Recently in Cooking Category

We touched on making mayonnaise from scratch in today's story on things that are better, and generally cheaper, when made at home versus store-bought.

Though we still say it's OK to buy the Hellman's without feeling too guilty, we were inspired in our research after talking to chef Mark Mendez at Carnivale, whose own mayo-making method is this:

"Take one of those tall, to-go containers you get at an Asian restaurant. Put in a whole egg, a cup of oil. Then take the immersion blender. It takes about three seconds. It's the coolest thing."

On the flip side, Oak Park local food champion Rob Gardner today offers his old-school, elbow-greased version on his Web site, the Local Beet.

Gardner was quick to dig into his batch of white gold, making BLTs, then dipping crudites and finally, riffing on Thousand Island dressing, that crafty, lucky bastard.

Got any other mayo ideas? Send them our way.

One night earlier this year, after he had just enjoyed a meal at a restaurant in Huntington, West Virginia, J. Eric Ruegg had an epiphany.

He was siting in a warm, quiet loft at the bar, when he lit up a cigar; a Gran Habano 3 Siglos Gran Corona. What followed was nothing short of achieving an elusive "total consciousness," something that inspired him to write about it for the Cigar Advisor newsletter. He wrote, "Its flavors were truly spectacular and tantalized my taste buds into submission. It was an ebb and flow of rich, aromatic bliss. While I had difficulty singling out any one particular note from another, underneath a predominant tone of cedar, I tasted what seemed to reference baking spices."

A couple weeks later, he cooked a pork tenderloin for he and his wife, and the combination of the aroma of the fennel bulb slices, crushed fennel seed, and black pepper rub for the pork, and the backporch cigar he enjoyed afterward (a Perdomo Reserve Cameroon Robusto) got him to thinking about flavors and the interplay of those flavors of the food with those of the cigars. "I remembered the 3 Siglos," he wrote, "its cinnamon, I remembered the pork tenderloin and its fennel, its anise flavors, I thought of the Perdomo on the porch, its desperate flavors wishing to escape to freedom, what were they? I only knew that they shared some of the spices of these confluent events."

I had to talk to this guy.

Chicken stock is a workhouse in the kitchen. It's a building block to so much, not to mention a thing of beauty on its own. Chefs devote entire chapters to building the perfect chicken stock. What is a kitchen without chicken stock?

The answer, we just learned, is Province.

Yep, chef Randy Zweiban's groovy, eco-conscious restaurant at 161 N. Jefferson doesn't use chicken stock. At all.

It came up in a discussion we were having for another story. True, Zweiban says, they make a pork stock (and a doozy at that, with the head and bones, for dish of 10-hour braised lamb with chorizo. You heard us right.)

But otherwise, it's all vegetable stock, all the time at Province.

"I used to use chicken stock all the time. With vegetable stock, you don't have the body that chicken stock does, but you have a really clean flavor," Zweiban says.

"We take everything in the house. In the summer, you have the silks from the corn and the cobs. I don't use too much of the skins of things. I make a simple mirepoix, then take everything from turnips to broccoli stems, asparagus stems right now, pea shells. It's a three- to four-hour deal at a simmer.

"If you really want a robust flavor, caramelize the vegetables first. Or take a whole head of garlic and throw that in. You can add white wine, or deglaze with wine. It's whatever you want and what you have around."

I have the neatest little cherry pitter. Truthfully, it's not the sort of thing I would necessarily buy myself. In fact, it was a wedding present, bought off the registry by some kind soul who must've understood my silly longing for such things.

Anyhow, it's this metal thing, and you put the cherry in the round holder and press down and -- pop -- out comes the pit. The 4-year-old especially has taken to the gizmo, not to mention, she knows the payoff she'll get after a few minutes of pitting on my end -- a bowl of ready-to-eat cherries.

That said, here's a convincing argument for giving my cherry pitter a rest, via the Atlantic's food site. If there's a more delicious mess in the world than eating cherries, let me know.

Pit master (or, as he likes to say, barbecue life coach) Gary Wiviott -- whose barbecue almost did in Sun-Times reporter Dave Hoekstra, through no fault of Wiviott's own -- will sign copies of his new book, "Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons" this weekend at the Book Stall in Winnetka and the Barnes and Noble in Oakbrook (details here).

