Endive, blue cheese: A great salad remembered

First things first. Blue Kitchen is going global this week. Brazilian blogger Patricia has graciously invited me to post a recipe on her baketastic blog Technicolor Kitchen. No, I didn’t bake [and that's not all Patricia does, but when she does, it's always amazing]. I made a flavor-packed, summery pasta dish with Italian tuna and artichoke hearts—all you cook is the pasta. So check out Patricia’s fabulous blog and this easy recipe. After you read the post below, of course.

Sometimes a restaurant just clicks with you. The food, the setting, the staff—even the moment it’s part of. Lucien, in Manhattan’s East Village, is just such a place for us. The moment it fit so neatly into the first time we ate there was the first time Marion and I managed to get to New York together. Marion had spent lots of time there, and I had made a number of three-day solo forays in search of art, jazz and booze [all plentiful there, by the way]. But we only got around to getting there together when I won a trip for two on Taco Bell’s website a few years ago. Seriously.

Last week I talked about printing out reams of recipes from epicurious.com. Well, anytime I plan a trip to New York, several trees die at the hands of my printouts. In my online research for this visit with my bride, I found Lucien. The reviews looked promising, so I called to make a reservation and ended up speaking with the owner himself, Lucien Bahaj. He was charmingly self deprecating when I told him of the glowing reviews I’d read—even a little alarmed—and wanted to make sure I understood that his restaurant was just a little neighborhood bistro. I told him that was exactly what we were looking for.

And it was. Opened in 1998, Lucien has the nicotine patina of an ancient Left Bank establishment. Tile floors, mirrors on the wall, high tin ceiling and a long, dark wood bar add to the narrow storefront’s authentic French feel. And the food is just as comfortingly familiar and authentically executed. Mussels steamed in white wine, escargots, both a foie gras and a paté, steak frites, cassoulet, duck confit… All served at modest prices in a cozy, welcoming place. We try to get there every time we visit now. If we lived in New York, we’d be regulars.

As it is, we’re already treated like regulars. We walked in with our daughter Laurel one night, having last been there a year before. Our waitress from that previous visit, the lovely, multi-tattooed Lola, came up and hugged us and said, “It took you long enough to get back here!” That trip, we ate there twice. And on one of those nights, we shared a delicious salad with Belgian endive, blue cheese and walnuts as one of our starters. Here’s my shot at recreating that salad.

Champagne, a missing cat and Abbott & Costello

We moved last weekend. Actually, the process has been ongoing in earnest for a few months now, but Saturday morning the actual movers came with the truck. We’d hired them to move the big stuff—furniture, mainly. That meant we were moving everything else, carload by exhausting carload.

Friday night we made two runs, then packed the car again to drive it full when we led the movers to the new place. We ended up getting to bed at 3 o’clock Saturday morning and got up at 7:30 to finish getting ready for the movers arriving at 9.

I don’t recommend moving on four and a half hours’ sleep.

We’d heard and read all kinds of horror stories about movers showing up late or not at all, but our crew arrived about 15 minutes early. Which was the cue for our 17-year-old cat Cosmo to add to the drama of the day by disappearing. He’s been an indoor only cat for the last ten years, but springtime always awakens the prowling gene in him, and he starts hanging out around windows and doors, sniffing the air and looking hopeful. We were afraid he’d already managed to slip out somehow—or would do so once the movers were going in and out. Finally, though, he nonchalantly sauntered out of a room we had each searched top to bottom, twice. How the hell do they do that? We promptly confined him in the room he’d just exited, and the move got under way.

The movers were amazingly efficient; when they finished unloading on the other end, it was only noon. And Marion and I were only getting started. We made another run to the old place, picking up another load, this one including Cosmo. Once he was safely installed in the new place, we unpacked boxes for a few hours, then made a run to what I’ve dubbed the holy trinity: Target, Home Depot and Petsmart [otherwise known as the cat food store in our household]. By the time we’d hit all three, it was eight o’clock and no dinner plans had been made, other than we needed to eat some. Fast.

