In the heart of Chicago, hardy food full of comfort

CHICAGO -- On a recent visit to help my son settle into his apartment off Lake Shore Drive, I opened the fridge to look for something for breakfast. Skunked!
On his way out the door to register for classes, he said, "Mom, try Valois on 53d Street . They have the best breakfasts, it's a friendly place, and cheap. Just don't worry about the nutrition thing."
Caffeine deprived, I whined, "How am I going to find it?"
"Just look for the sign that says, 'See your food.' "
Creeping along in a jumbo jet of a rented car, I turned onto a main shopping drag, and just a block later, there it was, Valois Cafeteria See Your Food.

It was warm and bright inside. The smell of coffee was almost as satisfying as a sip. Setting down my coat before I joined the line of hungry patrons, I glanced at the plate of the man sitting at the next table. Was that mashed potatoes, gravy, and scrambled eggs? He noticed me peering at his plate.
I just had to ask, "Excuse me, sir, are those mashed potatoes and gravy on your plate?"
"Yes, ma'am, that's exactly right," he answered in a broad Chicago accent.
"Is that a specialty in Chicago?" I asked.
"Not particularly -- but you can get it anytime you want here. Would you like to join me for breakfast," he said with a smile.
And with that I spent the next hour sharing a meal, talking about family, politics, sports, and, of course, food with John Casillas, a major in the Army Reserve. Casillas, 47, has been coming to Valois (vuh-loyz) for breakfast "almost every day since 1988." That is, when he isn't deployed to Korea, Kuwait, or Iraq.

Sitting down with people you don't know is a tradition at Valois.
The range of outfits in the line of customers included teens in hip-hop gear, professors in tweed, city workers in overalls, and women in fur coats. Everyone dines here. According to Bill Bogris, who works here with his uncle Gus Sellis and co-owner Spiro Argiris, more than 80 percent of the customers are regulars and some eat multiple meals here each day.

There is nothing American about the village of Ahladokambos in Greece, where Sellis and Argiris are from, and nothing Greek about the menu at Valois. But adorning some of the walls are murals of Greece alongside famous places here in Hyde Park .

This is down-home American cooking with heavy Southern touches. For breakfast, there are grits and gravy, eggs every which way, huge raised biscuits, and pancakes the size of the 10-inch plate (three to a serving). You can choose sides from pork patties, links, or bacon -- some customers choose all three. "This is the food your mom made on the weekends for breakfast -- only we have it every day," said Bogris.
The lunch and dinner menu could be a page out of the classic Fanny Farmer cookbook: stews, pot pies, meat loaf -- all comfort food, all the time. "See Your Food" is exactly what you do at this 86-year-old restaurant. The line cooks perform like athletes. The sound of spatula scraping the griddle is a constant. The place is clean; the food is real and real cheap.

My scrambled eggs, grits, links, coffee, and biscuits cost $5.23. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and broccoli to go cost $5.75. The beef is rare and sliced just before you eat. I asked Bogris how they can serve this food at these prices. "You give people good food at reasonable prices they are going to come back," he said.
A similar dining institution is Carson's Ribs, a famous barbecue restaurant downtown . This is a large place with high ceilings. The walls are covered with photographs of local and national celebrities who come to dine. There is usually a long line and just so you won't die of hunger , there is a big sideboard with baskets of rye breads, crackers, and an enormous mound of chopped liver. There was no line on this evening, but I swiped a smear anyway. It tasted like the real deal.

I was urged to go for the sampler: ribs, pork, and chicken. Everything was moist, delicious, and had been smoked on the premises. There must have been 300 grams of protein on my plate, which was not tarnished with anything green. The meat comes with a side of Carson's famous cole slaw, which is treated like a salad. A waiter offers ground pepper .

The potato offerings are numerous: au gratin, baked, double baked, skins, french fries, french fried sweet potatoes, or a vegetable. The baked potato was so big it made me wonder about the fertilizer. For good measure we got a side of the fried sweet potatoes, which have a light seasoning of sugar and cinnamon. They were unique, crispy, and delicious.

