Diamond Menu Winter 2013

LOX

BORSCHT

SALAD SPONGE

PIEROGI

COFFEE and DONUTS, CHICKEN POT PIE

EDIBLE TERRARIUM of CARROTS and SNAILS

BUILD-A-PLATE

GRILLED CHEESE ENCAPSULATED

FOIE GRAS with BABY ROOT VEGETABLES and NUT SOIL

APPLE TEA and SEA GRAPES

LANGOSTINE and DILL

SHRIMP NOODLES

HAND COURSE

OYSTER BAKE with JUNIPER and MUSHROOMS

CLAM and KRAUT

TURBOT and OAK LEAVES

LOBSTER, CASHEW, and EARL GREY

ROE with CHIPS

PORK PHO

SHANK and RELISH

KALE and BROWN SPICED SWEETBREADS

SMOKED BONE MARROW and FRENCH ONION SOUP

BEEF SHORT RIB with GOOD STUFF

BRIE and CARROTS

ROOT VEGETABLES for DESSERT and PINK PEPPERCORNS

ICE CREAM CONE

TEA PARTY

*subject to change but not much

Deer Menu Winter 2013

PINE CONE and MAPLE

ROUND PANCAKE

HANGING TERRIARIUM of GRANDFATHER'S FARM

POTATO, EGG, TRUFFLE, and TWIG

VENISON TARTARE and VINEGAR

QUEEN ANNE'S LACE and CATTAIL BROTH, ACORNS

TREE NEST

TROUT and LEEKS

1 PILL MAKES YOU LARGER

RABBIT and REDS

DUCK EGG, MUSHROOM, and FOREST FLOOR GREENS

49 degrees and 29 mintues NORTH/87 degrees and 4 mintues WEST

HEART, PICKLED VEGETABLE, and HAZELNUT

WILD RICE CRISPY TREAT

ROASTED BIRD and POTATOES

SPRUCE SODA

ELDERBERRIES and MILK

BIRCH, BLACK WALNUTS, and ROSEHIPS

FORAGING BASKET BITES

*subject to change but not much

Owl Menu at Elizabeth-WINTER 2013

PARSNIP concoction, by the GNOME, I think

TROUGH of TASTES

CARROT TEA

SAUSAGE GRAVY filled ROUND PANCAKE

CASHEWS and CARROTS

SMOKED TROUT and PARSLEY

SPICED TEA/TONGUE SOUP

HEN and EGG

HOMEMADE BRIOCHE and RABBIT TERRINE

PORK SKIN and CAULIFLOWER RAGU

SHORT RIB, BLOOD, and SWEET POTATO

MILK, HONEY and SMOKE AROMA

MIREPOIX

COOKIES

*subject to change...but not much

Diamond Menu Pics

Take a look!

Owl Menu Photos

Check them out here!

Deer Menu Photos!

Check them out here at Jen Moran Photography.

New Gatherers Cuisine

New Gatherers Cuisine is a term that I came up with while talking to a highly respected food loving friend of mine.  Because he believes my food to be "post-modern," or different than what has been done, and that it largely focuses on the land he suggested that I along with another out west are just a few in the United States to be doing cuisine such as this.  There is a food movement in the Nordic regions called New Nordic Cuisine.  He had said we were following in those footsteps so I said then I suppose we should coin the name for it here, thus after a few names being thrown out there, New Gatherers Cuisine was what we settled on.  While we don't have the actual manifesto written nor do we have the funding as they did for it truly to be a movement I think this is a lovely time for this focus considering it's become less and less taboo to eat foraged foods as people are largely becoming more conscious of what they eat and much more knowledgeable.  I grew up foraging and was use to cooking found mushrooms, cracking gathered nuts, so for me it seemed completely reasonable to have it incorporated into the cooking I did for others.  I also grew up in a house where mostly everything we consumed was from our garden, my mother constantly processing foods for the winter.  My favorite she said was peaches from our tree that she canned with simple syrup.  Our pantry was wall to wall Ball Mason jars.  I think it is Maya Angelou that says something to the effect, you don't have to go further than your own backyard to tell a good story.  This is also true I think for the story of food.  So I do gather some of our cuisine,  I preserve a large amount of the gathered and farmed cuisine, other gatherers or foragers and hunters work with me, and we are highlighting as best we can some of those items.  They are gathered, far and wide as well as close but rural, and all from lands were they can be rightly collected.  We serve what we know.  We preserve what we can.  But this is not all we do.  This is just one facet of Elizabeth Restaurant.  We use local and/or organic produce, serve antibiotic/hormone free meats,  cure, salt, and pickle our own items.  We tried to remain as sustainable and local as possible.  We know exactly what we are going to serve each week to our guests so that we have as little waste as possible. We are and intend to be as earth conscious as possible.  We are still a work in progress as we navigate our best avenues.
However, New Gatherers Cuisine has a larger meaning to me, to us.  It has always been that fine dining establishments have a flair of pretense, stuffiness, and separation by space.  We've purposefully eliminated all of those elements.  I wanted to open a restaurant that was all of who I am, all of who Elizabeth was.  The gathering goes beyond food and it's the gathering of people.  I wanted guests to come into Elizabeth and feel like they were in my home.  I wanted them to feel more than welcome.  I also wanted them to experience dinner as a party.  I wanted guests to meet new people, eat near one another as a family.  I want strangers to become family, just for a few moments in time.  I feel interaction with each other, even strangers around food allows one to feel enchanted. With all the Internet and connectedness yet separation I think this is a lovely way for people to be face to face.
New Gatherers Cuisine means so many things to me and I believe it's working.

