Things I Miss in January

Today I'm missing fresh strawberries from Mick Klug (might've been the best thing I ate all year during one stretch);

and pea soup with asparagus and watercress and shallot;

and tomatoes, like in this panzanella we made in August.

Missing them, and yet looking forward to having them again in just a few months. Here's to January!

i can only hope i'm a coosa (a response)

the coosa that alicia made for us last week.

i wondered what it would be to get me back on the blog again, and here it is. coosa. which you'll discover by the end of this post, couldn't be more fitting of an entry to get me back in the saddle.

what is a coosa? well, that depends on who you're asking. for the past week in our home, coosa has been on our dinner plates, stuffed with spiced ground beef and rice and sitting in a broth of tomatoes. but simply, coosa is a lebanese word for squash. but then again, it's just not that simple.

alicia and i were married on august 6 in the clarence e. lewis arboretum at michigan state university. it was an incredible weekend, with family coming out of the woodworks to bring in the celebration with us. and family is what i'm getting at here.

for the aboods, alicia's lebanese side of the family, coosa is a word with many layers. for one, coosa is a little squash. as a kid, you could've told me a coosa grew from the planted thumbs of green giants, and i might've believed you. that's what they look like. a green giant's thumb. for another, and i speak from experience here, coosa is a timekey. when alicia and i sat down to eat the coosa she made last week, i could tell the dish had taken her to a place i'd never been—and eating it with her was the closest i might ever get. in that memory of a place, alicia's grandfather was there and so too were his siblings, the cousins, the rest of the family—the dish was full of memories for her. it was a special moment for me to take part in, especially in light of our marriage. but then there's the variations on coosa. if one abood cousin were to bring his or her coosa dish to another abood cousin's house, i'd put money down that the comparisons would start spilling out the moment the lid was pulled off the squash filled pot. the broth is too thick. you don't puree your tomatoes? and that squash... you over stuffed the squash. it shouldn't split open like that. and where's the cinnamon? i can't taste the cinnamon! what'd you do to that rice, sweetheart? it's puffed up like a wet sponge! and so on. one coosa is different from another.

but then there's cousin maureen, and her father. and she's the reason alicia cooked the coosa last week. maureen wrote a series of blog posts about coosa, capped off by the beautiful story about how her father called her and her siblings coosa the way other kids are called pumpkin. "now we always ask the delicious little children in the family: 'are you a coosa?!' and they laugh and smile, and know exactly what we mean." her blog post is titled "are you a coosa?" follow that link and read her story. it'd be a shame not to.

and that's the magic of food. at times, food simply fills a need. it can be a peach in the morning or a slice of cheese in the afternoon, just to appease that pang of hunger. but then food can be a whole lot more.  in this case, food tells a story about my new family. and in a way, my writing on this one dish called coosa, is symbolic of my marrying alicia a few weeks ago.

just look at that picture at the top of this post. most people have never seen a dish like this before. so where did it come from? and why is it in my house? the story is there, and it's just beginning.

family farmed expo

tomato mountain had a table last year via tammy green's photostream.

a few months ago a friend approached me about helping out on the social media for a three-day conference of sorts held in chicago called the family farmed expo. since late january, i've been doing just that. and the expo? it begins today.

looking back on the early posts of this blog, long before i had a business and did much more on twitter than scratch my head at the short and blabbering tweets that came from my own account, i never would've dreamed to be working on an event that billed itself as "a three day conference, trade show, and food festival for farmers, businesses, the trade, individuals, and families." the joke internally is that it's sort of like the SXSW of local food. but it's the 5am hour, i'm awake, and soon enough i'll be down at the expo doing my social media thang, live tweeting my little fool heart out. what a thrill for me to be working so closely with local foods, artisan food makers, and family farms.

i'm hoping i'll have moments to pause and reflect, even report, on the expo and the incredible programming that will run the next three days—but to be honest, i just don't know what to expect. this might be three days of marathon training for all i know.

in the meantime, follow along as i work my way through the schedule with @grantkessler and @localfoodwisdom while the three of us put our heads together and converge to bring as much live content to the @familyfarmed twitter handle as we possibly can.

and let's hope we serve the expo well, huh?

826chi guest post series: meat tostadas

bean and chicken tostadas from stef noble's photostream.

this is it. the last post from the 826 kids before i jump behind the bar and make a fool of myself tomorrow night—which, having mardi gras like i will, should make up for the embarrassment, yeah?

pablo closes the series out with thoughts on meat tostadas. it's been great to see the culture that comes through these pieces, even in foods as simple as rice and beans or ceviche. it shows the importance of cooking at home, and how easily these stories and recipes and memories are passed from one generation to the next. "they are special," pablo says, "because we can all be part of this tradition, too."

thanks for following along with the kids, and here's hoping i see you tomorrow night. who knows, i might even be in an extra good mood and buy everyone a round... no promises.

Meat Tostadas
Pablo C. 

It’s almost dinner time and I am hungry. I smell the yummy smell of the meat tostadas. It makes me feel warm. It makes the kitchen smell good but different. It makes me feel happy in a strange way. 

What’s in these tostadas is the sweet avocado, lettuce, and tomato. It has cheese (chihuahua) also. How I help prepare it is I put the tomato, cheese (chihuaha), and avocado, and then serve it. This food tastes like a meat bowl. 