Next to us was a table of men laughing, gnawing ribs, and licking the sauce from their fingers. This is not a delicate dining experience. There was a young Japanese woman, with her shopping bags and guide book , sitting alone. She was making her way through her plate of food in a most decorous manner with a fork and knife -- but she might have been the only one in the place doing so . A group of girlfriends came in, sat down , and immediately began singing and slap-clapping a rhythmic version of "Happy Birthday."
My advice: Do not go to these places with a card-carrying member of the nutrition police. You want to enjoy your demise. Give in, then get out your sneakers, and walk it off.

COOKBOOK REVIEW'Japanese Cooking' is still the master

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art,
By Shizuo Tsuji, Kodansha International, 507 pp., $45

When "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" first came out 25 years ago, sushi was exotic, teriyaki was the sauce, and miso soup was for the macrobiotic crowd. No one who frequented the few Japanese restaurants in American cities could have predicted what would happen in just over two decades.

The late Shizuo Tsuji mastered Japanese cuisine, then French. He started the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka in 1960 to train chefs, and it remains one of the well-respected cooking schools in Japan. He wrote this encyclopedic book to share the "essence and spirit" of his native cuisine. In this 25th anniversary edition, the content is the same as the original. There is a foreword by the late food writer M.F.K. Fisher and a preface by Tsuji, both of which are from the first volume, as well as a new foreword by Gourmet magazine's Ruth Reichl, and a preface by Tsuji's son, Yoshiki.

Yoshiki Tsuji considered an extensive revision of the book, but in the end rejected it, he writes. He still sees this as an "almost perfect Japanese Cooking 101," and he is right. It is to Japanese cooking what "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is to French cuisine.
"Japanese Cooking" is divided into two parts. The first offers detailed chapters on ingredients, a deconstruction of the Japanese meal, equipment, and techniques. Each cooking method -- among them steaming (mushimono), simmering (nimono), and grilling (yakimono) -- has its own chapter, with a few recipes to illustrate each technique. The explanation on simmering, for instance, discusses the round wood covers that go inside pots to maintain the shape of the food and help the seasonings become absorbed. Tsuji suggests using an aluminum pie plate for this if cooks don't have multiple wooden covers the way Japanese kitchens do.

The second part is divided again by cooking techniques and categories such as noodles, sashimi, and rice dishes, along with recipes that reflect them. In some instances, you need to refer back to the first part of the book, where Tsuji offers exhaustive explanations on how to salt a fish or bone a chicken thigh or make a particular sesame dressing. Line drawings throughout take you, step by step, through unfamiliar territory.

Though not much of what's here is new -- only eight pages of color photographs have been added. What is remarkable is how many of these recipes are now in Americans' everyday lives. Edamame, the fresh soy beans, are a favorite snack. We can find local sushi bars and order uni (sea urchin) and toro (tuna), and the ingredients for seaweed salad are at many supermarkets. Pages of ingredient sources, in fact, listed state by state in the original, don't exist in this new release.
I bought the first "Japanese Cooking," and it anchors a collection that now fills several shelves. Even with many choices, the book still remains my go-to for reference and classic recipes. When Tsuji called his volume "a simple art," you have to realize that a single shrimp floating in a clear fragrant broth, garnished with a sliver of lemon rind, looks easy enough. But the shrimp has been somehow folded onto itself, the clarity of the broth seems unattainable, and coaxing just the right amount of fragrance from the lemon rind is a lesson in restraint.
But we have decades to master all this.

A sweet Portuguese tradition

EAST CAMBRIDGE -- You might walk right past Central Bakery without knowing there's a behemoth workroom just beyond the glass cases in the front. There, year round, bakers churn out Portuguese sweet breads and rolls.

At Easter, the round sweet breads are made with more sugar and more butter and baked with a hard-cooked egg and a decorative braid. Some of these breads are sold at local supermarkets, but the bulk go to hundreds of loyal Portuguese customers who wouldn't think of having Easter without the breads they call "folar " in Portuguese .

"I have a lot of customers who buy several loaves and ship them as gifts all over the country to relatives who have moved away," says co-owner Michael Vital.

Central, which has been in business since 1919, makes over 2,000 loaves with more than 14,000 eggs just for Easter week . Vital was 16 in 1981, when he started working for his father, who owned the bakery. Michael purchased the bakery in 1995 with John Carvalho and Tony Medeiros.