Gratitude Part 3.

Elizabeth Restaurant is radiant.  She's beautiful in so many ways.  I couldn't be happier.  Really.

My friend from LA.

Daaimah's gratitude lists.  I miss my friend so much.  We are both busy.

The chefs at Elizabeth Restaurant are such hard workers and I appreciate them so much.

The staff at Elizabeth is brilliant.  They shine.

That I have a strong network of friends that really really get me.

Walking through the woods my friend and I came across a deer.  The last thing I thought of was hunting it.  The first thing I said was be quiet so we don't scare him.

Opening Weekend Pictures

Take a look!

Gratitude Squared

Grateful at all the different ways in which I'm grateful.

That I'm surprised I curse so much.

All the lovely press and people and writers behind it who have written about my venture.

Anna Lloyd. Katie K.

My new staff.  They are great.  It's so lovely to be working with others.

That my mom calls and says, "Don't you do anything to that article.  I'm going to fix it up real nice."

How many friends and family reached out to me to say something generous about my mission.  It's unreal.

The chefs laughing at me when I said our first week might be slow.

My friends will be here visiting shortly.

Another List

My nieces are easy to spoil.

Elizabeth Restaurant looks like a dreamy cabin.

Anna Lloyd.  Katie K.  Daaimah.

Being able to sort the true from the false.

Knowing what I am willing and unwilling to do

The ability to make clear decisions

I am absolutely in love with what I do and am always doing it.  My work does not feel like work to me.

More Gratitude

My niece's widened gaze and smile when I gave her a taste of sassafras ice cream.  I said, "that's how good the woods are, why do you think I'm always out there?"  She says, "You are like Pocahontas or someone." Ok, sure, I'll take that.

That my older niece sadly is moving out after two and a half years with me but her little sister will replace her.  One for the other, it's an equal trade.  I could never have dreamt of anything better than having my sister's daughters with me, even if they can be a pain.  She had them as babies and I have them as young women.  Fair enough.

Mom still takes care of my posion ivy.

My dad still telling me what to and what not to eat from the woods even though the apprentice has surpassed the teacher.

Hunters and their wives.

Nancy McClelland, my accountant, is amazing and so helpful.

Spinach flavored gnocchi.

Daaimah Musbashshir and her gratitude.

One of my best buddies, Kelly Crowley, is coming to town soon.

A Note of Gratitude

My best friend Daaimah and her emails, addressed to whomever on her list will read them, highlighting clips of her life that resonate gratitude.  I will do the same.

Today when I drove my niece somewhere and she thought I was checking out a girl but I was looking at a fallen tree, scanning it for edible mushrooms.

That this Joni Mitchell and this Van Morrison tune bring me to not just tears but the act of weeping.

I'm weird enough to say these things about myself.

My mutual friends and friends.

Elizabeth Ann Regan.  Bunny is what we called her.

Elizabeth Restaurant.

Mike Meier and Jen Laaback and Robert Herbster who make up my team of investors and business partners.  They see me and accept my vision.

All the people who put in time and effort.  Neelu McGibbon, design.  Joseph Novelli, construction.  Sean Kaplan, PR.  Code, logo.

My family.  Always my family.

Nostalgia and the house I grew up in.

Homesteading roots.

The woods.

Great opportunities to work at fabulous restaurants even if I wasn't always the best employee.

I can't be tamed.  Well, I can but I can't.

