A brief history of Chicago BBQ. Interesting stuff, they also interview Barry Sorkin, the owner of Smoque.

Camri surprised me with a trip to Smoque for Father's day today. It was our first time, and well worth the wait in line. Great BBQ, great atmosphere, and really friendly folks helping us to get Wil-Wil a good table to eat his Mac and Cheese at.

Camri had pulled pork and shared Wil's Mac and Cheese, I had a half rack of baby back ribs, corn bread, french fries, and a smoked sausage. The ribs were good and chewy, Camri's pork was smoky and good, and Wil scarfed down a ton of Mac and Cheese. Our friend Jerry came too, and mixed it up with St. Louis ribs and a side of brisket. The brisket was over the top good, I think it'll be my main course the next time we go.

As we were leaving, we ran into the owner, Barry, and got our picture taken with him. He was pretty busy, but took the time for a picture for the blog. Thanks Barry!

One of our favorite chef's is on a mission to cut down on American meat consumption. The first we saw of his campaign was a talk carried on Ted Talks:

It's an eye opening talk. Bittman advocates cutting down on meat, not vegetarianism, just cutting down. His argument is health based, but it's also a move that he explains will help slow down global warming. Because of the huge amount of meat we eat, more than ever in history, and because of the industrialization of agriculture, animals are contributing more to global warming than any car. How? Farts. Really, farts. Watch the video.

So, to do our part for fart reduction, we've decided to try and cut down on the total amount of meat we eat each week. Luckily, Bittman has been helping with some how-to articles in his regular New York Times column and blog. We tried his recipe for spaghetti and zucchini, just substituting parsley for mint, and adding some onion and garlic. It turned out great.

We'll see how it all sort of shakes out...it's going to be a little bit of a challenge for us, but we'll do it, satisfied to know that with each bite of veggie, we'll be cutting down on farts...somewhere.

Hi there, remember us? We've been away for a while, raising Wil McAvoy to be a little foodie. It's hard work, and doesn't leave much time for blogging. However, we've recommitted to Tastebud, and plan on putting out an article a week for the foreseeable future. Let's get started!

Last week was Mayfest here in Lincoln Square. Camri, Wil, and I went over for Thuringers, beer, and delicious potato salad. Like all previous Mayfests, you pay for all the goodies with tickets, rather than cash. I was in charge of ticket purchasing, and ended up buying way too many. We had a few options, drink the tickets away, or buy a bunch of cake. Pre-WilWil, we probably would have just drank up the tickets, but in this post-William world, you have to consider the big picture. No one wants a picture of drunk mommy and daddy stumbling home with the baby.

Camri went to get us a load of cake, and found out that they were completely sold out. Instead, she bought five pretzels. "I have a plan," she said, and left it at that. We went home, sober, baby-safely in tow, lugging around five pretzels. By the time we got home, we had three pretzels...they sure make good walking food.

The next day, Camri made a surprise dinner, Pretzel Casserole, which she made up her very own self. It turned out great. Clearly, when Camri has a plan, just follow her lead. Here's the recipe, in all its glory:

1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
2 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 teaspoon water
3 Mayfest pretzels, cut into 1" chunks
3 oz cream cheese
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook onion in non-stick pan until translucent (about 5 minutes), add garlic and cook about 30 seconds
3. Mix mustards, oil and water together, add onion and garlic mixture
4. Mix cream cheese and cheddar cheese
5. Coat pretzel chunks with mustard mixture, transfer to a casserole dish sprayed with cooking spray
6. Take cheese mixture and break off pieces and drop into pretzel chunks, mix some in and put the remaining ones on top 
7. Put the lid on the casserole dish and bake for 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

We have an awful lot to be thankful for this year. Thanks to you for continuing to read our site, and for writing us with your ideas. All our cooking plans are in place for the big day tomorrow, we're going to try two new things, cooking the turkey on the grill, and making our own pie crust from scratch. The turkey is going to get a heavy dose of hickory smoke, with some sage, thyme, rosemary and chopped apples for cavity aromatics. Our pie crust is going to wrap itself around a pecan pie. Camri has a big list of side dishes, including buttermilk mashed potatoes, french bean salad, and glazed carrots with cider. Should be a great meal.

Hope you and yours have a great turkey day!

We've been away from writing the past two months, because we were preoccupied with the birth of the latest Tastebud contributer, William Christopher McAvoy. Wil was born August 4th, 2007. He weighed in at 7 pounds 1 ounce. So far, his favorite food is milk, but we're pretty sure he's going to have a diverse palette in the years to come. Why? Because we're starting him early with a gift from our friends the Otto's. They got Wil a series of books by Amy Wilson Sanger about different kinds of food in kid board-book form. You'll have to give Wil a little time to do some research, we expect he'll be ready for article writing in a decade or so. In the mean time, expect our future articles to mix in some kid friendly suggestions from time to time. Welcome Wil!

You'd think a hard-boiled guy like Philip Marlowe would drink his coffee as is, that he'd not fuss over the intricacies of getting a good brew, that he'd just put a slug of rye in it and drink.

