Charlie Trotter's in the wayback machine

I graduated culinary school in May of 2004 and my reward for this was to visit Charlie Trotter's world famous eponymous restaurant for dinner, at the time the restaurant was #32 on the list of the top 50 restaurants in the world and considered one of if not the best restaurant in Chicago.  We had made reservations for 4 people on June 1st and three of us arrived a few minutes early.  While we were waiting for our fourth the hostess came up and informed us that the party who had reserved the kitchen table had cancelled and if we would like to enjoy our dinner there instead of the dining room.  The kitchen table usually required a minimum of 6 guests so we jumped at the chance.  I need to dig around and find the menus, but I believe it was 18 or 19 courses and the meal was absolutely amazing.  Everything from the plating to the service to the courses themselves were flawless.  As a recent graduate I was most interested in watching how the kitchen at one of the worlds best restaurants operates, so didn't take many pictures.  In fact, I only managed to get one photo of a plated course.  I wish I could go back and kick myself, but there ya go!

That was almost 9 years ago, so why am I bringing it up now?  Charlie Trotter closed his restaurant last August after 25 years, back in December they started to auction off the furnishings, fixtures and equipment from the restaurant but that auction was cut a bit short for various reasons.  So last week they finished selling off most of the remaining lots of items via an on-line auction.  As a food nerd I couldn't stay away.  When the auction was over and the dust had settled I was the high bidder on three lots.  One was some square bowls along with a bread plate and saucer.  The second lot included 5 art glass and 2 pottery vases.  The final lot was the one I was really after, it was seven large white porcelain rectangular serving dishes marked "Ola".  Besides sharing the name of my recently deceased grandmother, these dishes are the same pattern as the one shown in the photo above.  Probably not the actual same dishes, but you never know!  I was able to find the plates online and they are quite expensive, the only retail price I could find had them for $140 each.  That seems a little high to me but in any case I got an extremely great deal!  Next thing I want to do is find the menu from our dinner in 2004 and see if I can recreate the course shown in the photo at home!

Rosewill RHIC-11001 Induction cooker with Stainless steel pot

Lately I've been trying to eat a little healthier during the day by NOT going to the hospital cafeteria.  With the exception of the salad bar, most of the choices each day are fairly large portions and many seem loaded with salt and fat.  I'd rather save my "bad" eating for after work.  Lately soup has been the option of choice, but the only thing in the office to heat it up in is a commercial microwave.  I'm not a big fan of nuking food in the first place, but this particular microwave presents more issues than most because of its power.  Each time I heat a bowl of soup in this microwave some portion becomes super-heated and erupts all over the interior.  Not only does this make a huge mess I have to clean up but some of the liquid hits the dirty top of the chamber and drips back down in to the bowl. Covering the bowl would seem like a good idea, but the eruptions are often strong enough to kick off the cover and send even more of my lunch out of the bowl.  Additionally, I could only get the soup lukewarm in the center before the sides would start to boil over.  I decided to buy a hot plate to put in my office so I could make lunch the way I want to make lunch.

Since this is the office a butane burner is out of the question, so the choice was of a model with an electric coil heating element or an induction cooker.  I ended up looking for an induction cooker from various sources and eventually decided on this particular one for a few reasons.  First, it's cheap.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money on something that I'll be keeping in the office.  Second, it came with a pot so I wouldn't have to hope I would have something laying around that would be compatible with induction.  Finally, I had an Amazon.com gift card from Christmas that I could apply towards the price.  A few days before the cooker arrived I saw another induction cooker at Costco (Aroma model AID-506) for $49.99. It doesn't come with a pot but I probably would have bought it if I hadn't already spent the money at Amazon.  Oh well.

  The cooker arrived yesterday afternoon and the first thing I thought when unpacking was that it is BIG!  Overall dimensions for the cooker are 12 1/2" x 15" x 2 3/4" high.  The pot supplied is pretty chincy, very lightweight but does work with the cooker.  I brought everything in to the office this morning, heated up some soup for lunch and was very satisfied with the results.  I was able to quickly heat up the soup to a uniformly hot temperature without making a mess in the microwave and without any crusty bits of dried soup around the rim of the bowl to be scrubbed off.  The pot was a little big for one can of soup, so tonight when I get home I'll go through the tote of old pots and pans I have in the garage to look for something more appropriate for the job.

As usual, I took a little spare time to do a test on the cooker.  1 liter of water from the tap was placed in the pot, the temperature recorded at 51.5 degrees Fahrenheit and the lid put on.  The cooker was turned on full power and I timed how long it took for the water to start boiling.  In 6 minutes the water was boiling, my guess would be that a pot made of thicker gauge steel would give better results, once I find something better I'll repeat the test and post the results.  I'm looking forward to better, healthier lunches at work!