This food is special to me because it’s a carried tradition from my family. This food came from my great grandma, who made this food every Sunday to honor the church’s time for us. My mom still makes it every Sunday, but still makes it on weekdays because it’s good. I help my mom make this food because I want to help her and be part of the tradition. They are special because we can all be part of this tradition, too. 

This food describes me by telling that I am traditional and it reminds me of my ancestors. This food is something I will never forget and I will try to keep it in my family for my whole life long, and show it to my kids to stay in tradition forever so they can learn how food can also be part of our traditions.

826chi guest post series: i love rice!

rice and beans with corn via the boastful baker's photostream.

the third in a series of guests posts from a group of kids that visited the 826 chicago headquarters and wrote about food.

the whole point to this guest series was to get more voices than my own telling short stories about foods that have a familial connection. with the last post i shared, i wrote about a connection between the two stories. and we see it again here with thoughts on rice and beans.

this all started because i'm guest bartending at prairie fire to raise money for 826 chicago, and i asked if 826 would like to share any of the kids' stories on the blog. when you read something like "rice tastes like little people in your mouth screaming to get out" from aaliyah c., you start to feel pretty damn good about asking for these stories. that's a heavy metaphor for a kids' writing exercise. awesome stuff.

a bramble via ian l grundy's photostream.

and since my bartending gig was cancelled last month because of snowpocalypse, we rescheduled for next tuesday—which happens to fall on mardia gras. so i've changed my cocktail to "the bramble" to bring a little cajun color to the night (maybe i should have beads, too...). it's a classic louisiana drink, layered on the rocks with bourbon, lemon, currant liqueur, and soda—even a non-whiskey drinker would keep ordering more and more of these they're so good. i'll be serving the drink from 6-8pm on tuesday, march 8, and any money raised for the night will be matched to hopefully give 826 chicago a decent chunk of change.

and finally, here's aaliyah, on rice and beans...

“I love Rice!” 

By Aaliyah C. 

The reason I chose rice and beans is because my family and I love rice. It is part of my culture. We like to make rice with different things, like rice with beans, rice and plaintains, and many many things. We make something different every day. Rice tastes like little people in your mouth screaming to get out. Rice smells like whole grain things. When I touch the rice it feels weird but I still eat it anyway. When I see it I wanna gobble it down. It sounds like nothing. Sometimes on special occasions we make it extra special to me and extra good, yummy. My family and I love rice and I hope we don’t stop making it!

a movie, food speak, and some grub

apples in fall shadows via green city market's photostream.

about a year ago i was just standing at the right place at the right time when a friend introduced me to jim javenkoski. jim is a midwest man, through and through, and the devoted daddy of twin two year-old boys who go with their pop every saturday morning to green city market. jim also holds a phd in food science, studying both at the university of wisconsin and the university of illinois, and is a supreme advocate for local foods and the small family farm. and he's on a mission.

every month jim holds a locavore dinner at a chicago restaurant and spreads his local food wisdom through the sensory experiences that follow—he suggests certain farms and products for the chefs to use, and in the process, these dinners have featured product the chefs might have otherwise never known about or purchased. and to top it off, the farmers are invited to the dinner to not only eat and drink, but speak about the foodstuffs and the stories therein. it's a rare chance for any regular guy like me to rub elbows with the farmers who feed me year round.

and this month jim's throwing us a curveball. he's hosting a movie screening.

beth eccles, center, led the RIA and balsan restaurant crew on
a tour of green acres farm in september, and i tagged along.

the film is called "INGREDIENTS", and a copy of it is sitting in our dvd player right now. a food documentary that went straight to disc and never had life in the theaters, the film shifts between ohio, oregon, and new york city, focusing on the relationships between the small family farm and the cooks who have committed to working with the ingredients those farms put out year-round. this film gets to the very heart of what i write about on this blog, what jim advocates at his dinners, and what is slowly catching the eye of more and more americans.

the dinners usually set you back about $75, but this time around the cost drops all the way down to $25 a pop. which, just to hear jim speak and see the film is worth the price of admission, but jim's sweetened the deal a bit. matt maroni and gaztro-wagon, the pioneer of chicago food trucks, will be dishing out his naanwiches and munchies for the movie, there'll be an open bar featuring local brews, and after the film, beth and brent eccles of green acres farm and marianne sundquist of in fine spirits—she hosted and cooked for the most recent locavore dinner—will host a panel discussion moderated by jim.

here's a short clip of the film's opening, anchored by none other than berkeley local food maven, alice waters:

the event is tuesday, february 22 at 6:30pm at logan square kitchen, a rentable and shared space that's helped artisan food makers find a certified kitchen for the foods they sell at green city market. and i think it goes without saying, i'll be there.

826chi guest post series: my amazing summer

ceviche in peru via .mayli.'s photostream.

yesterday it was hawaiian pork chops. today, it's ceviche.

this is the second in a short series of guests posts from the kids at 826 chicago, and while in just two posts the kids are finding a connection to these family table foods, there's also a common thread that's formed. on the surface the kids identify with the foods enough that for an exercise that calls for "recipes and reflections," we've seen two that span a generational gap in each family. what's beneath the surface though is that the kids aren't quite developing the understanding of this significance. the question isn't being asked, "what story is behind my mother's ceviche? how did she learn to make it?" instead the reflection we get is scene specific to the memory: watching the clouds pass overhead, dropping the bikes before going inside, and drinking lemonade.

which is refreshing for me to see, because it's easy to forget we once were at that point, too. a time when enjoying a simple thing like fresh ceviche, and sharing it with friends after a day in the park, was all it took to make the best day of the summer. it's called innocence—or naïveté or, calling a spade a spade, just plain youth—and it's given me pause to think back on those moments when i finally did ask the questions as to why a thing was what it was, and how did it get there, and why was it in our home?

call it sentiment, but i get a kick out of wondering what that ceviche will mean to tiffany ten years from now. my guess is that summer day will be a forgotten memory, but the stories of the ceviche, the time spent with her mother learning how to make it, will surface.