Katie K.  Anna Lloyd.  Daaimah Mubashshir.  Loren G.  Monique W.  Jessica S.  Jill Mc.  Stacey G.  Gabi W.  Rachel B.  Veronica.  These ladies are rocks!  There are more!

BTC.

The faith that miracles happen in many different capacities.

Mustard Green Malfatti

Malfatti.  The translation is something like, "badly made."  I'm not sure.  I think that's what I remember Tony Priolo say when I worked at Piccolo Sogno.  But hell, badly made is easy.  I can make something that looks like a human made it!  That's my favorite way to make things.  I had SO much mustard.  From just a square foot garden plot I pulled near 5 pounds.  I also pulled that weight in Swiss Chard today but I focused on the mustard because having too much gave me anxiety.  I began to grow these before my dinners were over and used the more tender baby greens wilted on top of course twenty, rabbit ravioli.  Now the greens are big, fluffy, and spicy.  This is my third turn on that plot already this season!  I'll likely have about one more.  Currently my plots have greens growing that I hope to bolt in time for edible flowers for Elizabeth's opening along with other items I will pickle and use for garnish.  Either way I gave some mustard and chard to my neighbors but the rest I will use this week in different preparations, some I will also turn to sorbet.  I love green sorbets.  Tonight I decided on malfatti, last minute decision but at this point it's only appropriate to make the best pheasant food I can considering I'm on a tight tight budget and ramen hurts my belly. 

I don't think I even made this malfatti in any traditional way.  I didn't have ricotta on hand so here's what I did and remember I eyeball then I write it down in what I think it might be appropriate measurements so you have to taste, touch, and experiment for yourself.

3 cups of chopped mustard greens.  Quickly blanch in salted water, chill then strain.

1/2 cup of buttermilk

2 eggs

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

1 cup flour

1 1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

Place the mustard greens, buttermilk, eggs and cheese in food processor and blend until nicely incorporated.

Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add the salt, pepper and nutmeg.  Slowly add the flour, incorporating with a spatula.

Let set for twenty minutes.

Bring 4 quarts of water to a simmer, using two spoons, scoop a small amount (about ounce) of malfatti onto spoon and use other spoon to push it off into the water.  You can put about 5-8 in pot at a time.  Allow to cook until they float for one minute and the using slotted spoon transfer to an oiled sheet tray to cool.  Repeat until all malfatti batter is used, should be around 3-4 cups malfatti when finished.  

I heated mine in a chicken glace with chicken thighs, zucchini flowers, butter and finished it with parmesan cheese.  You can do whatever you want.  You can also use any green you want.  It's scrumptious.

Target Practice/Hunting For Berries

He told me how "This area was once all covered in water.  That's why the soil is so sandy."  I told him, "I want a cabin.  Right in the middle of the woods.  Maybe I'll find a little plot of land and just get one of those kind of cabins that you snap together, but then it couldn't be in an area with lots of wind or anything rambunctious like that."  He said, "Grandpa had two cabins in the woods on the farm."  I pictured it.  It was like a long lost memory.  And then I don't know if it was really a memory or my imagining a memory but I saw myself standing in the woods, tall as my dad's waist.  Looking at those cabins I remember thinking that's where Hansel and Gretel went!  Who lives there?  What is that place?  Why is there a stove?  Who cooks there?  Why are there bullet holes in it? And then he said, "The only replica I've seen of the porcelain stove that was in there was being sold for 37 thousand.  It was quite an antique."  "Where is it now," I asked and he said, "It's still there."  

"Why don't we get it?  I'd love to have it." 

"It's all shot up.  Cousin Vince shot it up with some of his buddies."

"What?"

"Yep, they just shot up all the cabins."

And then I picture our pistols in the trunk and thought, well at least we are going to use targets, paper targets.  Ugh, why'd they have to be so dumb?  Why do cousins have to do weird stuff like that?  

Anyways I wondered if it was this memory, the picture of me wondering at these cabins in the middle of the woods, was my reason for wanting this myself.  If it's my desire to get back to that safe feeling of just being a child, the height of my dad's waist, stomping through the woods, absorbed in the magic of the green, the leaves, the wild animals, the sounds of leaves...