Maria Nunes, who works at Central, sees how excited customers are when they come in for the rounds. "The bread is so good that people are tearing off pieces and eating it in the car, on their way home," she says. Nunes grew up on Saint Michael in the Azores. "My grandmother used to make all of us kids special breads. Mine was in the shape of a doll and the egg was the face. The boys got a heart or round with the egg in the center." The egg is not just for decoration. She explains that people who didn't have enough to eat considered an egg a treat.

As to the significance of the egg, Vital says, "Tradition, I guess."

"Do you know?" he asks Nunes and Jose Vicente, a carpenter doing some renovation for the bakery. Both shrug and offer this: "Tradition!"

Vital speculates that the Rev. Jose S. Ferreira , pastor at Saint Anthony's, might know.

Saint Anthony's, or Igreja de Santo Antonio, is a modern building a block from the bakery. Ferreira, who comes from Vila Verde in the north of Portugal, has been at Saint Anthony's for over 14 years. The meaning of the egg inside the bread, he says, is indeed tradition. "Spring, in nature, is the beginning of new life. Easter is a time of renewal and the Resurrection . The egg is the beginning of life."

With that and good bread in mind, customers crowd Central Bakery this week for loaves. Some contain up to six eggs, and those are surely saved for special meals. For eating in the car on the way home, there are breads with a single egg baked inside.

Better than takeout

A splash of soy sauce, a drizzle of sesame oil, a little rice wine, a smashed clove of garlic, chopped scallions, and a knob of ginger. You have the aromatic elements of a simple Chinese stir-fry. Exotic bottled sauces or even a stop at an Asian grocer aren't essential to make an authentic dish.

Stir-frying has become as much a part of our culinary repertoire as steaming or broiling. Today, many woks share kitchen space with frying pans in cookware departments and on bridal registries. To stir-fry, use any wide implement that you can scoop under food in a hot pan and just keep it moving.

You can make a fine stir-fry with a minimal amount of oil. The most important part of the dish is good preparation. The actual cooking is done in a flash over high heat. Finely chopped garlic, scallion, and ginger go into a small bowl; seasonings such as soy sauce, sugar, and wine go into another.

This is not a chop-as-you-go operation. Cut up all the vegetables and arrange them on a platter next to the seasonings at the stove. Begin with the finely chopped seasonings. Then add the vegetables, in this case cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, celery, red pepper, carrots, and broccoli. Even broccoli stems can go into the dish. Peel them and slice them into 1-inch diagonal chunks for great crunch. If the vegetables are all the same size, they'll cook evenly. Fresh or dried shiitake mushrooms add heft and a musty flavor. In fact, dried mushrooms, reconstituted in hot water, are more flavorful than the fresh and the soaking liquid can be added, too.

When all the vegetables are in the pan, add a small amount of water or stock, cover the mixture, and steam the dish briefly. A dash of sesame oil releases a nutty aroma. Serve with a bowl of white or brown rice.


Recipe
Stir-fried vegetables: Serves 4

1/4 cup water or chicken stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine
6 button mushrooms, quartered
1 cup bean sprouts
2 teaspoons sesame oil

1. Heat a wok or large frying pan over high heat for 30 seconds. Add the oil and swirl it around pan. Add the garlic, ginger, and scallions. Stir-fry for 30 seconds.
2. Add the cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, celery, red pepper, carrot, and broccoli florets and stems. Stir-fry for 2 minutes.
3. Add the water or stock, soy sauce, sugar, salt, and rice wine. Cover with a lid and cook the vegetables on medium-high heat for 2 minutes more.
4. Uncover the pan. Add the button mushrooms and bean sprouts. Stir-fry the vegetables for 1 minute more. Turn off the heat. Sprinkle with sesame oil. Stir again and serve with rice.

A cookie contest keeps friends together through the years

WEST PEABODY -- They call themselves the Agawam Babes, and for 16 years, these girlhood friends have been getting together in each other's homes for brunch and a cookie swap. It started as a way to stay connected despite marriages, kids, and jobs. The group has changed over the years, but the core has stayed solid.

