Girl and the Goat is the West Loop brain child of Stephanie Izard, thus far the only woman to win the title award on TV’s “Top Chef.” Leesa tried to get snag us reservations there last year, but her efforts were futile, so this year, I tried to book a few months in advance using OpenTable. When I had no success with that (it kept telling me I was trying to book too far in advance), I e-mailed the restaurant and found out that while OpenTable imposed a 90-day-early policy, they booked up to a year in advance (!) by phone! So, needless to say, I called immediately and signed us up for what would either be a very early (5:30) or very late (after 9) dinner; we opted for the early.

Take in mind, it was pretty easy for me to get a dining time because we were flexible, but apparently, this is not always the case! I have heard several people since say that they have had to wait for months to get a table. Granted, we booked three months in advance, but I have no idea how successful (or not) we would have been if we had tried to book something more immediate when I made the reservations back in October, so it seems like either way, we totally lucked out.

So, did Girl & the Goat live up to the hype? Was it worth the wait? Two words: Heck, yeah!

First, they have a rotation of breads. A rotation. You know how so many places have one signature bread? Well, G&TG rotates in three per night:

They may not look like much, but the night we went, we had these three: the Squish Squash (a squash-based loaf) served with apple purée and pecan butter, the pretzel loaf served with honey mustard butter and 1000 island and the Chicken Little (a chicken noodle-based loaf) served with chicken liver butter and carrot sage oil. If that doesn’t get your mouth watering, you must be one of those anti-carb people. And even then . . . you know you secretly want it.

The rest of the menu is divided into sections by main ingredient type: vegetable, seafood or meat. I couldn’t tell you which items necessarily came from which menu section, as I believe the following came from the meat section:

Ham frites, people. Ham frites with tomato aioli and beer cheddar dipping sauces. The beer cheddar packed a lip-smacking punch — and who doesn’t like a good aioli with their fried carbs? So good. I’m not exactly sure where the “ham” came in other than that maybe the potatoes were fried with some bacon-like deliciousness. It was straight up fried goodness. Everyone at the table enjoyed these.

Pretty much anyone from Hawai‘i could identify these by their signature flat bone cut:

These Kalbi-style ribs were done with the authenticity you’d expect from any Korean restaurant. Todd liked them for their simplicity, especially among the cacophany of flavors and exotic offerings on the menu. (Yes, this is a “safe” dish for those who may not be into taking too many culinary risks.)

The more adventurous among us enjoyed a few other dishes, as well:

Spaghetti squash provided the perfect textural complement to these blue prawns. The peanut-pork ragout was like a richer version of a Thai-inspired peanut sauce. I never would have expected such freshness of shrimp so far inland, but the salty flavor of the ocean was perfectly preserved in these perfectly cooked crustaceans. A definite winner.

The goat, pork and veal sugo with pappardele was delicately seasoned with rosemary (which can be too strong if you’re not careful) and cape gooseberries. I’m not really sure how the flavors all balanced out with this one, as none of these are ingredients I would normally cook with (except for maybe pork), but we really liked this dish, too. I think I picked it because of the berries in the description, and the gamble really paid off.

Finally . . . THE PIG FACE!

Leesa was relieved when she learned that we would not actually be presented with an actual pig’s face (which, if you’ve ever been to a Chinese restaurant or a Filipino party, you know they can do). In fact, as you can see from the photo, you can’t even see the pork (wood-roasted pig cheek) pretty much at all until you move the egg aside. The way this dish works is, you break the egg and mix everything on the plate together. It looks completely unattractive at that point, but once you taste it, you don’t care. The main ingredient is fork tender and melt-in-your-mouth delicious, seasoned with tamarind and cilantro, with potato sticks providing just the right touch of crunch.

Girl & the Goat received a 2011 James Beard nomination, and Stephanie Izard was named Food & Wine’s Best New Chef of 2011. Why these awards are hanging in the dark basement hall, I couldn’t tell you, but they are well-deserved in a city that takes no culinary prisoners.

Oh, yeah . . . and I totally dig the napkin-holders:

We’d definitely dine there again! G&TG is a welcome addition to the mandatory Chicago dining experience.

I came across this linked recipe for Chicago pastry chef Mathew Rice’s Gooey Butter Cookies one day on Pinterest. I’d asked Todd for a stand mixer for Christmas — I even picked out the exact one I wanted (the cheapest KitchenAid one, 4.5-qt, white) and Wish List-ed it on Amazon — but I didn’t really have a particular recipe in mind to make with it until I found this. I’m a sucker for a nice, chewy cookie, and this looked like it would fill some kind of holiday dessert void.