“My Amazing Summer” 

By Tiffany M.

It was a nice beautiful day. I was hanging out with my best friends Jackie, Lorely, and FiFi. We were lying down on the grass in the park. We were watching the clouds, relaxing, and there was a wonderful breeze. Jackie, FiFi, Lorely and I then got hungry. So we decided to go back to my house for lunch.

We took our bikes and rode them as fast as lightning because we were so hungry. When we got to my house we dropped our bikes and went inside. We sat on the couch drinking lemonade and trying to decide what was for lunch. Then I faced them and said, “Why don’t we have ceviche?” Jackie, FiFi, and Lorely agreed. So my mom helped me cook the ceviche. Jackie, Fifi, and Lorely gathered half a pound of cubed fish, 5 limes, 1 big red onion, half of a green pepper, 1 small tomato, 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, 2 spoons of vegetable oil, and a bunch of cilantro. We cut all the ingredients and mixed it up. I served everyone and we ate it all. It WAS DELICIOUS!! This was the best summer day EVER!! THE END.

826chi guest post series: hawaiian pork chops

the infamous index card recipe from gherringer's photostream.

to be totally candid, i couldn't wait for wednesday morning to roll around so that i could begin posting this guest series from a group of kids who recently took a field trip to the 826chi center with a theme of "recipes and reflections." when i approached 826 about raising money for them when i guest bartend next week, i had no idea there was a food theme in their program. here's the prompt they offer for teachers on the theme:

Everyone loves food, but what does it really mean? During this field trip, students bring a family recipe and discover how food holds more meaning than just the ingredients in the recipe. Students work with volunteers to write reflections, incorporating memories of the recipe and its place in their lives. At the end, volunteers type the stories and the class is mailed a class book with their class photo on the back.

so much of what i've found through this blog is rooted in the premise of this simple exercise. there are endless stories to tell surrounding our food—which is why i can't get my fingers to type fast enough to introduce to a new way of storytelling on this blog. writing on "hawaiian pork chops," and the first in what will be a series of posts from the 826 kids, here's dylan's reflection on his family's recipe...

"Hawaiian Pork Chops"

By Dylan C.

The recipe for Hawaiian pork chops runs in my family. They taste really good and also they are easy to make. We make them for holidays or just days that we just like to have good food. It tells people that I really like yummy food. Also every time I hear “Hawaiian pork chops” my mouth waters, especially when my dad makes them. Some ingredients are brown sugar, ketchup, salt, pepper, and plenty more. The holiday we usually make it on is the Fourth of July. When I hear the word I get really hungry. When we make them everyone can help themselves—or at least if you hurry up.

charity guest bartending for 826chi

this isn't my drink, but it'll look something like it,
ward eight via cookthinker's photostream.

a week from tonight, for two hours, i'll be wearing my bartender pants. thing of it is, i've never worn those pants before. i don't even know what they look like. so one can only hope pants like those have pockets full of whiskey, right?

i'm guest bartending. i've been fortunate to cross paths with sarah stegner at prairie fire here in chicago, who is both co-chef and owner of the restaurant. every tuesday night the restaurant hosts a guest bartender, inviting them to serve a cocktail of their own recipe, with any tips raised going to a charity of that person's choosing. when sarah asked me a while back if i'd come in and do this, i didn't really hesitate to say yes.

i'll be pouring out a ward eight, which is a classic whiskey drink with somewhat of a story. the drink is named for a boston politician appointed to state government in 1898, and it was the voting margin in boston's ward eight that helped push him over the top. and the restaurant that created the drink? locke-ober. a place that is alive and kicking pretty strong near beacon hill still today—and brings the story full circle, with our short-lived boston roots. but i'm calling mine a ward826.

most major cities in the u.s. have an 826. l.a. has one, and so does boston. and there was one down the street from alicia and i in chicago last year, and we didn't even realize it—which made us feel pretty small, with our mfa-creative-writing-gung-ho-literary-student-loan-debt-enthusiasm and all. that's because 826 is a non-profit writing and tutoring center, for children.

"the facade of 826chi. the boring store is a front for the spy store is a front
for the after-school writing program," via rcavalcante's photostream.

the 826 centers are a product of writer dave eggers, whom a lot of people know from his book a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. when i was writing more, his mcsweeney's collection of stories and essays was the one publication i wanted to see my work published in. the writing is off-the-grain, unique, and the kind of stuff we'd all be better off with stumbling across just a bit more.

a student reads in november via 826 chicago's photostream.

so even though i've worked closely with taste of the nation and am more recently working with green city market and the upcoming family farmed expo, there wasn't much hesitation when i decided to go to 826chi with my tips for next tuesday night. and they reciprocated. so much so that they've shared a few samples of student writings from a recent "recipes and reflections" field trip to the center. the kids bring a family recipe with them on the trip, and the point is to discover how food holds more meaning than just the ingredients in the recipe. if you've read this blog before, that should sound just a tad familiar, no?

everything looks better upside down, via 826 chicago's photostream.