I knew exactly this is why my dad and I have the rituals we do.  He told me frankly, "I sure miss that farm."  I said, "me too."  We do this because while we are building new memories we are both trying to get back to that lost time full of comfort.  His father's farm.  I realized that day how much he loves and misses his dad.  For him, that farm is where the spirit of his father lives.  So we go to the game preserve right down the road from the farm and each time we do we drive past the house.  He points at the pines that line the vacant cornfield and says, "I planted those."  Last time I even got out and knocked on the door to see if whomever was there would let us go into the woods and walk around but no one was home.  Honestly, we are both a little afraid of who might be in that house.  We are afraid of what we might find out in the woods.  It's not so magical anymore as now it's just a house with a lot of land out in the middle of nowhere where no one does anything to keep it up.  He said, "all our restaurant tables and chairs are probably still in the barn.  If I had them I'd give them to you."  

"Geez dad, I don't know but I don't think I want the tables and chairs you got resale yourself in the 60's for your Polish diner.  I'm not sure it would fit my concept."

"Yep, that's a unique concept."

Back at the preserve we searched forever to find area 7 again.  When we did I found one lone blueberry.  All the rest had fallen already or the deer and squirrels ate them.  Everything is still coming early this year due to that hot streak back in March.  He pointed out sassafras that i just about walked on.  I stopped, knelt down and rubbed the leaves between my fingers and inhaled.  It's one of the most gorgeous smells.  I cut it down. 

We went down a gravel road to check out a tiny lake where there were bluegill and bass.  I told him, "you can eat lily pads."  He said he never did.  But the flowers were so beautiful he searched for a stick and pulled one out of the water while I looked for wild carrots.  I threw down what I pulled up, not certain if I might have had water hemlock instead.  We smelled the flower and it was approximately a  musty lily.  I wanted to eat it but I wasn't certain that I could.  I know the tubers of the lily pad can be consumed.  A future dish!!!!  "Lily Pads, Frog Legs, and Seaweed," of course.  

We stopped every so often along the side of the road so that I could hop out and grab elderberry flowers.  He said, "I never used the flowers.  Only the berries."  He told me to throw the flowers out because he only knows for certain that they are elderberries when the berries form in late summer, early fall.  He was concerned as I was earlier about the water hemlock but I was certain this time.  I couldn't help but think there is so much bounty in the woods I don't even know where to start.  

He told me, "where those mounds are you'll always find arrowheads."  We found arrowheads all the time in our garden on the tiny farm where I grew up.  They always seemed to show up after the garden was freshly tilled along with a heavy rain.  He said those mounds were where the Native Americans set up their camps, because of the water in this area they had to be high up.  He also said the duck hunters from Europe use to come to this area to hunt.  They treated it like people once treated safaris.  They'd make the 7 day boat ride across the Atlantic, then travel with carriages and horse.  I asked what they did with the ducks.  Did they preserve them somehow to take them back?  I was assuming they were hunting for their families, but he said, "no, maybe they ate some but it was just for sport."  He said they use to just go wild with killing animals.  That's why buffalo are now only ranched and no longer roam free.  Oh.

I'm thirty two years old and somehow my dad who certainly doesn't know everything, but has a way of saying it that you believe it, makes me still think he knows all the answers.  When we are out there, in the moment, I believe him.  This is the man that still asks if I think I should get a secretarial job at the Union.  Honestly I'm not even sure what the words, "secretarial job at the Union," mean.  This is the man that while not homophobic, worries about me because I'll never have a husband to take care of me.  But somehow,with all that I believe stories he tells me about what happened out on these farms and in these woods before they were irrigated or civilized as they are today.  I'm not sure what the truth is and I have other things I like to wikipedia.  But I know that when we go there together we go to a place that we both feel safe in.  A place that we remember we loved where we spent time with people we loved and escape from our everyday into the magic.
Over the 6 hours we spent together that day about half an hour was spent shooting guns, one hour was spent hunting berries.  The rest was willy nilly stomping and memory making.