The Babes include the Nascembeni sisters, Karen and Sandra; the Gatti sisters, Dina, Lisa, and Lynn; and Kathy Walsh Bautze and Pam Lombardini. They all grew up in the same neighborhood in Agawam, in Western Mass., attending the same schools and church. All in their mid-40s to early 50s now, they're still dear friends. Their annual event takes cookie swapping to new heights.

This year, Dina Gatti Bona, 44, dressed in a shimmery red top, is hosting at her home here. Everyone comes with several dozen cookies. They contribute confections to a common plate, and after brunch they have a contest -- a serious tasting, in fact -- to decide the best. There are rules: no one can help you bake, no mixes, when it's time to vote you can vote for yourself, and, of course, you have to be from Agawam.

By 10 a.m. on a recent Sunday, Bona's house is a flurry of activity. Bing Crosby is crooning Christmas carols and the friends are laughing, reminiscing, and grumbling about the packaging becoming a craft project. Lombardini, 51, is arranging cookies on a two-tiered platter. Karen Nascembeni, 44, is dramatically recounting how she shelled dozens of pistachios for her entry. Her sister, Sandra McArthur, rolls her eyes. Then Nascembeni notices large chocolate cookie sandwiches. "Who brought these big mothers?" she asks. "They look so unhealthy." Without skipping a beat, Lombardini says, "They are."
Lisa Gatti Whelan, 48, and her twin, Lynn Gatti Walton, share a photo album and charts of past entries. Bautze, 45, cutting bread, hears someone say that her husband helped print the recipe. Uh-oh. "You're disqualified," she shoots back.

Bona tells the group how her power went off, she almost had a nervous breakdown, and she was up into the middle of the night making cookies. No sympathy.

They toast with mimosa cocktails, and the 16th Annual Catty Cookie Swap begins. Cookies are placed on the table; each baker offers an explanation and gives her personal "year in review" -- heartfelt, funny, and bawdy stories about families, jobs, and life in general. Nascembeni, last year's Cookie Queen, wearing her feathery crown, starts. Her lemon pistachio wreaths go on each plate. McArthur presents Italian horn cookies.

Bautze offers lime-coconut snowballs; Whelan has made red-sugar-dusted poinsettias and her twin offers coconut-cherry chews. Lombardini talks about the effort it took to make her chocolate peppermint confections. Bona explains how to make hazelnut macaroon domes.

In addition to the crown, the winner gets a wire whisk scepter and a satin sash with stamped gingerbread men down one edge and "Cookie Queen" on the other. Over the years, the recipes have become more complicated, the packaging more elaborate. If one person's presentation becomes all glitz and glamour, everyone else follows.
After the tasting, it's time to crown the queen. Each participant writes a name on a piece of paper, ballots are folded, and placed in a bowl.

Hostess Bona opens the first ballot and shrieks out her own name: "Dina!" Next, "Karen!" Then: "Dina!" "Dina!" In the end, Bona's hazelnut cookies with ganache are chosen, and for the fifth time she is queen. With scepter and sash, she throws kisses and thanks the group in a queenly way.

The Agawam Babes roar with laughter.

And they seem to be planning how to unseat Bona next year.

Getting schooled in Korean cuisine

CONCORD -- Spatula in hand, prep cook Domingos Netos is frying dozens of sunny-side up eggs on the griddle in the open kitchen of Concord Academy's cafeteria. Hundreds more eggs are ready on commercial-size baking sheets. But this isn't breakfast. The eggs will top the Korean seasoned rice dish bibimbap. Dozens of bowls of this Asian classic will be served for lunch today.

The private school is hosting chef Hak Joon Kim of Incheon, Korea, who is participating in the Global Chef Program run by Sodexho, the school's food service. For two days recently, Korean kimchi, the fiery cabbage salad, shared space with the salad bar and cold cuts.
When Kim arrived, Sodexho's general manager at the school, Dennis Gallant, wanted the Korean chef to teach the staff how to cook short grain rice properly. The grain is already a menu staple, and the staff had been using a giant rice cooker, but the students -- six percent come from South Korea -- kept telling the kitchen that something just wasn't right. Kim immediately identified the problem. No one was rinsing or soaking the grains before cooking, resulting in very sticky rice. Yes, short grain rice is called sticky rice -- but it should not be sticky enough to elicit comments.

