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.