Food Blog

Miller Park sausage race gets some more flavor

A review of And a Bottle of Rum - A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails “Rum was the gin of the New World. But it was more than a quick ticket to a fast drunk. Rum’s rise marked a rite of passage for the struggling colonists. Merely by drinking it, they effectively announced a change in their role on the global stage. They were no longer a people who made do with crude and rustic beverages concocted in their own kitchens. They could now pay for valued goods with the sweat of their labor.”

Cooking the books Why most celebrity cooks never list their writer/recipe tester on the covers of their cookbooks. “It’s hard to understand the reticence about owning up to ghostwriting. If tennis players aren’t assumed to be good writers, why should we expect that skill of cooks? The problem is that in our celebrity-obsessed age, readers of cookbooks don’t just want recipes that work. They also buy into a dubious notion of personality. They’re not just looking for minestrone, they’re looking for X’s minestrone. Eager to have their kitchen touched by his magic, they probably don’t realise that authorship of the recipe is sometimes debatable. This question wouldn’t make a bit of difference if the personal imprimatur of the celebrated author weren’t the unique selling point of the recipe.”

HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid “Buy organic fruit. Trust me on this. I’m the expert here; you’re the desperate schmuck who needs to surf the Internet to figure out how to put f*#@ing fruit into a f*%#ing bowl”

The 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die “Alan Richman traveled 23,750 miles and consumed more than 150,000 calories while taking the measure of 162 burgers across the country—with one goal: To find you the best damned assemblage of ground beef and buns this country serves up” Only one Chicago place - Poag Mahone’s made his list, and he’s rather disparaging of our burgers. “The television, tuned to a Cubs game, was so loud I had to scream my order several times, and all I was trying to say was “hamburger.” I know everybody in Chicago is depressed because the Cubs never win. I never realized they were also deaf. I’d be disheartened, too, if I had to eat burgers in Chicago — Poag Mahone’s was the only place I found that did burgers right.”

Alan, if you didn’t know that half of Chicago gloats happily when the Cubs lose, you probably didn’t know where to look for burgers around here.