Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen

For quite a while, Old Jerusalem at 1411 N. Wells has been the only middle eastern restaurant within walking distance of our home.  It is OK, but I can't say that I'm a real fan of the place.  I'd often drive all the way up to Pita Inn in Skokie (3910 Dempster) instead of walking the 3/4 mile to Old Jerusalem when I wanted my shawerma fix.  So last year when I heard that Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen was opening a second location in the neighborhood at 1625 N. Halsted I couldn't wait for it to open.  But I waited, and waited, and waited.  The original opening date was scheduled for March, but that came and went with the windows still papered up and no evidence of work being done.  But work was being done, I guess the build out just took a little longer than expected.  Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen has finally opened their doors, and last night we walked through the rain to give it a try!

The restaurant is well decorated on the inside and much larger than you would expect from the street.  Everything is wood and earth tones.  Walls are adorned with middle eastern art along with a wooden shelf supporting various pottery and metal vessels.  The wooden tables and chairs sit atop hardwood flooring and the restaurant is well lit with pots and lamps hanging from the rather high ceiling.  All in all, a very attractive space.  Even the bathrooms (at least the one I went in to) are well decorated, they owner obviously put a lot of thought in to how he wanted this space to look.



  


I haven't seen anything advertising that the restaurant had opened and their website still says "Opening Soon", so there weren't many people there when we arrived.  A lot of restaurants do a "soft" opening like this to work out the kinks that are inevitable at any new establishment.  We were seated immediately and out drink orders taken.  No alcohol is served, but our waitress did tell us that they are BYOB is anyone wants to enjoy an adult beverage with their meal.

When our beverages arrived, we were ready to order.  My dining companion ordered the Hummus with Portobello (Diced and sauteed mushrooms on a bed of our famous hummus served with pita) and I ordered and appetizer of 6 falafel (Chickpea fritters highly seasoned and fried to golden perfection) and a combination plate.  The falafel was very good, crispy on the outside with a moist, flavorful interior.  My dining companion reported that the hummus topped with the sauteed portobellos was also top notch.






 
The combination plate is a little different that what is listed on their on-line menu.  Instead of the fixed selection on that menu, the menu at this location allows you to select either two or three items from a list to create your own combo.  The list of options has about 10 items to choose from, I asked for beef shawarma, chicken shawarma and lamb kebob.  They apparently didn't have the lamb kebob, so I opted for the beef kebob instead.  I didn't get a list of the other items available, but they did have various kebobs (chicken, shrimp, salmon, kufta and chicken kufta are ones that I remember off the top of my head).  The combo comes with basmati rice, grilled veggies, pita bread, a salad (romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomato, mint and a tahini (I think) dressing)  and two types of sauces (a tahini sauce and a thicker garlic sauce).  I thought all the items in my combo were well done, the chicken shawarma (which in many places is dry and overcooked) was tender and juicy.  Same for the beef shawarma and beef kebob. 


Both of us really enjoyed our meal at Dawali and I'm sure we will be returning soon and often.  Hopefully next time we will save enough room for a desert or two, but the portions are so large that it may not be possible!  As it was, we took home enough food for another meal tonight.  This stretch of Halsted is becoming one of our favorite areas for restaurants in the city, made even better by the fact that it is within easy walking distance of our home.  Besides the new Dawali Mediterranean Kitchen there is Landmark Grill, Boka, Alinea, and (a couple blocks north) Taco Joint.

Redflame Pizzeria

We tried out Redflame Pizzeria at 2417 N. Clybourn last night after driving by it multiple times over the last few months.  They have about 8 or so interesting microbrews on tap, I had a Dogfishhead 60 minute IPA and a Lagunitas Dogtown Pale Ale with diner.  There was also what looked like a pretty good size wine list but we weren't in a wine mood so I can't say much about that.   

We stared out with a bruschetta trio, one was whipped goat cheese and caramelized onion marmalade, one had sundried tomato pesto and one had tomato, basil and parmesan.  The topping were very good but the bread was not toasted much at all.  Didn't have the crunch I expect when eating a bruschetta.  