so for the rest of the week leading up to my stint behind the bar at prairie fire, i'll be featuring an entry a day from the kids.

and in the meantime, if you're in chicago, make plans for next tuesday night. i start pouring my ward826 (whiskey, oj, lemon, and grenadine i'm making myself) at 6pm and won't stop until 8pm. and the kicker? the auer family foundation has stepped up as a matching donor for the night—so whatever tips are raised, we're now throwing the kids twice as much.

cheers to that.

guest blog: sustainability, and how one restaurant works with, and supports it, part two

The third post in a series of guest posts from the team at RIA and Balsan in the Elysian Hotel, Brian O'Connor gets down to the anatomy—sometimes hair pulling—of sourcing product, and specifically seafood, that's sustainably harvested. This blog exists because I wanted to know the stories behind where my food was coming from—and this post hits on that note, to the T. For more on Monday's dinner, go here.

The dining room at RIA.

OK, now that we’ve set the ground rules for sustainability, how do they translate into real dishes at a real restaurant? 

Yesterday I mentioned the challenge of a longer supply chain. At the restaurant we try to know everyone from whom we purchase product. We visit our local farms and hang out with the farmers at the market. Our Sommelier, Dan, gets regular visits from winemakers and makes his own way out to their properties as much as possible. While we’ve had a few chances to drop in on oyster farms in the northwest and we can work out a trip on a fishing boat now and then, it’s difficult in the middle of the country to build the kind of direct relationships we’re used to with the multitude of mariners who regularly catch our fish. 

So what can we do to make up for it? “We have to know, and trust, our purveyors,” says our Chef de Cuisine Danny Grant. He singles out a handful: Pierless Fish, Ingrid Bengis Seafood, and especially Mika Higurashi at SONA (which stands for Sustainability of Natures and Aquaculture). “I know I can tell Mika what I am looking for and she will find the highest quality and the best source.” It’s a lesson learned over and over in this business: personal relationships are the path to success.

So now that we’re more comfortable outsourcing our direct purchasing to a trusted wholesaler, what do we buy? Let’s walk through a dish we’ll be serving Monday night: Sea Scallop, Caviar, Octopus, Fumet Blanc.

A RIA dish: Scallop and Octopus. With
turnip, sturgeon caviar, fumet.

The above is a chilled appetizer of gently poached scallop and octopus with hakurei turnip, American sturgeon caviar and a classic fumet emulsified with a touch of crème fraîche. It features a variety of seafood, each of which can be sustainably sourced.

Ingrid’s Diver-Harvested Scallops 

Sea Scallops are a success story for sustainable seafood. In the 1970s industrial scallop capture nearly destroyed the natural population of Atlantic scallops. By the 80s the US began to restructure its scallop fisheries, introducing catch limits and rotational fishing and even closing off entire areas to harvest. The tenacious scallops showed their resilience and populations rebounded faster than anyone imagined.

Scallops have little inherent vulnerability. They are small, mature quickly and reproduce in large numbers (females produce 15-60 million eggs). Additionally, biomass has been closely watched since the 80s and populations are known to be large and strong. While East Coast US fishing regimes are not always thoroughly enforced, the fisheries have been managed reasonably well.

However, there remain concerns about by-catch and habitat damage due to the trawling used to capture the majority of commercial scallops. These trawls scrape along the ocean bottom, regularly upsetting the balance of the ecosystem and also capturing skate, flounder, sea turtles and other marine life.

From a diver's eyes via piggyhiggins' photostream.

Thankfully, a responsible alternative exists: scallops hand-harvested by divers. This less-invasive method avoids much of the ecosystem damage and by-catch while also functioning on a day-to-day basis. Instead of large ships dredging up scallops and then holding them aboard for a week or two before returning to land, the “diver” scallops are harvested in the morning and brought ashore in the afternoon. By the next day we have them in the kitchen.

When they come ashore, Ingrid Bengis-Palei or one of her employees is waiting for them. Ingrid Bengis Seafood was a pioneer in the Northeast quality and sustainability revolution of the 80s and 90s (she’s been called the Alice Waters of seafood for her role). She knows most of the Mainers who gather seafood in the icy waters around Deer Isle and she works with them to find the best of the best. As so often happens, the individual touch so important to sustainability also brings us product of the highest quality.

Wild Spanish Pot-Caught Octopus

Like lobster pots in New England, these pots help Spanish fisherman
 effectively catch wild octopus, via catrien's photostream.

Researching Octopus is a great way to dive into the complexities of sustainability. A variety of octopus fisheries exist worldwide, each of them managed differently. A quick glance at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s seafood card finds international wild octopus listed as “avoid.” Uh oh. However, the Aquarium publishes more detailed Seafood Reports that approach the issue with an academic level of detail and flesh out more specifics for each fishery. The major reason octopus gets a red “avoid” is because it is nearly impossible, sitting at a sushi counter or browsing in a grocery store, to reliably tell the provenance of the product. With a bit of research, though, one can find sources of responsibly caught octopus.

Our relationships help us find these sources. We get our wild octopus from Spain, where fisherman head out daily to pull in their pot traps. The octopus has a relatively short lifecycle and produces hundreds of eggs, which means it has little inherent vulnerability. Overfishing does not occur and the inland pots catch mostly mature octopus with negligible by-catch. The true size of the stock is unknown, but fishing levels have remained constant for nearly 30 years in a well-watched regime. The remaining environmental concerns revolve around uncertainty: little is know about the octopus’s role in the larger food chain.