The book, co-written by Colleen Rush (picture above), is a gem as is Wiviott, a founder of the LTHForum culinary chat site. We finally met Wiviott face-to-face a few weeks ago (it is entirely possible and all too common in this line of work to correspond with someone for a good amount of time without ever actually meeting them).

Anyway, we're glad we did. He's a bear of a guy, as the photo suggests. This being his first book -- and his first book signing -- he admits he's a little nervous. So go meet the guy. You'll probably pick up some good grilling tips. To work past the nerves, he'll just be picturing you all naked.

If you closed your eyes at dinner, would you be able to tell if the meal was cooked by a man or a woman? It's an intriguing experiment, one that Alinea's Grant Achatz and other food cognoscenti will undertake at an event in New York on Monday.

So, do men and women cook differently? Achatz's initial thoughts, in a nutshell: Not really.

The chef, not a man of few words, continued: "Some people I have talked to mentioned men liking bolder, spicy and more rustic flavors and women tend to favor subtleties. I certainly do not think that to be the case. In fact I wonder if gender classification can be made at all. What is a masculine presentation? Is it a giant chunk of roasted meat? What makes that manly -- the caveman connotation? Does the use of finesse in the plating mean it is from a woman's hand? I like to think I have finesse.

"Same for beautiful. I have seen many beautiful plates cooked by men. If a dish contains flowers, does it hint to female preferences? I use a lot of flowers in my cooking.

"I think where you might see a difference is when you create some framework or boundaries. Dig into periods of time or age, geographical location, ethnicity and urban versus rural areas and you will find a separation in cooking familiarity and perhaps skill. But that has more to with society's control over gender in general than the genetic makeup of people.

"One way to find out for sure."

(And in other Achatz news, the chef is shopping around his memoir.)

Are you the type to make a bunch of restaurant reservations in the city you're planning on visiting before you actually book your plane ticket? Do you build your days around specific meals, snacks and drinks you've so carefully researched in advance? Ever spent your vacation cooking in someone else's kitchen (after having paid a tidy sum to do so)?

Welcome to the club, you food geek. It's called culinary tourism, and it's the fastest growing segment of the travel industry, writer Brian Clark says in today's Food section.

A co-worker just told me about his dream vacation: a culinary bike tour of Italy. Twenty miles during the day, pasta so fresh it will make him cry in the evening.

I've always wanted to do one of those cooking in a farmhouse in Provence sort of deals. Of course, with the recession and all, domestic travel might be more realistic. In that case, a New York City gelato tour sounds just about up my alley.

What's your ultimate food trip?

Made cornbread from the back of the cornmeal container last night. The other week, it was scones from the back of the pastry flour bag.

We underestimate the power of the back of the box but that's where some of the most classic recipes are from. Think Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Here's what we want to know: What are your favorite back-of-the-box recipes? Post your comments, or send an email to mdavenport@suntimes.com.

Well, this would have been a fantastic topic for one of our Kitchen Economist installments in the Food section, but Mark Bittman beat us to it. Here's a thorough, logical look at why and how to use your freezer to its full potential. You'll eat well and save money. Nuff said.

We decided to shake up Easter tradition a bit and forego the staid ham for Spam.

Intrepid reporter Paige Wiser makes a good case for it -- Spam sales are up, way up, and people are looking for affordable meal solutions. Oh, and the president eats Spam (Spam musubi, to be exact - see photo).

So we were heartened to be greeted this morning by this e-mail from a reader:

"My mother used to fry it for us when times were rough - 1950s. But my sweetest memory of it was back in the '80s. My 14-year-old daughter decided that she wanted to cook my wife and I a five- or six-course dinner. We had soup, salad, veggies, dessert and my favorite Spam. She took a whole Spam and pushed whole cloves all into it. Basted it with a sweet sauce and baked it like a ham. Oh, so delicious,I can still taste it. She's 48 this year and she still remembers the dinner."

Thank you, Leonard from Chicago. Happy Easter.