Nope.

It turns out, Philip Marlowe, the character that made Humphrey Bogart...Humphrey Bogart, is sort of a coffee dandy. In the following excerpt from The Long Goodbye, we get a detailed peek into Marlowe's coffee making process, as well as how a real coffee connoisseur would have made coffee at home for himself and a gun wielding alcoholic house guest in 1953:

I turned the hot water on and got the coffee-maker down off the shelf. I wet the rod and measured the stuff into the top and b that time the water was steaming. I filled the lower half of the dingus and set it on the flame. I set the upper part on top and gave it a twist so it would bind. The coffee maker was almost ready to bubble. I turned the flame low and watched the water rise. It hung a little at the bottom of the glass tube. I turned the flame up just enough to get it over the hump and then turned it low again quickly. I stirred the coffee and covered it. I set my timer for three minutes. Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character. The coffee was all down and the air rushed in with its usual fuss and the coffee bubbled and then became quiet. I removed the top of the maker and set it on the drainboard in the socket of the cover. I poured two cups and added a slug to his.

See? Even tough guys take special care of their coffee.

A friend at work lent us a few issues of Cook's Country by the editors of Cook's Illustrated. We'd seen the magazine on the newsstand before, but never bought it. Cook's Illustrated is a pretty distinctive magazine, completely illustrated and ad free, with lots of good cooking tips. Cook's Country is pretty similar, except they have full color photography, still no ads though. While Cook's Illustrated focuses on cooking in general, Cook's Country specifically covers American comfort food. Chicken pot pie, bread pudding, king ranch chicken, hot dog taste tests, it's like having Aunt Bea in magazine form.

The recipes are great, as is the overall design and feel of the magazine. That said, it's also sort of a heart-attack magazine. They don't pull any butter-punches. This is a macaroni and cheese magazine folks, expect to put on a few pounds just by looking at it. All in all though, it's pretty great. We highly recommend it.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article on kool aid pickles, which pretty much blew our minds. We thought they sounded like a yummy summer treat, so we tried them out this week. Here's our recipe:

1/2 jar of mini dill pickles
1 packet of cherry kool aid
1/4 cup of sugar


Add the sugar and kool aid to a quart jar filled
with the pickles.  Don't worry if the jar has some pickle
juice in it.  Our jar had a bunch of chopped onions
floating in it, and it went just fine.  Fill the jar to the top
with water, cap it and shake.  Leave the pickles in
your fridge for a week.  Then eat them.

They're crazy.

Folks, we were skeptical. These things are crazy good though, jump right in. Don't be afraid of the red pickles. The red pickles are there to freak out the squares. You're not a square, right? You're a cool dude. The kind of cool dude that wants to eat a crazy red pickle. Get out there red pickle eater...face the world...proclaim your love of oddly colored foods!

We went to our friends Amy and Marshall's house this week so they could show us how to cook pizza on the grill. "Pizza on the grill!" you exclaim, "that's impossible! Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!" We interrupt your wild raving, and point to a picture, which clearly shows pizza being made on a grill. "Oh man!" you further exclaim, "this is mind blowing!" We snatch the picture out of your hand (seriously, you're crunching it), and get on with the story.

Amy and Marshall made the pizza grilling technique up themselves, with no help from any recipe books. We were pretty surprised, "weren't you scared? The first time you put the dough on the grill?" Amy says no, she's clearly way tougher than us. "She also doesn't follow recipes," Marshall tells us. Amy is the Evil Knievel of food, just without the jump suit.

They learn a lot from the Food Network. Their favorite food to cook (other than grilled pizza) is enchiladas. They like to make big batches of them, and freeze left overs. We ask them what their favorite kitchen utensil is, because readers of Tastebud Chicago want to know this kind of stuff. The answer is a big metal bowl. It's funny, because that's one of the answers Brett gave us when we interviewed him about Panade. We're also fans of our big metal bowl. Bowls are pretty great, reader. Go out and get yourself a bowl.

Grilling pizza is shockingly easy, so easy that Amy makes pizza a lot after work. She buys the dough from Trader Joe's, and keeps it on hand. "The secret," she says, "is to add a handful of flour. The dough comes too wet. You need to dry it out a bit." She presses the dough out into a rough square, "tell people that I don't use a rolling pin, I just press it out by hand." The square looks rustic to the max, which is the goal.

She puts a teeny coating of olive oil on the dough, and then slides it onto the hot grill. No toppings are on the pizza just yet, you have to get the crust a little crusty before that. When one side is done, she flips the half cooked pizza onto a cookie sheet (cooked side up), and starts to put the ingredients on. For one pizza, she puts homemade pesto made from home grown basil, feta cheese, and roasted pine nuts, for the other she uses fresh tomatoes, more home grown basil, and fresh mozzarella balls.

Then the pizzas slide right back onto the grill where they cook for another few minutes until the crust is nice and brown. For the feta pizza, she used a whole wheat dough, which was our favorite. The white dough was great as well, but we have a thing for whole wheat.