Can I get that to go?

A quick heads up—today’s post is potluck. After you read it, I expect you to bring a comment to share with everyone. Also, I’m doing a double post today, the second in honor of Valentine’s Day. So be sure to scroll down.

If you’re a regular at Blue Kitchen, I figure you either like to cook or are a friend or family member who feels honor bound to visit. Or maybe you’re C.) all of the above. But there are times even those of us who loooove to cook either don’t have the time or the energy or C.) all of the above. What do you do then? Drive through? Pizza? What are your defaults? Your delights? I’ll go first.

For us, if we’re not up to cooking, it’s usually because we’ve worked late or have umpteen things to accomplish after dinner. If that’s the case, we also don’t have the energy or time to go someplace and sit down for a nice relaxing meal. So it’s got to be fast and on the way home. Cheap is good too. Our defaults, driven more by geography and speed than desire, are usually Chipotle or Taco Bell. I know. Shut up.

But then there are the guilty pleasures. We recently rediscovered one: Egg foo yung, those pancakelike deep-fried patties of egg, vegetables and meat or seafood. A longtime staple of rather suspect Chinese American restaurants, they’re often found next to those ersatz Chinese dishes, chop suey and chow mein on the menu. And in St. Louis, they’ve even invented something called the St. Paul Sandwich—an egg foo yung patty on white bread with lettuce, tomatoes, mayo and pickles. So I was stunned to recently discover that egg foo yung is actually based on an authentic Shanghai dish.

Before going any further, I have to say that Marion and I are regulars at more than a couple of restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown, places where we would probably not be allowed back if we ordered egg foo yung. And we tend to avoid generic food court Chinese food at all costs, in no small measure because the foods they serve tend to feature the same gloppy brown sauce that is a key ingredient of egg foo yung. But there’s something about egg foo yung that transcends national origin to become one of the world’s true comfort foods.

And never was it more comforting than one night a few years ago. In a fit of temporary insanity, we had agreed to our older daughter’s request for a sleepover birthday party with six guests. A total of seven girls, including the birthday girl, who needed all the caffeine and sugar buzz we’d also intelligently provided like a shark needs swim fins. They weren’t being bad, mind you—it was just the perfect storm of noise and energy and gross out humor. Silly me. I thought having daughters, it would be all Barbies and tea parties and I would escape the various bodily function jokes of my own childhood. I’ll wait while my women readers enjoy a good laugh at my naivete about now. That’s okay. I deserve it.

Marion and I were hunkered down in our room, grimly watching Saturday night TV and each privately longing for a tranquilizer dart gun as the party raged on outside our door.

And then we remembered the late night Chinese take-out place not two blocks from our house.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in our room with wonderfully satisfying plates of egg foo yung, steamed rice and gloppy brown sauce. I think we must have also had a couple of glasses of some modest white wine. The world was suddenly a better place.

Okay, your turn. What’s your default take-out or delivery? What’s your guilty pleasure? Try to stick with fast and cheap and, if at all possible, greasy this time. I’m sure we’ll talk about fancier options in a future post.

Note to self: Get organized

I keep promising myself to put together an editorial calendar for Blue Kitchen, mapping out topics I want to cover, especially around the holidays. If I’d done that, last week you would have read about some romantic Valentine dinner or a sinfully rich dessert in time to perhaps actually plan for it tonight. But I didn’t. And if I’d gone ahead and written about something like that for today’s post, you’d just be pissed that there was no time to get things together. So instead, I wrote about egg foo yung.

Just so you know I’m not a total doofus, Marion and I won’t be eating egg foo yung tonight, assuming the winter weather cooperates. I made dinner reservations at one of our favorite little Chicago bistros, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe. Sharing the kitchen with the [only slightly] more formal Cafe Bernard, the tiny Red Rooster offers exquisitely prepared simple French cuisine in a relaxed country atmosphere. If you ever find yourself in Chicago for dinner, you could do far worse than this cozy, friendly place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Be sure to check out the special Valentine’s Day editions of Kitchen Boombox and WTF.