Bittersweet Wildest Dreams

Is it true you really know you are living if reality is better than your dreams?  I've always felt alive in a way.  I've always sensed the reality of my life even if I was dreaming of living on another planet or even in some of my worst moments.  However, I haven't always been able to see things clearly or exactly for what they are.  Let's just say I've, at times, had the inability to differentiate the true from the false.  Sometimes there is a part of me that thinks, "I did this," "I made this food, dish, course, menu."  Certainly I had something to do with it.  But all that thinking is only fooling myself and I wouldn't want to ruffle feathers by saying how I really think it's done.  Ok, I will sort of say.  I think it's more of a channeling than anything else.  It's like it all exists above me and is channeled through me.  And I'm alright if you now think I'm a weirdo.  I don't mind.  What I can also say is that wherever all this loveliness is sourced and how it transpires and what will be happening in the near future is and beyond my dreams.
When I began One Sister the goal was a restaurant.  I remember my first entrepreneurial endeavor.  I collected armfulls of zucchini and tomatoes from our garden.  I set up a table on our front lawn and laid them all out with a FOR SALE sign.  I think I got sidetracked, probably by an afternoon cartoon or Gilligan's Island (I loved that show) and while I stepped away, the one car that was to stop did and drove off while I was gone.  It's interesting that 23 years or so after than day, when I started my company I was doing close to the same thing, just with a touch better service.  While growing up I told my friends that someday I will have a restaurant.  Maybe it was even an intuitive inclination as I had told many people, "One day I will have a garden and grow lots of my own herbs and produce and flowers and then sell them in my front yard and at night I will invite people in to have dinner."  It's really not that much different. So yeah, I'm kind of doing that, kind of.   The location is different, certainly then I thought I would be living in the country somewhere dreamy and magical with fireflies all over the place and a cabin set deep in the woods.  I want to do that too, have a cabin in the woods and I'm saying it now as I once said I will have a restaurant so it will come true!
I began One Sister when I realized I was no longer afraid to put myself in front of people and say, "yeah, I can do this."  I didn't want to wait for some future date and time was not reversing itself.  I couldn't wait for permission either because there was no one on this planet that would have given it to me. Sometimes some people just have to show the world.  I had to prove it.  And for the most part rightly so, I don't have a cooking school degree and I don't have a long list of chefs on my resume that I had trained under.  I had certainly worked for and with some great chefs but not "trained under."  I taught myself with patience, research, watching, asking questions, working for free in the kitchens of others, ambition, fortitude and a hard head.
One Sister grew fast.  I had to keep up with her rather than her keep up with me.  I did take a couple short breaks to work in full-service restaurant kitchens to get up to speed (since it had been about 8 years) and quickly became the head of them, but it was in places that I really didn't find exciting and working for others...  I felt as if I just could not work for restaurant owners.  It was important for me to own a restaurant myself.  It was important for me not to let go of the dream I had.  Either way, within two short years even with the breaks One Sister had a product, pierogi, that reached a Best Of list.  Then within two more short years putting myself out there, the underground dining brought me to this time and place.  This bittersweet moment where One Sister ends, and Elizabeth Restaurant begins.
I wanted this to happen and while I was taking all the steps for it to happen I wasn't ever certain it would.  I have never "expected" it and while at times thought I "deserved" it, the emotion I carry with me is one more of gratitude than anything else.  I have worked my ass off to get here, a point where I will continue to work my ass off.  I have worked so that I can work and I do that because I love to create, cook, and feed people so much that it doesn't feel like work at all.  I am not striving for perfection but I am stiving for excellence, which I find in being perfectly imperfect.  Elizabeth is an extension of who I am just like my sister the human Elizabeth and I were extensions of each other.
This new dimension has opened up and it is difficult to become too afraid of or proud of the big picture, the fact that I now have Elizabeth Restaurant, because there is so much to do.  I am blinded by the daily tasks.  But before I know it there will be a moment where I relax and I'm lying in bed, blinking at the ceiling and thinking, "Holy shit!  I'm living beyond my wildest dreams."

Carrot Top Pesto

About two weeks ago I went into a preserving frenzy.  I pulled a lot of swiss chard, beets, and carrots from my garden.  There is just something about growing your own food that for me, makes it so hard to throw any little bit away.  Not only did I use the beets on my current menu and can some of them but I also pickled and canned the stems.  I used the swiss chard on my menu as well, a touch for my own consumption, made sorbet, pickled and canned stems, and gave some to my neighbors.  The carrots I pickled and preservered.  They were so tiny and cute.  They look beautiful in the Ball Mason Jars, swimming in an orange tinted liquid with coriander seeds.   The tops were so lovely, green and vibrant there was no way in hell I could toss them in the trash so I made pesto.  This pesto is the loveliest I have ever had.  Ever, I think.
So here is what I did.  I took about three cups of carrot tops, cleaned and roughly chopped.
I added them to the food processor with two peels cloves of garlic, about a cup of cashews and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  As usual please excuse my recipe explanation as I do eyeball everything, so just taste as you go.  So the I processed it, adding grapeseed oil as it spun, until it moved freely and had the consistency of pesto.  Also just before that point I added a dash of lemon oil for an acidic touch that would not turn it brown.  However I did can a small jar which did discolor it a touch.  I also served some of it at my dinners on my dish appropriately titled "Carrots and Cashews."  But for everyday use it is amazing on steak, fish or pasta.