For this lunch, Kim seasons a fresh bone-in mackerel stew, called mugulguk, with a piquant sauce of red pepper paste scattered with scallions. A radish and oyster soup, along with kimchi, round out the menu.

Before students and faculty come in for lunch, food services manager Herb Read is helping spoon the now perfect rice into black plastic bowls for the bibimbap, while Kim adds a savory mixture of vegetables and beef, then tops each with an egg. The kitchen is filled with the aromas of sesame oil and soy sauce. Kim garnishes a big bowl of kimchi with a yellow rose carved from a turnip-like vegetable. Read, watching, says that Kim "treats all food with respect."

To serve the students, the Korean chef takes a spot at the counter alongside an interpreter. Curious students ask questions and take some of everything on their trays. No one makes a face and all seem intrigued. Some of the Asian students chat with Kim in Korean.
Lewis Selas, a sophomore, usually has pasta for lunch, but today he is trying fish. "Holy mackerel! I don't eat fish," he exclaims. Senior Annie Lobel says "This is amazing. They should do it every day."

While one group of Korean students comments on the authenticity of the bibimbap, junior Hae Sung Kim is munching on a quesadilla. "The line was too long," he says.

Holly Fowler of Sodexho's Education Division is here to see how the program is working. "Typically you think students won't try [unfamiliar] foods," she says. "We do those programs in many schools and they eat until the food is gone!"

A few stragglers make their way to the counter. Not a grain of rice is left. Dinner tonight for the school's boarding students -- and day students who don't want to miss out -- will be dwaejigalbi-jjim (braised spareribs of pork) and doraji and oi-saengchae (seasoned bellflower root and cucumber). Rice is soaking and Netos is prepping vegetables.

Kim, energized by the response of the students, says, "It was an explosive experience for me."

Sharing the pleasures of real sushi

Hiroko Shimbo has been teaching Japanese cooking in her native Tokyo, New York, Spain, and England for 15 years, which has given her new opportunities in the restaurant industry as Americans become ever more captivated with the food of her culture. She was the culinary consultant for Taneko Japanese Tavern , which opened earlier this month in Phoenix . She is the author of ``The Japanese Kitchen," an accessible volume introducing readers to the basics of the cuisine, and "The Sushi Experience," published this month, which takes sushi-lovers from the simplest hand rolls to complex nigiri-zushi -- raw fish on finger-size beds of rice -- the real test of a sushi chef. Along with step-by-step photographs, Shimbo explains how to cut fish yourself.
We spoke by phone from her kitchen-office in New York, where she lives with her husband, James "Buzz" Beitchman , a telecommunications expert. Shimbo thinks Americans are becoming more sophisticated in their taste for sushi and sashimi and now want authentic dishes. There is a large repertoire of home-style sushi made for picnics, lunch boxes, and celebrations. Start with the basics and build up your skills, she advises, because information and confidence are key.

Q. What it was like growing up in your mother's kitchen?
A. My mother's kitchen was a wonderful busy, busy place. My father was a physician. His clinic was attached to our house. We had patients staying at the clinic so my mother always cooked a large amount of food both for the patients and then delicious dinners for our family. My sisters and I were always hanging around in the kitchen. We were raised with delicious food. We naturally developed a love to cook and eat.

Q. Did you help your mother?
A. Not when we were small, though we did carry the trays to the patients. When we grew up we helped quite a lot. But with my two sisters and mother in the kitchen, it became quite aggressive! Many women!

Q. Americans read that Japanese businessmen come home late after an evening out with co-workers and expect a hot meal. Did your mother have dinner waiting for your father?
A. My father was always there so my mother made breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He was a very lucky guy. But yes, most of my friends' husbands come home and eat with their families only once or twice a week. It is a very common pattern. I think the younger generation is changing. When the Japanese economy slumped in 1990, the companies cut back on entertainment budgets, so businessmen had to eat at home more often.

Q. We hear the complaints that younger Japanese women don't cook anymore. What are they serving their families?
A. It is true. They are feeding their families prepared foods bought at the supermarkets and food courts. Many buy frozen food they reheat at home. It is very disappointing.

