Outer Rim Territories

Standing Room Only: Gene and Jude's | Serious Eats

Memories of Second David CURF days. Late night runs for double dogs with fries. Genius.

[Photographs: Nick Kindelsperger]

This marks my last Windy City post forStanding Room Only. I made it over nine months, though I really didn't think I'd even make it that long. But every week, when I thought I had exhausted all the random seatless eateries in the city, I'd find some other gem.

While I constantly worried about what place to feature next, I always knew where I'd end the series. I was saving Gene and Jude'sfor my last post—there isn't a better stand around. Gruff and a tad rough around the edges, Gene and Jude's sits just outside the Chicago city limits in River Grove, and yet it still encapsulates everything I love about the city's hot dog stands. Let me count the ways.

Cook to soothe the spirit

Cooking "is a very calming ritual. Its a different kind of stress relief than I get doing anything else," said the creator/star during a break from taping the show. "Slicing, dicing and chopping — the rhythm of that is something I enjoy and find relaxing. But I also really, really, really like to knead dough. I like the physical action of getting my hands into it. … I find that physically rewarding."Whether its biscuit making or "throwing something together" for dinner in 30 minutes, he finds "the labor of the kitchen, the doing of cooking and things in the kitchen to be amazingly stress reducing," Brown said. via Cook to soothe the spirit - chicagotribune.com.

America: Too Stupid To Cook | Ruhlman.com

[...] “No, you’re right.  The book is good.  Americans are being taught we’re too stupid to cook and it’s simply not true.” That one sentence crystallized the issue for me, turned my frustration from a wall into a lens.  Americans are being taught that we’re too stupid to cook.  That cooking is so hard we need to let other people do it for us.  The messages are everywhere.  Boxed cake mix.  Why is it there?  Because a real cake is too hard!  You can’t bake a cake!  Takes too long, you can’t do it, you’re gonna fail! Look at all those rotisserie chickens stacked in the warming bin at the grocery store.  Why?  Because roasting a chicken is too hard, takes FOREVER.  An hour.  I don’t have an hour to watch a chicken cook! Companies that make microwaveable dinners have spent countless R&D dollars to transform dishes that used to take 7 minutes in the microwave into ones that take 3 minutes.  “Hey, Marge, that’s four minutes of extra TEEvee we can watch!” In practically every single cookbook produced today, the message is, buy this book because we show you easy things to make fast.  Only takes a second.  Whether it’s Rachael’s 30-minute meals or the quick-and-easy columns in the food magazines.  That’s all we hear.  Real cooking is hard and difficult so here are the nifty shortcuts and tips to make all that hard stuff quickly and easily. It’s the wrong message to broadcast (unless you’re a prepared foods exec, in which case you want people to go on believing cooking is difficult—they want your money!).  We’re not too stupid and lazy to cook.  Of the top five books on the NYTimes advice and how-to bestseller list, half are about cooking—not about losing weight, not about finding god, how to be as rich as your neighbor or how to find love in 30 minutes.  Book sales generally are stagnant but cookbooks keep selling.  People want to cook but they’re told at every click of the television remote, in every cookbook, in all the magazines, this is HARD people, so here are the shortcuts! Next cookbook I’m going to write?  It’s going to be called, Recipes That Take a Really Long Time and Are Too Hard For People To Do. (The only problem would be coming up with enough recipes where that was actually true.) [...] The World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe Turn your oven on high (450 if you have ventilation, 425 if not).  Coat a 3- or 4-pound chicken with coarse kosher salt so that you have an appealing crust of salt (a tablespoon or so).  Put the chicken in a pan, stick a lemon or some onion or any fruit or vegetable you have on hand into the cavity.  Put the chicken in the oven.  Go away for an hour.  Watch some TV, play with the kids, read, have a cocktail, have sex.  When an hour has passed, take the chicken out of the oven and put it on the stove top or on a trivet for 15 more minutes.  Finito. (But be careful, you might find this so boring that you’ll start thinking about making stock next.  Don’t. Too hard.  Takes too long.  You’ll have to clean the pot.  I’m telling you now.  Don’t risk it.  Consider yourself warned.  Don’t blame me if you wind up with something delicious on your hands.)