the summer meal you should be making right now … A Grand Aioli with Easy 2-minute Mayonnaise

Summer food is summer food for a reason. The ingredients tend to be things that are in season, many for only a short time like tomatoes and corn. The dishes typically come together quickly with a consideration given to not heating up the kitchen, utilizing techniques like grilling or a quick stovetop sauté and avoidance of the oven altogether. Full disclosure: I break this rule all the time and just sweat it out. I make what I want to make, weather be damned. Last weekend toward the end of a horrible heat wave, I was craving something cool and light and I was seriously considering sitting in a bucket of ice during every meal. Friends were coming over for Sunday Lunch and I decided to channel my inner French woman and make the ultimate summer meal I’ve enjoyed immensely during my travels – a Grand Aioli.

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eating through a miserable winter … Cassoulet Sunday Lunch

2014 has opened with a bang and the Sunday Lunch series is back on with a vengeance.  The latest one was a perennial favorite – Cassoulet Sunday!  Nothing gives a bigger middle finger to polar vortexes, dibs on shoveled parking spaces and wearing thermal underwear to the office than a steaming clay pot of beans, tasty duck parts and equally tasty pig parts.  It’s a helluva dish and if you’re not making it, then I feel sorry for you.

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umeboshi tasting and a Ramen Sunday Lunch

I assessed the damage from the previous days Sunday Lunch.  7 people. 7 bottles of wine. 2 half finished bottles of homemade infused vodka.  13 wineglasses, 7 cognac glasses and countless dirty dishes, bowls and spoons.  Not too bad.  There have been worse.  A good hour and some hot soapy water and all traces of spilled wine, stray pickled bits and crusty noodles would be gone.  It was a good one, a most enjoyable afternoon filled with stories, laughter, general catching up and good-natured ribbing.  Two years ago I vowed to have regular monthly Sunday lunches with a particular group of friends and had fallen behind this year.  I missed my friends and was catching up.  This was a good one.

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when something surprises you … Pimento Cheese

I’ll admit it.  I have no problem doing so.  When I’m wrong, I’m wrong.  You see, I had some pretty heavy preconceived notions about this Southern thing called “pimento cheese”.  Generally not a fan of mayonnaise in great quantities, the thought of mixing shredded cheese and mayo together did not sound tasty.  Or delicious.  Or possibly good in any way.  Friends with Southern backgrounds would swoon at the mere mention but I lumped it into the category of Southern things I don’t really understand, right next to sweet tea and soupy double crust cobblers that are not pie.

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resurrect an old favorite … Classic Lemon Tart

There were two holidays in my house growing up where we went full on Polish – Christmas and Easter, the later much more so than the former.  Easter was when we had a table groaning under the weight of food – several kinds of pierogies, sausage, sauerkraut, a butter lamb, potato casseroles, and always kolacky and a lamb cake for dessert.  Sour cream usually featured heavily in there too.  A Chicago-Polish friend once told me that it wasn’t a proper meal at her house unless someone was passing the tub of sour cream.  For my clan, it wasn’t a proper Easter without three things:  pierogies, garlicky sausage and kolacky. Wait.  Four things.  Pierogies, garlicky sausage, kolacky AND polka music.  The night just cannot end without a rousing rendition or six of “Who Stole the Kiska”.  You should try it.

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duck, duck, confit … Cassoulet Sunday Lunch

Sunday was a strange day, weather wise, in Chicago.  While the day prior was relatively mild for late January, Sunday started out meek but ended with a roar as a fierce torrent of freezing rain and thundersnow quickly descended.  It was cold, wet, icy and altogether unpleasant and this mess started at the exact moment the first batch of friends arrived for Sunday Lunch.  If there was ever a time to serve warm, filling comfort food, this was it.  Cassoulet Sunday had met its match.

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the French don’t eat ribs, but I do … Figgy BBQ Ribs

I’ve been a little busy of late, traipsing around the French countryside the last few weeks but before I left, I had friends over for a really great Sunday lunch.  A little over a month ago, July 15^th in fact, it was Bastille Day.  Admittedly not one of the bigger holidays in the States, but it holds a special place in my heart.  Last year, on Bastille Day, I exactly where I’m sitting at this very moment:  at the kitchen table of my friend Kate’s lovely home in Southwest France.

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french lunches, duck fat and dessert … Chocolate Malt Pots de Creme

France was in the air this weekend. I had friends over for the latest Sunday Lunch and this time, I paid homage to my French friends with a big beautiful cassoulet in the very special Not Freres Poterie terra cotta cassole I lugged through three airports on my return home.  I also took the opportunity to serve some of the luscious tinned duck tidbits I purchased this summer in the heart of canard country.  While traveling through Southwest France, I amassed a large collection of bits and pieces preserved in duck fat in the trunk of my rented Renault. Part edible souvenirs and part fascination, they were simply things I couldn’t pass up – cans of confit duck gizzards, foie gras stuffed duck hearts, duck confit, duck rillettes.  Tasty stuff and the single reason I paid an exorbitant overweight baggage fee at Charles de Galle.  No time like the present to use them and this was a crowd of happy and eager eaters.  It was a fabulous afternoon/evening of good food, laughter and many, many bottles of wine.  Exactly what I envisioned this lunches to be when I started.

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