  

The pizzas were excellent though.  They use a two step cooking process, first the dough is grilled then the pizza is put under a broiler to cook the toppings.  The result is a pizza with a nice char on the bottom and a crust that has a great crispness on the outside but is nice and chewy on the inside.  Unlike NY or Neapolitan style pies, the crust is thicker and can support the toppings all the way out to the end of the slice.  Compared to other thin crust pizzas I like such as Coalfire or Sono Wood Fired pizza, there was a LOT more toppings.  I was expecting something along the lines of Sono Wood Fired, where I can easily eat one pizza by myself, so we ordered two.  By the time we were stuffed there was still the equivalent of an entire pie left.  The pizzas we ordered were the big MART and the wild SHROOM pies.  Big MART comes with a red sauce (choice of regular or spicy, I ordered mine spicy), house made Italian sausage, pepperoni and cheese.  The spicy sauce had a nice kick to it, the meats were top notch and it was topped with a lot of a good quality cheese.  Wild SHROOM had a base of whipped garlic goat cheese, mushrooms, thyme and topped with the same cheese as the big MAR.  Both pizzas were excellent, we do plan on going back soon!

Dinner at Alinea

Alinea is considered many many to be the best restaurant in the country.  A few months ago I took my girlfriend there for her birthday, we enjoyed a fabulous meal during which I made a complete ass of myself by snapping pics of each course with my iPhone.  I have been negligent in posting to my blogs lately, so I thought this would be a good subject to get started again...

The first course consisted of three small creations based on famous cocktails.

LEMON - luxardo bitter, luxardo amaro, grapefruit
APPLE - laird's apple brandy, grenadine, thyme
SQUASH - cynar, carpano antica, flor de cana 7                    year

GOLDEN TROUT ROE - coconut, licorice, pinapple

 

YUBA - shrimp, miso, togarshi

CHAO TOM - sugar cane, shrimp, mint

HALIBUT - black pepper, vanilla, lemon

APPLE - horseradish, celery

RABBIT - parfait

RABBIT - rillette

RABBIT - consomme'

PHEASANT - green grape, walnut, burning leaves

SHORT RIB - olive, red wine, blackberry

HOT POTATO - cold potato, black truffle, butter

PIGEONNEAU - a la Saint-Clair

BLACK TRUFFLE - explosion, romaine, parmesan

PINEAPPLE - ham, freeze dried cherry

BACON - butterscotch, apple, thyme

CARAMEL POPCORN - liquified

EARL GREY - lemon, pine nut, caramelized white chocolate

BUBBLE GUM - long pepper, hibiscus, creme fraiche

CHOCOLATE - blueberry, honey, peanut

Stuffed chicken for labor day

For Labor Day I decided to make chicken breasts stuffed with mushrooms.  They turned out really good, so even though I don't have any pictures I wanted to post the recipe.

First, for the mushroom stuffing I diced up a little over a pound of mushrooms in to a 1/4" dice.  They were mostly button mushrooms but I had a few wild mushrooms left over from a pizza last week so I threw those in as well.  These were sauteed in a few tablespoons of olive oil with a little salt and pepper.  While the mushrooms were working away I diced up a vidalia onion in to the same size dice and added it once the mushrooms were nice and caramelized.  These were allowed to cook until the onions were soft, translucent and starting to brown, then a finely diced clove or garlic and some fresh rosemary were added.  When the smell of garlic started to waft off the pan about 1/2 cup of a dry white wane was added.  This was cooked until the liquid was au sec, removed from heat, adjusted for seasoning and allowed to cool to room temperature.

To prep the chicken breasts I inserted a paring knife in the side of the thickest part, then moved it back and forth to produce a pocket in the flesh.  Then I used my fingers to widen the pocket so it could take more stuffing.  The mushroom stuffing was spooned in to the opening and pushed throughout the pocket, then the opening was sealed using a small wooden skewer and the chicken allowed to rest in the fridge.

The morning of Labor Day the chicken was coated with olive oil and seasoned with a mixture of salt, pepper, sugar, paprika, ancho chili powder and granulated garlic.  The breasts were then sealed in a vacuum bag (FoodSaver) and cooked sous vide at 150 degrees for about 3 hours.  Once removed, the bag was placed in the refrigerator to chill until we were ready for final cooking. 