Additionally, Spanish fisheries have been remarkably creative in responding to the ecological and economic challenges of modern fishing. Spanish institutes often develop and fund those Sardine-counting studies I mentioned yesterday and the Spanish have been at the forefront of modernizing aquaculture to restore marine environments (more on that in my final post).

Petrossian American Sturgeon Caviar

Petrossian is a caviar staple, and a staple in our kitchen, too.

Unlike the scallop, the wild sturgeon is not a success story. Sturgeon are long-lived fish and they tend to reproduce rarely. They are inherently vulnerable to overfishing.

Worldwide stocks remain at levels so dangerously low that many governments have outlawed their capture. Black market fishing continues, often catching the fish only to open them and remove the gleaming black caviar inside. As stocks near extinction (and the remaining fish tend to be chock full of PCBs and Mercury), the US has banned the import of Caspian Sea sturgeon caviar.

In the US wild sturgeon are making a comeback and there is even one viable (and heavily regulated) commercial fishery in the Columbia River. The meat of these fish is delicious. For caviar, however, we turn to aquaculture—fish farming.

After years of research and failed experiments, in the 1980s scientists in California finally succeeded in raising sturgeon in captivity. Since then, commercial sturgeon aquaculture has taken off and currently exists in three states with plans to expand to others. As these operations improve, caviar packers have begun to partner with them to cure, pack and age the sturgeon roe in the quest to create a product comparable to the legendary Caspian caviar.

Petrossian has been selling caviar since the 1920’s, when they worked with Cesar Ritz to establish caviar as a symbol of luxury. While there is a certain status conveyed by the tiny eggs, we like them because they are delicious—well cared for, aged and packed.

Petrossian sources their sturgeon roe from Stolt Sea Farms in Sacremento, California. As might be imagined, aquaculture avoids the sustainability concerns of wild seafood such as population vulnerabilities and overfishing. By-catch isn’t really a problem when one is raising only fish for harvest.

There are, however, other environmental concerns associated with aquaculture (more on this in the next installment!) and Stolt does a fine job addressing them. The sturgeon are raised in water that is re-circulated, avoiding the escape of farmed fish or waste into natural ecosystems. The waste is processed and sold as fertilizer. The one remaining challenge in current sturgeon aquaculture is that the fish are carnivorous and eat more seafood than they produce.

One Dish, 1200 Words 

The heartbeat of the kitchen...

OK—I hope the anatomy of a single dish’s sourcing helps to illuminate some of the thought that goes into selecting our seafood. Are we perfectly sustainable? Of course not. Are there trade-offs and compromises involved in our decisions and sourcing? Certainly. But by utilizing the resources we have and cultivating relationships with like-minded people, we can take great steps toward operating a more responsible restaurant.

One of the most common refrains in discussions of sustainable seafood is that transparency is key. We need transparency from the folks catching the fish about their methods and the status of their fisheries. We need transparency from our purveyors regarding the provenance of the product. And we need to remember that our guests need transparency in order to make well-informed decisions. We don’t list every single purveyor on our menu, but we do our very best to ensure our team knows the source of every single item on the plate.

By the way, the hakurei turnips come from Heritage Prairie Farm in La Fox, Illinois.

guest blog: a contest!

This post is the second in what has now evolved to be four guest entries from my friends in the kitchen at the Elysian Hotel—and today we're hearing from Executive Chef Jason McLeod. On Monday night they're hosting a 'ocean-friendly' seafood dinner at RIA, in partnership with the Shedd Aquarium's Right Bite program. The dinner is $150 per person, so this is quite the bounty for whoever wins... but for me, I'm helping spread word of an issue I care deeply about.

Common in South America, this little guy will be spreading the
ocean-friendly message Monday at RIA, via Oleg Volkov's photostream.

It's official. Not only will we be cooking with some gorgeous sustainable seafood Monday night, but we just found out we'll have some very special friends visiting us throughout the dinner, too. Some, how do I say this, unique friends... and I think it's safe to say it'll be the first time either will have set foot in the Elysian. Actually, I doubt they get out much in Chicago at all.

Roll out the red carpet, people—we'll be joined by a Red Foot Tortoise and a Blue Tongue Skink. And I know, those names are great, aren't they?

I don't know about you guys, but this takes me way back to my childhood. We were lucky enough to have a zoo that made trips to our school with all sorts of cool stuff from the zoo and that day was always one of the best of the year. I mean, getting up close to animals and reptiles and birds I'd never seen before and skipping out on class? That's the real deal, man.

Needless to say, this news had the staff giddy with excitement—which got us thinking. We need to have some more fun with this. To spread the message to more people. So, because we're now on twitter and constantly plugged in to that always spinning network, we're gonna open up two seats to the Shedd Dinner via a little contest... and whoever comes out on top? Those seats are theirs, on us.

The Blue Tongue Skink will be there Monday night, too. Common
in the Land Down Under, we'll have one in the dinning room.
via floridanaturephotography's photostream.

And here's how it's gonna work...

Part 1. Correctly answer the following two questions in the comment section of this blog post (correct answers will be published on the blog upon receipt):

1) Our ocean-friendly dinner menu will be featuring sea scallops. This tasty seafood is considered what species? 

(*UPDATE* No need to go crazy specific here, just tell us if it's a bird or reptile or... you know.)

2) The ocean-friendly dinner menu will also include Dungeness crab. This crab is named after a region found where?

