Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies, and great relaxers. At the end of a long day nothing feels better to me than getting in the kitchen and throwing together some food. However, after Chicago’s long stretch of hundred degree plus weather, I discovered a new favorite for summer: not cooking. Instead I turned to fresh and tasty summer staples that almost never required me to turn on the stove. These dishes are some of my summer favorites, that really pop with a couple of small additions. Continue reading
Molecular Techniques, Spherification
Food trends come and go, that which was hot one year will eventually fizzle. These trendy food preparations that wow diners of the worlds finest restaurants quickly become caricatures of modern cuisine. One chef creates an influential cooking technique, food writers swoon, other chefs begin to replicate the recipe, and before long there isn’t a restaurant in town who has such a trend absent from their menu. The whole process becomes boring to diners as the market is flooded with shoddy reproductions of what might have started as a noteworthy original idea. Although, there is redemption for food trends that fall to the wayside, as that original technique finally becomes accessible to the home chef. Popular restaurant trends of yesteryear become fun home cooking fodder as complicated and expensive cooking techniques slowly find their way into cookbooks and grocery stores. One such trend of recent turnaround are the indubitably confusticated techniques of “Molecular Gastronomy”, specifically the once buzz worthy spherification. Spherification can now be a fun and inexpensive technique to impress guests at home, as what was once haut cuisine can now be constructive in the everyday kitchen. Here I’ll provide some helpful hints on spherification with a easy recipe for sweet vanilla spheres, the perfect ice cream topping for the vanilla obsessed. Continue reading
Welcome to the Neighborhood, La Fournette!
Make way for Wells Street’s newest culinary juggernaut. Some new neighbors moved in on our block, and we couldn’t be happier about it. La Fournette, Chicago’s newest French bakery, is a welcome addition to our already food-centric Old Town neighborhood. The bakery is owned by Pierre Zimmerman, master pastry chef and two-time World Baking Cup champion of the French team in 1996 and 2008, and his family. They are fourth generation bakers, and our friends Jacquy Pfeiffer and Sebastien Canonne, of the French Pastry School, are serving as advisers in this delicious project. La Fournette opened its doors last Monday, following a weekend-long, pre-opening event that saw a lot of the shop’s signature goodies exchanged for some last-minute feedback on their many offerings. And, believe me, they are many.
Harissa and Preserved Lemon Grilled Shrimp
Shrimp are often treated as the frozen boneless chicken breast of the sea. The natural sweet flavor of these tasty crustaceans are often masked in complex sauces and over seasoned breading, or worse to be lost completely as an overcooked and flavorless seafood in a poorly made fried rice. When grilling with friends in the summer, I all to often see the sad offering of over seasoned grilled shrimp skewers, it is a sad fate for the lowly shrimp to be reserved as an appetizer. “Bland” needn’t be the last word on our lovely decapod friends, a simple marinade of Harissa and Preserved Lemons can change shrimp from the surf and turf sideline to an addicting grilled main coarse. Continue reading
Edible Souvenirs: A SH Old Town Tradition
There is a tasty tradition at the Spice House (at least in our Old Town store), which we typically celebrate with the return of a manager or another from vacation or travel. Many of us spend a good amount of time taking food very seriously, and our connections as spice retailers often bring about opportunities to sample a lot of seriously high quality food and treats from kitchens around the city. So, from time to time it is refreshing, as a change of pace, to lower our standards a bit and indulge in something that is not overtly culinary, but still very delicious: snack chips.
Spice House Sling
Last week, a kind gentleman representing the fine spiced liqueur, Bénédictine, stopped by the shop. He was looking to procure a wide variety of herbs and spices, each representing prime flavor notes in Bénédictine’s closely guarded secret recipe. Using these, he would create an aroma kit, like those used by wine tasters, to demonstrate his liqueur’s depth to costumers. With the aid of Bridget, Old Town’s manager, the gentleman was so pleased with the Spice House that he offered a bottle for us to enjoy. So the question was posed, “how best to honor such a fine gift?” With a custom cocktail, that’s how! This is how the “Spice House Sling” was born. Continue reading
Top It With a Fried Egg
For as long as I can remember, which isn’t long, the focus of American cuisine has trended in two decipherable and opposite directions: (1) cooking and eating more healthily, and (2) extreme flavor indulgence at, sometimes, the expense of good health. It could be the lack of necessity (I haven’t yet eclipsed the quarter-century mark), or maybe it is the way I was raised (my dad served many a bacon-wrapped bratwurst for brunch), but I’ve found over the years that food trends rooted wholly in maximizing flavor and deliciousness have held my attention far better than the ones that purport to keep my cholesterol down.
Food Films, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
Food has been the subject of many films, easily becoming a genre onto itself. From grand documentaries to humble narratives, the subject of food has been explored with infinite detail at the cinema. I know from personal experience that a film can make me laugh, cry, or even leave a theatre feeling the desperate craving for a piece of egg sushi. Food films can do more than just awaken our appetites though, as food is as complex a subject as humanity itself. Filmakers take to food as a subject so often because the craft and intricacy of food is something people take to as a defining passion. This past Memorial day, which also happened to be my birthday, I was treated to the screening of a documentary about a tenacious perfectionist and the food he toils over. David Gelb’s new documentary film, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi“, adresses the maxim that the food that we eat and the care we put into making it, makes us who we are. Continue reading
Introducing my husband, Spice Boss!
Please allow me to introduce Tom Erd, Spice Boss. My husband and I have owned The Spice House for 20 years. For many years prior to that we both worked there, for my parents, who founded our business in 1957. It is a long, long time to be doing the same thing, but hopefully we have gotten pretty good at it over all the years. We sometimes find we need to challenge ourselves with things a little outside of our everyday spice box, in order to keep our creativity flowing. Interesting propositions come our way all the time, mostly because we are a very approachable small Mom and Pop business. We have not figured out the rhyme or reason behind why on some days these just get shot down, and other days the ideas take on a life of their own. My scientific guess would be it just depends on which side of the bed we got up. When Tom started mulling over the idea of doing You Tube videos as Spice Man, I thought it was a passing fancy. Continue reading
Artizone
Throughout our 55 year existence as a company, The Spice House has been offered a role in a variety of ventures. An upscale gourmet shop is looking for a spice vendor, for example. For the most part, we are not really all that interested in putting our products in other people’s shops, as we are sticklers for making sure the products we offer are of the highest quality and freshness. We know how many customers we have shopping with us in our stores, and how fast a product moves in and out. Products that don’t have enough of a market to keep them revolving from our grinding/blending room into you home cooking quickly enough get discontinued from our product line. However, when people discuss their projects with us, the line something to the tune of “we want only the highest quality spice vendor, and you are it” seems to hook us every time! This is how we ended up as a vendor at Artizone.The concept is actually pretty cool, and if you live in the Chicago area you should check it out. Continue reading