Elizabeth Before "our little lemon"

Dang.  Here are some photos of the before.  With friends, elbow grease, paint, buckets of bleach, and a make over Elizabeth is going to be charming.  Neelu McGibbon of Studio ROOH is helping me get to the bottom of what Elizabeth is so that we can create a "cohesive space," in what is already a fairly challenging environment.  Can't wait to see what happens.

Diamond Menu

DIAMOND

GAZPACHO EXPERIMENT

BITES PART 1

HOMEGROWN SPONGE

HANGING EGG, WEEDS, GARDEN

WATERMELON AND CARAWAY

PEACH AND SNAIL

BUILD-A-PLATE

TREE NEST

WILD RICE CRISPY TREAT

CHOCOLATE DASHI

ZUCCHINI ROULADE

SHRIMP NOODLES

OYSTER AND MUSHROOMS

CORN TORTELLINI

VIOLET AND TROUT ROE

PORK PHO

CHICKEN LIVER MOUSSE AND GRANOLA

BAGUETTE, PORK AND BLACK TRUFFLE

DRY-AGED RIBEYE

CANTALOUPE 

MILK AND HONEY

PUMPERNICKEL BACON YUMS

BITES PART 2

The Deer Menu

1 PILL MAKES YOU LARGER

WALK INTO THE WOODS AT MY GRANDFATHER'S FARM

FLOWERS, EGG, TWIGS

CHANTERELLES/SUMMER MUSHROOMS

EDIBLE ILLINOIS FLORA

WILD SALMON 

SMOKED GREAT LAKES FISH

TREE NEST

DEER HEART

WILD BOAR SHANK AND ONION

BLACKBERRY AND BLUE CHEESE 

FORAGING BASKET

DESSERT OF MUSHROOMS

WILD MINT SALT WATER TAFFY

The Owl Menu

TOMATO TEA

TROUGH OF TASTES

TOMATO AND CUCUMBER GARDEN

BREAD INTERLUDE WITH BACON

CORN AND PRAWN

BREAD AND CRACKERS WITH PORK

LAMB CENTERPIECE AND OTHER FIXINS

RASPBERRIES AND GOAT MILK

BITES

Three Menus Per Season=Twelve Reasons To Dine

I'd say that creating new menus takes up about 90% of my head space.  I love to make new dishes so much it only made sense to me if I were to have 3 tasting menus, then they must all be completely different and representative to the characters in Elizabeth's logo. All characters can be thought of as her totem, or my totem.   They are also reoccurring symbols from my childhood.  Either way, they make sense to me and are important.  

So since each character represents a menu this is how it works...

The Owl is the barn owl.  While all menus will focus on farm to table this menu will highlight the most seasonable, freshest products I can find.  It will be the shortest menu, ranging between six to eight presentations of food. I will work directly with farmers and the local Chicago farmers' markets.  As I do now, all salting, smoking, curing, drying, preserving and baking will be done in house.  This menu will showcase many of those methods.

The Deer is from the woods and nature.  I cannot count how many times I have been in the woods and I looked up to find a deer staring at me.  They are constantly in my path.  I love these beautiful and mystic creatures. This menu will focus on what is foraged, collected in nature or be representative of nature and the wild.  It will showcase what I've found, what I love to find, what is currently in season or what I've preserved from past seasons.  My memories and ideas will be in this menu.  It will be the earthiest and perhaps the most challenging.  It will be the mid length menu, ranging between 12 to 14 courses.  

The Diamond menu will be the lengthiest menu, ranging between 20-23 courses.  This is the menu where we will hold you hostage for most of your evening so come prepared.  Hopefully it will be the best hostage experience you'll ever have.  On this menu you may encounter items which are a little more rare and a little more of a delicacy.  It will probably be the closest to what you may have experienced in my home only heightened due to more brain and man/woman power.  It will be the most daring.

All menus will involve whimsy, traditional and modern techniques.  They will be fun and adventurous.  One is not meant to be better than the other.  My intention is not to have a "best" menu while I'm sure that there will be guests who will come to all and decide for themselves which they think is the best.  It is just my intention to create, have fun, and give my guests an opportunity to have a range in price points and length of dining time.  I want them to want to come back and have new experiences.  To feel as if they are in the same space but an entirely new food dimension.  