3) What luxurious seafood was once considered to be 'poverty food,' fed to prisoners and servants? Some servants even demanded contracts that they could be fed this food no more them three times per week.

Part 2. Post the following on twitter, tagging @riabalsanchefs in the post (tweets submitted before correct completion of Part 1 will not be accepted, first person to finish is dining with a plus one on us):

1) A photograph of any RIA dish featuring any of the above three types of seafood.

Follow the rules and finish first and you'll be hanging out with a Red Foot Tortoise and a Blue Tongue Skink, too—though, maybe don't dress like them?

And keep a look out for Brian's second post, following the first he posted the other day. He's been working his tail off on this project—and that's not easy when you have a restaurant to run!

guest blog: sustainability, and how one restaurant works with, and supports it

On Monday, November 15, Ria restaurant, one of my newest partners, will team up with the Shedd Aquarium to present an “Ocean Friendly” dinner featuring a sustainably-sourced menu.  For the next three days, Ria General Manager Brian O’Connor will discuss the complexities and concerns associated with sourcing sustainable seafood, a struggle difficult for restaurants, but one I hope more and more take on—and one I've written about at length in the past.

The Shedd Aquarium via setholiver1's photostream.

Hi there.  Thanks to Johnny Auer for providing this opportunity to think out loud (or in type) about some of the challenges and rewards involved with sustainable seafood.  I’ll be posting three times on the subject: today I’ll discuss the general goals and criteria of sustainable sourcing, tomorrow I’ll get into some examples we face each day in the restaurant, and then Friday I’ll do my best to describe the future direction I see the whole endeavor heading.

Sourcing sustainable seafood presents even more complex challenges than those associated with other sustainable food.  The usual concerns associated with sustainable sourcing are there: environmental impact, methods of production, and of course quality of the product.  Additionally, we have to worry about the uncertainty inherent in a longer supply chain, the stability of species populations and the length of their reproductive lifecycle, and even the effectiveness of public and private oversight. 

Investigating the sustainability of our seafood presents other problems.  We make it a point to regularly visit and communicate with our farmers, and we can see firsthand the methods used and even debate their effectiveness when necessary.  Getting out to the Alaskan seas three times a year, however, is prohibitively expensive.  If we were able, we’d still have a hard time tracking the vulnerability of population stock or seeing if the rest of the fleet fishing the species were as responsible as the boat we were on.  The issue is vast as—well—the ocean.

Thankfully, we have the work of the Monterey Bay and John G. Shedd Aquariums to guide us.  Through their Seafood Watch and Right Bite programs, they collect and distribute a wealth of information regarding wild and farmed seafood.  Monterey Bay has even established a set of guiding principles and criteria for objectively judging sustainability.  These criteria group fish into three categories: Best Choices (Green), Good Alternative (Yellow) and Avoid (Red).  These evaluations are invaluable to the chef or restaurateur interested in sourcing sustainable seafood.

Shedd's Right Bite wallet card, download it here.

There are five Seafood Watch criteria for evaluating the sustainability of wild-caught seafood.  They focus on the stability of the species itself, the effects of capture on the surrounding environment and the effectiveness of enforcing any necessary limits on catch.  Here they are:

•       Inherent vulnerability to fishing pressure

The more resilient a species, the less likely it is to be overfished.  For this criterion we consider the growth rate of the fish, its fecundity (a great term for reproductive capacity), and its maximum age. 

Compare a sardine and a coastal shark.  Sardines begin reproducing as young as two years old and live 5-10 years.  Additionally, they produce loads of offspring.  Sharks mature in 8-15 years (longer for females), can live 30+ years and produce only a handful of young.  The shark is inherently vulnerable to overfishing because it cannot reproduce as quickly as it can be caught.

Mediterranean sardines via anthony plewes' photostream.

•       Status of wild stocks

This criterion evaluates how “endangered” a species is.  We consider the overall biomass of the species and the rate at which it is captured.  This is surprisingly difficult to assess accurately. (Imagine trying to count all the sardines in the Mediterranean: How do you find them all?  How do you ensure you don’t count a sardine twice?  These are just the initial challenges.)

Because of the difficulty accurately assessing wild stocks, the Seafood Watch program adopts a conservative position: uncertainty is assumed unsustainable.  If we cannot be sure the health of a stock, it is considered unhealthy.  As we will see in the coming days, this leads to some of the most interesting questions in the evolution of the program.

•       Nature and extent of discarded by-catch

As anyone who has been fishing can attest, one can never be sure what is on the end of the line until it is reeled in.  As the scale of fishing increases from basic hook-and-line to longlines with hundreds of hooks to football-field-sized trawls dragged along the ocean floor, it becomes more difficult to catch only the intended fish.  Methods which reduce or eliminate by-catch are more sustainable.

We often look for hook-and-line caught fish as it not only limits by-catch (which is quickly thrown back), but also because the smaller scale tends to lead to better quality product.  Each fish pulled aboard is cared for properly: the body is not packed awkwardly, bending and denaturing the flesh; it is processed as necessary and sent to us as quickly as possible; also, it provides a more direct link between the source of the product and the final dish.  In addition to hook-and-line, diver-harvested and trapped seafood also tend to limit by-catch.

•       Effect of fishing practices on habitats and ecosystems

This criterion directly addresses the double-whammy of massive trawling operations.  As the anchors holding down the trawl net scrape along the ocean floor, entire ecosystems are disturbed and even destroyed.  The smaller-scale the operation and the less invasive the method, the smaller the footprint left behind.