Q. When we hear "food court" we think of cafeteria-style places in shopping malls. In Japan, though, these refer to boutique-style stalls on the lower floor of Japanese department stores.
A. While the presentation is wonderful and the taste is actually pretty good, prepared food contains quite a lot of additives so I don't buy them no matter how appealing it looks. It isn't everyday food.

Q. Can ordinary people afford this?
A. Yes, prepared food can be reasonable. You can choose the more expensive food in the boutiques or those sold at 7- Eleven or other convenience stores.

Q. How did you begin teaching Japanese cuisine?
A. I was a Japanese language teacher, but teaching language is teaching everything, from how to bow, culture, history, food. Language is based on these pillars. One day a student said, "Why don't you teach us how to cook a Japanese meal?"

Q. Did you teach from your own experience or go to culinary school?
A. Mostly from my own home training. Like most Japanese ladies, after graduating from university, looking for a future husband, I went to a cooking school. But I learned nothing at that cooking school. In Japan, students don't ask questions. We just receive whatever they teach us. I was living in Japan and had an American husband, and had many foreign students. They asked me how to make miso, how to make sake, how to make rice vinegar. I couldn't answer these very basic questions. I was frustrated, so I started to contact artisans and manufacturers and learned from them.

Q. How did you learn how to make sushi?
A. I attended the Tokyo Sushi Academy. It sounds like the military. The president started this school in 2002. They offer expensive and intensive sushi training for one month. One month is so brief, but every day starts with cooking sushi rice and filleting fish. We also learn to make nigiri-zushi, the rice ball with a slice of sashimi on top.
After that I did research on all aspects of sushi -- tradition, history, culture, and recipes. This included interviews with sushi chefs, rice farmers, wasabi growers, knife makers, wholesalers, and fish mongers.
Because I was raised with real sushi, I was initially quite disappointed to see how sushi evolved in America. People started with unconventional sushi, like California roll [avocado, crab and cucumber] to suit the American palate. Then came sushi with mayonnaise dressings. However, sushi chefs can be more creative here. This is now even popular in Japan.

Q. Who is the audience you have in mind for "The Sushi Experience?"
A. Raw fish lovers and those who are not so keen on it -- which makes everyone! I want people to know that sushi is not just raw fish. Fifty percent of the recipes are made with vegetables, cured fish, seafood and omelet.

Q. Many skilled Japanese sushi chefs seem quite skeptical that non-Japanese can prepare this food. What do you think?
A. I agree in part. Take the Japanese chef who trained in Italy. They can cook pretty good Italian food but they haven't been raised as Italians. Food is not just preparation. The Japanese are very stiff in their mind-set that somehow a non- Japanese can master the Japanese language, or that a non-Japanese cannot really understand the Japanese mentality. These attitudes are too extreme. However, when it comes to sushi preparation, especially nigiri-zushi, there are so many things that you need to know about the fish, the specific way to make rice. It really takes long years of training.

Q. There is an impression in Japan that America has no food culture beyond hamburgers and fast food. Having lived in the United States, what is your impression?
A. Oversized! This is a country where things are always changing because of the addition of new immigrants. This has had a big influence on American food. One thing I don't like here is the concept that bigger is better and quality is not much of a concern. When people ask for larger sizes, food loses its quality.

Q. What do you think of the concept of an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet?
A. That is awful. I don't know what kind of sushi they offer, mostly rolls. When it comes to raw fish, it is expensive and if there is any place that says "All-you-can-eat raw fish sushi," I just doubt the quality of the fish. Certain expensive fish cannot be offered so generously.

Q. What advice do you have for Americans eating at a Japanese restaurant?
A. In Japan, restaurants are highly specialized. Here the Japanese restaurants aren't. Everything is on the menu like yakitori, tempura, teriyaki, katsu [fried foods], and noodles. But the Japanese food boom has finally arrived. In New York City and on the West Coast there are more authentic Japanese restaurants which serve more unusual dishes. Try what you haven't tried before.

Hiroko Shimbo will be at Boston University’s Seminars in Food, Wine, and the Arts on Monday from 6 to 8 p.m. The fee is $65, which includes tastings and a copy of her new book. Call 617-353-9852.