The way I have built my business, from the ground up, first by gardening and truly connecting with the seasons and selling products at the farmers' market and then by my dinners, I've been thoroughly connected to nature.  I have either grown, foraged or sourced through the markets all my own products on a daily basis, which forced me to remain seasonal and local.  I never had the luxury of ordering from a catalog or sheets of papers from vendors.  This was more of a blessing than I ever imagined.  It challenged me to take Midwestern items that we are familiar with and present them in a new and avante garde way.  Where the availability of items that I might have liked to use became limited, I was forced to think in a new food direction.  How can I take this perhaps "boring" vegetable and turn it into something extraordinary?  How can I make it delicious and beautiful?  Where did it come from?  How does it grow?  What does it grow with?  So on and so forth.  Every season and sometimes twice within a season my menus have flipped.  While having had One Sister dinners for two years now I do have some staples, which guests come back and expect to have and I love them to have them but I have changed the menus almost entirely 12 times.  I will remain especially true to the seasons, changing each menu 4 times a year.  I'm certain there will be a few dishes on each menu that will remain but for the most part you can come to Elizabeth and have a new experience each time as the seasons change.  Three different menus per season and four seasons in the year means that you can have twelve different experiences.

Having the dinners in my home gave me the opportunity to really talk with and become close with many of my guests.  I've made many friendships from this venture.  The dinners have been magical.  My guests have called me a sorceress, a magician, and a witch.  I think all of those have basis in fact.  Therefore it will be my challenge to recreate that feeling and setting within a restaurant.  What I'm thrilled to say is that it will be done.  Elizabeth will have no barrier between the kitchen and the dining room.  We will all be in the same space together.  It will be like dinner and show in one.  I've always pictured my dinners to be like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Elizabeth will be very much the same, full of surprises, interesting service pieces, and a warm, hospitable atmosphere.  Elizabeth will challenge to change ideas of fine dining.  

Elizabeth is named after my sister.  She died unexpectedly of a stroke when she was 39.  I was 23 at the time.  It was then that I slowly (with learning curves and growing pains) but steadily began to live life with focus.  She could not or would not conform.  I decided I would not either, never stopping to settle but to truly do what I want.  Cooking for others is certainly what I was born to do and it's what I want to do.  Elizabeth gives me the opportunity to cook for others as well as, in an abstract way, continue to cook for her.

Spring Pics/Food Porn

Spring Menu pictures by the wonderful Jennifer Moran.  Click HERE.  This last round of pictures made it one full year of her photographing my food.  I'm thrilled to have her capture it's beauty.

Turkey Hunting

My father wouldn't pull over to let me shoot the turkeys in the wide open field.  It just doesn't seem fair that we had to go into the woods, sit in a camouflage tent and wait when they are sitting there in the wide open as we drive past.  I suppose living in the City for 12 years now and hearing about drive-by shootings day in and day out it seems natural to me to just prop the shotgun out the side of the window and bam!  He says, "the  game wardens can search your vehicle with less evidence against ya than a police officer.  Shooting out of the vehicle is illegal."
So we sat, we waited, we called, they called back but they never arrived.  I have mixed feelings about hunting animals.  There is the side of me that collects the spiders from the house onto paper and gently nudges them out the back door or off the porch.  The side of me that stops for hurt pigeons on the side of the road and tries to nurse them back to health in my basement.  AND THeN, there is the side of me that wants to blow the turkey's head off.  Rip an arrow through the deer's heart.  Knock the ducks out of the sky one by one.  Two nights ago I watched "War Horse," and had serious trouble trying to contain my tears, practically weeping about how lovely this horse was and at the same time wondering what horse meat would taste like.  Well, I suppose I'm strange, fucked up, weird.  Whatever the case maybe when it comes down it in order of importance collecting, foraging, harvesting, and hunting my food is far more rewarding that picking it up at the grocery store or getting it delivered.  So that means hunting wins out. Did you know people hunt bears with Twinkies?
Well so I didn't get a thing.  Maybe it is the peace loving side of me that ruins my hunting for me.  Maybe it's that while my intention is to hunt I'm too loud and sidetracked by the beautiful flora that surrounds me.  My father says, "put that decoy in the open and then get back over here and don't move."  But on the way back over I spot a wild carrot to dig out, take note of the wild raspberry bushes, and kick the ground when I'm pissed to know how everything has come a month early this year and my REAL intention was to find morels while I was out here.
I often get asked where one can find different edible flora.  I made special note of Jasper-Pulaski if anyone wants to take the trek.  Area 13-fiddle heads, miner's lettuce, birch.  Area 7-burnt out, which means good for morels, fiddle heads, blueberries, pine.  Area 8-pine, wild raspberries, wild strawberries, wild carrots.
This game preserve is wild and abundant.  It's beautiful and peaceful, even with the gunshots ringing in the background.