Additionally, this section looks at the role the fish itself plays in the larger ecosystem.  Removing a creature that is a vital link in the food chain can have lasting consequences far beyond immediate physical damage.

What you might find when eating at Ria...

•       Effectiveness of the management regime

For the final standard we take a step back and investigate exactly how all of the above criteria are managed and enforced.  Many fisheries limit yields or methods of capture, but if there is no enforcement mechanism these limits are routinely ignored.  Additionally, the disincentives must be strong enough to stop the offending behavior but not so strong they discourage good fishing practices. 

Again, uncertainty is treated as unsustainable.  Without a certifiable metric for measuring effectiveness, management regimes are assumed to be “good alternatives” at best.  To address this challenge, a number of different operations have emerged, from completely government-controlled and operated to those formed by industry association and privately overseen.  In time, we will be able to better assess how each of these designs works and hopefully take the best of each to move forward.

So that’s a (somewhat) brief introduction to how we think about sustainable seafood.  The Seafood Watch guiding principles and criteria give us a great starting point to examine the product we are using in the kitchen.  Sometimes small changes can make huge improvements in practice: switching from Atlantic to Pacific Halibut or dropping Monkfish off a menu immediately make it more sustainable.

The real challenge is in the gray areas.  Should I use wild diver-caught scallops?  If I know the person fishing my black bass and I am certain she fishes it sustainably, am I right to use it?  These are the real questions we face each day in the restaurant and these are the questions I’ll address tomorrow.

See you then!

an 11 year old tells us what's wrong with our food system

birke baehr is eleven years old. and he knows more about our food systems than you do.

watch. and learn.



"think local. choose organic. know your farm. and know your food."

i want to be an organic farmer when i grow up too, birke. chase 'dem dreams, boy!

whole foods and grass-fed beef

the whisnant's of rain crow ranch, an all grass-fed and pasture raised cattle farm.

i think a lot of us enjoy retaining information. it's why the history channel and the travel channel and animal planet and every other odd and random niche of a network are on our tv listings, right? and now, we have social media. we have things called news feeds on facebook and streams on twitter. every minute of every day these feeds are updated with pictures and links and snippets of stories being told by someone, somewhere that we're not at that exact moment. while there are definite downfalls to this, there's also a tremendous upside. i'm retaining more random news and info than i ever have before!

which is why i was so excited to find a whole foods post in my news feed announcing a nation wide sale on grass-fed ground beef at every single one of their stores this coming friday, september 3. grass-fed ground beef. $3.99 per pound. just in time for labor day. are you kidding me?

cheeseburger time via whole foods.

but i was also skeptical. how in the world can whole foods pulls this off? how can the farmers afford it? and whose beef is this? who are those farmers? well, luckily, whole foods wasn't shy to share just exactly where the beef would be coming from for every single store in their repertoire. so i now know that the beef i'm buying this friday is coming from a 10,000 black angus cattle farm in missouri called rain crow ranch. it's a family farm run by a husband and wife (she has a doctorate and her husband studied in both agriculture and marketing) and their six kids. that's the kind of story i want to hear—and the kind of producer i want to buy from. read the list of farmers to find out where whole foods will be getting your beef from.

people have issues with whole foods ranging from things like cost to political opinions to issues with a lack of local product in their stores, i understand this. but if you're going to cook out this weekend, and you're buying ground beef anyway, then why in the world would you not take whole foods up on this?

and why grass-fed beef? hear it from the doctor (and mom) of the whisnant family:

"grassfed products have enormous health benefits. higher in omega-3 fatty acids, higher in cla, higher in vitamin e, higher in beta-carotene, lower in calories grass fed beef is one of the healthiest protein sources on the planet. though these health benefits can be measured by science they alone do not represent the true product. grass fed is as much a process as it is a product. it is a sustainable management philosophy that benefits not only the product but also the animal, the producer and the environment. grass fed beef as a product is the tip of an underlying mountain of strength and integrity rooted in family farms that put their hearts and hands into what they produce. each farm has its own unique story and history; i would like to share part of ours with you."

for more on rain crow ranch, and to really understand what goes into an operation like this—why it's important for the cattle to be fed on grass and raised in fully sustainable and organic pastures—i implore you to watch this video. this is the kind of food education we all should've gotten when in school, as kids. the kind of education our own kids are still not getting. and it's right here at your fingertips! and there's no processing or butchering at all, it's clean!

you learn a thing or two, from time to time

an elephant in the room via law h8r's photostream.

there's an elephant in the room. it's in the corner when i sleep and sitting next to me on the train when i head to the city. i see it drinking a beer at the bar and it joins us at dinner in our dining room when we eat at home. i even see it now from my desk. it's across the street, trying to climb the tree where the squirrels are. but it can't. it's too fat.

and no one else can see this elephant but me. or so i've come to realize.

losing my grandmother this summer, and watching my family suffer with that loss, has had a tremendous impact on me. which is to be expected, right? but the thing of it is, i'm ashamed of what's become of this. i've stopped eating well. i haven't been to the gym in months. we rarely cook dinner at home. our fridge is bare—and when we do go to the market, the stuff sits and rots before we ever think to eat it. to be totally candid, our produce drawers are full of mustard greens, arugula, and escolar that i bought the week we moved in to our new place. that was a month ago. and yet, when i do open the fridge, and the smell of something stale so blatantly hits my nose, i ignore it. i leave the spoiled foods where they've been untouched for weeks now in those drawers. and i'm not sure why.