When we were ready to cook I lit a chimney of charcoal (what's Labor day without grilling?) and set up the grill for indirect cooking.  A drip was placed in the center and the coals placed on either side.  The chicken breasts were placed on the cooking grate directly over the drip pan and a large handful of soaked apple wood chips were placed on each pile of coals.   One of the breasts had a temperature probe inserted in the middle of the stuffing so I could keep an eye on things, then the top was put on and the vents closed about 3/4 of the way to keep the temperature low.  The chicken was allowed to smoke until the internal temperature reached 150 degrees. 

The end result was really nice.  Beautiful mahogany color with great smoke flavor, but not so overpowering that you couldn't taste the other ingredients and the cooking method kept the meat nice and moist.  This is rather labor intensive, but a recipe I'll keep in mind for special occasions.

Dinner at SoNo Wood Fired...This time it's open!

After last weekend's misfire with lunch at SoNo, I decided to try again for dinner.  I found their hours posted on Yelp, not sure why they can't do something with their website but that is another issue.  Betty and I had decided on the day to go, and naturally I got stuck at work that day and was running late.  When I finally made it home, we started the walk to the intersection of North and Clybourn aves.

We were greeted at the door by the hostess, who promptly sat us at a table near the front.  The space is nicely designed, with lots of glass and wood.  There are glass doors at the front that can be opened when the weather cooperates, and last night was beautiful.  After several minutes our waitress came by to take our drink and appetizer orders.  SoNo has a fairly extensive wine list and had 21 bottled beers available.  It would be nice to have the beers on tap that their burger bar next door offers available, but the beers offered were well chosen micros.  We ordered the pomodoro and London Fog bruschettas as appetizers, which arrived soon after our drinks.  The pomodoro was good, lots of fresh, ripe tomatoes, shaved parmesan cheese and good olive oil on top of the toasted bread.  The better of the two was the London Fog, it had a nice portion of the bleu cheese, caramelized cipollini onions and lavender honey.  Both were good, but the portion size is a little small for the $3 price per bruschetta.

For pizzas, I chose the Soppressata Diavola (spicy soppressata, bufala, tomatoes, charred onions & basil) and Betty ordered a Funghi (wild mushrooms, fontina, crispy sage & toasted garlic).  The pizzas arrived in about 15 minutes.

The Soppressata lived up to the spicy description, other than that I found this to be a little bland.  Like my experience at Urban Burger Bar, the chef seems to under season his food in my opinion.  The tomatoes were nice but there were too many of them on the pie which resulted in a pool of liquid on the plate.  The bufala mozzarella was pretty good as were the charred onions.  The crust had a very nice char on it, but didn't have much taste other than that.  When I make this style of pizza at home I use a retarded dough formulation which allows for a long, slow, cold fermentation that produces a nice flavor in the finished product.  This crust didn't have that flavor.  Perhaps we were there on a night when their dough hadn't had a chance to age enough, I'll withhold judgement until I've eaten there at least once more.

I liked the funghi pizza better than the Soppressata one.  This is a white pizza, so none of the tomato juice pooling on the bottom of the plate.  The pie had a nice taste of roasted garlic to it and the mushrooms had some good caramelization to them.  The flavor combination of mushrooms, fontina, roasted garlic and sage really worked well.  Like the first pie I didn't think the crust had much flavor, it seemed to be acting as more of a platform than a component of the dish contributing flavor.  As you can tell, I rally find crust to be an important part of a pizza.  The cheese seemed almost creamy, which was very nice.  Even with the crust issues, this is a pie I'd order again.

We didn't order any dessert, but the menu had about six flavors of gelato, chocolate cake, pana cotta and the like.  All in all, I liked this place.  I'm sure we'll go back at some point since there really isn't anything else like it within walking distance for us.  Hopefully they will be able to improve their crust and get a little more aggressive in the seasoning as they mature.

Key Lime Pie

Years ago I was given a recipe for key lime pie by a person in Miami and promptly lost it.  A good ten years later while going through a drawer of papers, there it was!  I made a pie last weekend and it turned out pretty good so I thought I'd post the recipe and never lose it again!

This is a very simple recipe.  I used a store-bought graham cracker crust and bottled key lime juice.  About a month or two ago I did see fresh key limes for sale at Dominick's, but I hadn't found the recipe at that point and didn't grab them.  Next year for sure!  You will want to have a pie crust ready before you mix the filling.  Graham cracker crusts are traditional and easy to make, but I was being lazy.

The filling has just four ingredients...