Competition With Myself.

Upon leaving a guest recently commented, "Your food is so good I didn't think it could get better, but you continue to out do yourself.  How will you keep this up?"  I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  Actually, it takes up most of my head space.  Luckily I'm continually inspired by nature, the seasons, the works of others, songs, and most dangerously by plateware itself.  When a guest accidentally broke an heirloom owl umbrella holder it cracked in such nice pieces I said, "well, I guess I'll have to create a dish to serve on this."  And it's truly vicious for me to go to Chinatown, Sur La Table, or CB2.  I see something that will beautifully serve or hold food and think, that's a new dish.  These inspirations are what continues to drive the climb of my menus.
So this is what I have to do to trump myself.  I have to utilize more of my garden, more of the woods, more of myself and siphon it all into my preparations.  Here is an idea!  My father recently told me he seeds saved from vegetables he had grown in 1968 on our small farm.  He soaked them and planted them and they began to sprout.  Today I visited him and brought home some of those seeds.  The words banana musk melon and sweet Hungarian peppers were scribbled onto little browned pieces of paper tucked into the jars. Creating dishes from these seeds, which will hopefully sprout and fruit should help in this out doing myself project.  Seeds from the farm I grew up on from vegetables that grew 11 years before I was born, replanted and created into a dish to serve to my guests.  I think I will add elements to that dish directly from the woods.  We'll see if it works and if it does you can have it this summer.

Spring Menu-2012, More Accurate Rendering!

Bubble Tea

parsnip, licorice, swiss chard

Salad Sponge

honeys, homegrown, sorbets

Pierogi

yukon gold potato, truffle, mascarpone

Encapsulated

asparagus, egg, leeks

Tree Nest

squash, "eggs"

Tofu and Kimchee

1 pill makes you larger/ 1 pill makes you small

Carrots and Ramps

Scarborough Fair

Ebelskiver, cherry

Wisconsin Rice Crispy

curry, cauliflower, rose hips

Chocolate Dashi

basil seeds

Hanging

California

Built-A-Plate

DIY, sprouts, fish, puddings, gels, paint

Scallop

peas, yogurt, ham

Your Hand

Crawfish Centerpiece

Shrimp Noodles

Smelt

white chocolate, Blis products

Pho

owl mugs

Chicken Liver Mousse

clove, dark chocolate, pollen, pineau de Charantes

Wild Turkey

Jasper Polasky, foraged items

Lamb 

homemade cheese, fiddlehead ferns

Bacon Ice Cream Cone

Rhubarb

biscuits, strawberries, beets, farmer's cheese, sweetbreads 

Bites

So Lovely!

By Hunt. Gather. Love.  She talks up One Sister and Jen Moran.  Read here.

More Winter Menu Pictures

Pics by Jen Moran!

Spring Menu-Rough Draft

Bubble Tea
Parsnip, anise hyssop, swiss chard

Salad Sponge
homegrown, honeys, goat milk, sunflower

Pierogi
Yukon gold, white truffle, homemade mascarpone

Hanging
Aromas of California, rattlesnake

Encapsulated
Asparagus, ash, truffle, hollandaise

Tree Nest
Spaghetti squash, tomato and black pepper beads

Homemade Tofu
Konbu noodles, kimchee, homegrown mung beans

Smelt
White chocolate, blis maple syrup, roe, smoke

Build-A-Plate
Sprouts, puddings, gels, powders, paint, DIY

Bay Scallops
Peas, pistachio, yogurt

Your Hand
Oysters

Floral Centerpiece
Crawfish, foraged items, flowers

Shrimp Noodles
Scampi

Chocolate Dashi
basil seeds

1 Pill Makes You Larger, 1 Pill Makes You Small
cocoa nibs, mushrooms, chamomile, caramel, peacan

Scarborough Fair
Ebelskiver, goat, apple, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

Pork Pho

Jasper-Pulaski
Wild game bird, morel mushrooms, grains, nettles

Dry-Aged Ribeye
Homemade ricotta and vinegar, ramps, fiddleheads

Ice Cream Cone
Bacon, Koval Whiskey, black pepper

Rhubarb
beets, short cake, sweet homemade farmers cheese

Bites
Chocolate

Some Winter Menu Photos

Photos of winter menu at dinner table by foodie extraordinaire Charlotte Tan!