What a long strange trip it’s been! This line from the Grateful Dead’s song “Truckin” keeps going through my head as I look back at the events of the last three days. It all started with an email I received: “Hi Peter. I work with Nonesuch on public relations, and we’ve received quite a bit […]
Peter Glatz
After the passing of his wife, Julianne (former Illinois Times food columnist), Peter Glatz decided to retire from a 40-year career as a dentist to reinvent himself as a chef at the age of 66. In his short culinary career, he has worked at Chicago’s Michelin-starred Elizabeth Restaurant, Oklahoma City’s Nonesuch (Bon Appetit’s “America’s Best New Restaurant- 2018), Savannah’s The Grey, and Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis.
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Cool food after a hot run
“It’s too darn hot! It’s too darn hot!” These lyrics from Cole Porter’s musical Kiss Me Kate have been going through my head these past few weeks. The temperature around the stove at Nonesuch, the restaurant where I work, consistently hovers around 96 degrees F, even with the air conditioner going full blast. The temperatures […]
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Too much watermelon!
The average American household throws away more than $1,500 worth of food every year, according to the James Beard Foundation. Last year the foundation launched Waste Not, a multi-year campaign to educate consumers on full-use cooking – how to use all the food you buy and avoid food waste. Waste Not: How to Get the […]
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How you’ll be making eggs from now on
Just as a pilot trains in a flight simulator before taking off in a 737, before I ever performed a dental procedure in the mouth of a living person I had rehearsed the operation numerous times over a two-year training period on plastic models, extracted human teeth and jawbones of butchered pigs. Even with all […]
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Quick pickles, for a sexy kick
My summers during college and dental school were spent farming with Julianne’s grandfather, Bob Stevens, on North Cotton Hill Road. We were what was known as a “truck farm,” a term that hearkens back to an earlier time when the produce in our markets came from local farmers rather than being shipped in from places […]
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Optimal flavor starts with superior seeds
In a recent op-ed published in the New York Times, renowned chef and author Dan Barber wrote: “As a chef I can tell you that your meal will be incalculably more delicious if I’m cooking with good ingredients.” This should be self-evident, yet the unfortunate reality is that, in the case of fresh vegetables, optimally […]
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Cook like a Cajun
Food and music top the list of things I’m passionate about. Several years ago I saw a southwest Louisiana band called the Red Stick Ramblers who played a mix of Cajun, Texas Swing and gypsy jazz. At the set break they announced that the Ramblers hosted an annual festival in Lafayette – the Black Pot […]
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Mail order hits and misses
Once upon a time, in the early years of my life, before downloads and streaming, there were record clubs and book clubs. The now-defunct Columbia House Record Club gave me my first opportunity to screw up my credit rating. Seduced by the offer of eight tapes for only a penny (I’m talking eight-tracks here – […]
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Southeast by Southwest
I jump on my bike and head to my neighborhood grocery store, a five-minute ride from my apartment. On the way I make a quick stop at Lang Bakery for a banh mi sandwich and a cup of Vietnamese iced coffee. I then cross the street and enter Super Cao Nguyen, a Vietnamese grocery store […]
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Green garlic
Before garlic matures into the pungent dried bulb we buy at the grocery store, it spends its childhood as a delicate, lightly perfumed stalk known as green garlic or spring garlic. Garlic cloves are planted in the fall, hibernate over the winter, and emerge in the spring. Early in its life, garlic is mostly green […]
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A chef’s wedding
When I announced that I would be getting remarried on April Fool’s Day and cooking the food for my own wedding reception, many people thought I was joking. In truth, I was just carrying on a family tradition. We have a long family history of hosting elaborate gatherings with attendance sometimes exceeding 100. Events of […]
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Make your food funky
My first experience with fermented fish was not a good one. Halley’s Comet pays us a visit approximately every 75 years and the last time was 33 years ago. I wanted to optimally experience this once-in-a-lifetime event. One of the best viewing areas was French Polynesia so I booked passage on the Aranui, a freighter […]