4 egg yolks
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup key lime juice
pinch of salt

Whisk the yolks together, then whisk in the condensed milk and salt.  When everything is smooth and uniform whisk in the key lime juice until well combined and pour immediately in to the waiting crust.  The acidity of the key lime juice will start to set the curd pretty quickly, the filling does not have to be cooked at all but will "cook" in the mixing bowl if you don't get it in to the crust within a few minutes.  I just make a quick whipped cream to go with the pie but the original recipe called for a meringue topping make with the four egg whites you should have left over and three tablespoons of sugar, whipped to stiff peaks.  Once this is placed on the filling the pie is baked in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes to brown the meringue.  Using the store bought crust and whipped cream instead of meringue, this dessert took about 5 minutes to make and was liked by all who partook!  Next time I make it I might add a little fresh lime and lemon juice to freshen up the bottled key lime juice, I'll likely try that this weekend.

Lunch at SoNo Wood Fired, uh....make that Urban Burger Bar.

Last week there was an blog in the Chicago Tribune talking about a new wood fired pizza place called SoNo Wood Fired.  At the time I'm writing this the web site basically says very little, no menu, no contact info, just a logo and a place to sign up for twitter and facebook feeds.  This was the weekend of the Chicago Air and Water Show and the Midwest Buddhist Temple's Ginza Festival.  Every year during these events (which normally happen on two consecutive weekends instead of on the same weekend) the only thing to do is find a parking spot on Friday and leave your car there for the entire weekend.  Move your car and you're not likely to find another space within a mile of home until Monday.  Until I saw the blog about this new restaurant my plan was to visit Old Town Social for lunch on Saturday, I've enjoyed most of what I've tried there.  With this new information in hand, I ventured out on a very how Saturday just before noon and trekked my way to SoNo Wood Fired...and found it closed.  No hours posted on the door, just a menu and a locked door.  I guess opening a restaurant with no information on the web page and no information on the door is one way to go...

Anyway, next door to SoNo is Urban Burger Bar.  The two restaurants are owned by the same people so I figured they might know if the pizza place would be opening for lunch.  The answer was no, it wouldn't open until 4:30pm.  Oh well, I decided to have my lunch at the also new Urban Burger Bar.

UBB is a pretty nice bar, they have a wide selection of beers with about 15 or so on tap.  And the stuff on tap is GOOD beer, mostly from micro breweries.  Plus, on the Saturday I was there ALL draft beers were only $3!  The main food attraction is (coincidentally) burgers.  There is a long list of topping to choose from, with a few premium ones that cost extra.  For some unknown reason the menu on their website starts with their "Urban Stackers" and leaves out the "burger bar" entirely.  Someone really needs to talk to their webmaster to get things straightened out!  After I enjoyed my Crooked Tree IPA from Dark Horse Brewery I ordered my burger.  I chose a grass fed burger (all burgers are 1/2 pound) made with beef from the Tallgrass Beef Company, an organic beef producer partially owned by local media personality Bill Kurtis.  For toppings I chose mushrooms, crispy onions, white cheddar cheese and bacon.  The burgers come with a side, I chose regular fries but there are other options like sweet potato fries.  They also offer a selection of dipping sauces for the fries instead of just ketchup, I chose the chipotle aioli.

The burger arrived in about 10-15 minutes.  Not bad considering that the place was pretty busy.  The burger itself was cooked to a nice medium rare as requested.  It was juicy and tasty, but could have used a little more seasoning in my opinion.  I have to admit that I'm kind of a bun man, and this one was nice.  A bad bun can ruin the burger experience for me.  This one was fresh, sturdy and gave just the right amount when you squeezed it to take a bite.  They were pretty generous with the toppings.  The crispy onions where sliced thin, breaded and cooked until crispy.  I would have no problem having just these as a side.  The mushrooms could have been sauteed a little more, I like some caramelization on my sauteed shrooms and these seemed a little on the bland side.  The cheese and bacon seemed top quality.  All in all, there wasn't much to complain about with this burger that couldn't be addressed with a salt shaker at the able.  The fries were good as well, and since I'm not a big fan of ketchup I appreciated all the dipping sauce options available.  The chipotle aioli was really good on its own, and I used a bit of it on the burger as well.  I'm looking forward to trying my original plan, pizza at SoNo, at some later date (and time).