fair haven, ny. where my grandmother left us and we
discovered the magic and simplicity of family and summer.

there was a point this summer when i wanted to just walk away from the business i'd started, feeling the pressure of running a one-man operation, that it was just too stupid of an idea to ever start to begin with. i'd imagine most people would come to that point when facing the loss of a family member, the excitement of an engagement, and the weight and pressure of the wedding planning that follows. which is why i didn't walk away from my business and instead am restructuring the way my business operates. if working alone is too tough, then hire somebody, right? if wedding planning is overwhelming, then take a step back and think about why you're even getting married to begin with—i keep on thinking over and over about the moment i bent on my knee. her face was beet red and she was laughing and crying and while i lost the ability to speak, i was so damn nervous, she kept asking what are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing. over and over. and it just might be the happiest moment of my life. so planning a wedding? it's about remembering that moment, isn't it?

but the problem i'm having is that through all of this, the elephant is still there. i weigh more than fifteen pounds than i did before alicia and i left for california in june, when we got engaged. i'm at my highest weight of my life. i look awful. i've looked awful for a while now. and yet, i haven't found the courage to do anything about it. it's not that i'm sitting in a room with the lights off every night drowning in my sorrows—i've been there before. i know that feeling. this is different. most days, i'm numb to my emotions. after my grandmother's second service, which was in california, my grandfather's health started to deteriorate, too. he hasn't been able to eat much, and like her, he's been fighting cancer, too. but when she was alive, they had each other. how does one keep fighting after a loss like that? cancer doesn't let up. if you let your guard down just for a moment, it sneaks right in and doesn't relent. unfortunately, that's what he is now facing. so when i'm hungry or tired or overworked? when i'm vulnerable to my emotions and lose that numbness i carry with me every day? that's when i stop caring about what i'm eating or where it's from or how it was cooked. that's when i just eat. that's when things feel good.

and that's the total opposite of everything i've ever written about in this blog.

so there's this elephant, and i'm just not sure what to do about it. the answer is obvious. i know how to shake it. but that produce drawer is still stinking up our fridge, and i'm still sitting here ignoring it. maybe now that i've called the elephant out i'll step into the ring and take the thing on. but if it's that easy, then why'd it take me so long? why didn't i kick the elephant's butt before this?

though really, when it comes down to it, i'm getting married next summer. whether i like it or not, that elephant will grow wings before my bride to be allows any ol' elephant to sleep in our room at night. and that's maybe the sign of courage i need. like my grandparents were for each other, i've met that someone who won't let me back down.

hello, again

this was our backyard for one night. deetjen's, big sur.

it's been a while. a long while. since i last wrote, i proposed to my girlfriend; bunked for a night under a redwood along a creek in a cabin on a big sur canyon; lost my grandmother to cancer; failed to add any new clients to the business; stephanie opened her restaurant; started reading the town that food saved—a remarkable story of agriculture and community set in a vermont town called hardwick; finished reading anthony bourdain's newish book; moved; my parents moved, too; and so did my brother mikey; got deathly ill off oysters in san francisco—in the middle of the night, when i was going to propose the next day; the hearty boys received a flawless review in the tribune—and are now packed nightly; my brother tommy graduated from the 8th grade; found what might very well be the venue for the wedding; went to a wedding in north carolina; and michigan; but failed to eat my first chick-fil-a; but not my first epic burger; and, oysters and sickness and all, somehow the girlfriend said yes.

and yesterday morning i found myself sitting next to a husband and wife farmer, discussing a future project that's very much raw and in the early stages of development—but just might have the right combination of timing, public and political interest, influence, and just a desperate, desperate need by a small minority (family farmers) that'll evolve into something really, really big. something i've been waiting and waiting to not only see, but have a hand in.

but it was sitting next to the farmers, hearing first hand what it's like to be small farmers in a country whose government is making money hand-over-fist with its interests in big food commodities, when i noticed the dirt and filth caked to the nails of the farmer sitting next to me, that i realized how far i'd come in my journey from little woodland hills, california.

this farmer wore the dirt on his hands as though he'd been born that way. that my small, unblemished, dainty little fingers separated my hands from his like his bald head was different from my flowing head of hair. like blue eyes are different from green. the farmer wore his filthy and weathered hands like he had no choice. something like genetics.

i was sitting next to, and having a responsible and mature conversation with, real life farmers. to me—i could've been sitting next to magic johnson or vin scully—big deal, man.

and when i woke up this morning, i couldn't stop thinking about finding a way to re-immerse myself yet again within the issues i'd been writing and researching about late last year. family farmers are struggling. corporate farms are thriving. and in all this time that i've started my business, thousands of people across the country have continued to write and work and better the state of our food systems. well, i'm looking forward to rejoining the cause.

that, and run a business. and plan a wedding.

leaving on a jet plane

alicia and i are flying to los angeles tonight to spend a couple days with my family, and then we're driving up the coast to spend some time in san francisco, carneros, and big sur. some great farm to table restaurants are in the plans and same too for some vineyard visits, but i think i'm most excited about driving along the coast and through the windy and rolling hills of wine country. this will be a first time there for both of us—and is there a better way to close it out than staying in a cabin on a creek near the ocean in a redwood forest in big sur?

in the meantime, i'm pretty excited about something that launched yesterday. the splash page to my website! jamco new media has got some legs - albeit it wobbly toddler ones.

hope everyone has a great weekend. and we'll see you in a couple weeks!