and a similar variety of olives. Now, technically this blog is "What Holt and Barbara Had for Dinner," but since lunch sort of fed imperceptibly into dinner (i.e., I never stopped eating), I feel justified in starting there.

Jon did crêpes filled with huitlacoche and goat cheese. Yes, friends, Ustilago maydis (street name: corn smut). A black fungus blight that infects corn and turns out to be surprisingly delicious, for something lovingly described as featuring "large distorted tumors." Jon and Lois first had it in Mexico City and we managed to find some out at Jungle Jim's, when Jon and Lois came to see us in Cincinnati. It turns out to resemble sort of a truffle paste. We will no longer be allowed to visit them any more, unless bearing gifts of cans of infected maize.

Dinner was what happens when classicists live in Arizona too long: a Southwestern kleftiko.* A kleftiko is your basic Greek crock pot, traditionally a terracotta dish sealed for long slow baking, named for the klefts: robbers or freedom fighters, take your choice, who apparently had loads of time on their hands.

Since it's not my dish, I can’t give you a recipe, only a memory. Jon's version was a lamb shoulder, thickly coated in mild chili powder, slow roasted for hours and hours with broth, then pulled apart. To which was added tomatoes, onions, baby carrots, Mexican oregano, garlic, more chili, more broth, and baked for more hours and hours. Disposed of with five bottles of wine, of which the most memorable--alright, after 5 bottles of wine I had to take notes the next morning-- were a Ramey Chardonnay 2001, and a Calina Reserva Carmenére 2004, made from a Chilean varietal which was new to me and mighty tasty.

(Calina turns out to be owned by Kendall-Jackson, and carmenére was originally from Bordeaux, migrated to Chile where they thought it was merlot.)

*Jon has produced, among other things, the best ever adaptation of Apicius, the ancient Roman cookbook for the modern kitchen.