The recipe for a lot of butter, a lot of sugar, a ton of flour (not literally) and half a real vanilla bean (which, let’s face it, you can only buy whole), so it definitely isn’t the cheapest cookie recipe in town — but it is well worth the “extras.” With all you put into the effort, you do get a lot out of it: One batch yields at least six dozen cookies (it’s actually way more, but I lost count) if you use a teaspoon-sized scoop, and everyone you gift these cookies with will be your friend for LIFE. The gooey butter cookie completely fulfills the promise of its name in terms of taste and texture, and it tastes amazing whether it’s consumed warm, refrigerated or at room temperature. Bless your friends with these, and you will definitely bring smiles to their faces; after all, really good cookies with pure natural ingredients are hard to come by these days!

And so, without further adieu, I bring you the recipe for possibly the most fabulous cookies on Earth.

—

GOOEY BUTTER COOKIES

Recipe by Mathew Rice of Nightwood Restaurant
Source: Tim Mazurek, Lottie + Doof (reprinted with permission)

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 pound cream cheese
• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped [How to Scrape a Vanilla Bean]
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Confectioner’s sugar for rolling and dusting

Directions

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the cream cheese, butter, vanilla bean seeds, and sugar together until fluffy.  Add the eggs and vanilla extract.

Incorporate the flour mixture.  Chill for at least 30 minutes.  Scoop roughly 1-ounce balls and toss in the confectioner’s sugar.  Place on a baking sheet, lined with parchment, a couple of inches apart.  Bake at 325° F until they spread and puff slightly, about 12-16 minutes.  They will be really soft in the center.  If they start to brown, they’ve gone too far.  Cool to room temperature.

—

Crissy’s Tips:

• Seriously, do not skimp on the ingredients. Tim thinks the vanilla bean is optional (“but important”), but really, I think if you’re going to go through all the trouble, go big or go home.
• You will use lots and lots of confectioner’s sugar. That is why there’s no set amount: It’s just a lot.
• The longer you refrigerate the dough after prep before you roll it into balls, the better the shape will hold up. This is true for most cookie recipes, but it is especially important here.
• You should also keep the dough (rolled or not) in the refrigerator whenever you don’t need to have it in front of you (i.e., while each cookie sheet is baking).
• Cookies can cool on a plate in the refrigerator. Yeah, it’s ghetto compared to cooling racks, but when you’re lacking for counter space, it works, and it’s fast.

If you are a friend of mine within reasonable geographic distance (i.e., you live on Oahu), please don’t steal my thunder and give these away for Christmas. . . . But otherwise, you know, enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 tsp. olive or canola oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (I used the one in the jar — yes, we cheat at my house)
• 3 Tbsp. chili powder
• 2 tsp. cumin
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 15 oz. tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
• 1 tomato, seeded and chopped
• 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, chunked
• 2 cups “Mexican blend” cheese (usually cheddar and monterey jack)
• 1/2 cup minced fresh cilantro
• 12 (6-inch) soft corn tortillas
• cooking spray

Directions

1. Use oil to sautee onion and jalapeno in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until softened (8-10 minutes). Stir in garlic, chili powder, cumin and sugar (30 seconds), then adding tomato sauce, water and tomato. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer until slightly thickened (5 minutes).

2. Cook chicken pieces in sauce until chicken is cooked through (internal temperature should be about 160˚F), then transfer chicken to a separate container to cool.

3. Use a collander to strain sauce liquids into a medium bowl, to be kept separate from the sauce solids (onions, etc.). Transfer sauce solids into a large bowl.

4. Shred chicken and mix with the sauce solids (onions, etc.), along with 1/4 cup of the sauce liquids, 1 cup of shredded cheese and the cilantro.

5. Preheat oven to 425˚F. Use cooking spray to grease a 9″ x 13″ baking dish.

6. Stack corn tortillas on a plate and microwave for 60 seconds to soften.

7. Spoon 1/3 cup of chicken mixture evenly down the center of a tortilla. Roll the tortilla around the filling as tightly as possible (watch out — they break easily) and place in baking dish, opening side facing down. Repeat with remaining filling and tortillas.

8. Lightly spray top of enchiladas with cooking spray. Place in oven, uncovered, for 7 minutes, until tortillas brown slightly.

9. Remove enchiladas from oven and pour remaining sauce liquids over top, then sprinkle with remaining cheese. Reduce oven temperature to 400˚F. Cover dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes.

Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

For what it’s worth, I have totally been sticking with the dairy ban even though the results have been terrible. I’ve had migraines in 6 of the last 7 days (Friday night being one of the most splitting headaches of my entire life), which may or may not have happened anyway, so I’m not blaming the lack of dairy — I’m just saying, it definitely hasn’t helped. I’m kind of annoyed to be dipping into my supply of Relpax so often, so I’m getting “cheap” and using the liver-plunderers instead. Surely this will not end well, but I gotta do what I gotta do.

Hopefully I am paying some kind of pennance up front and will not have migraines while I’m attempting to ride roller coasters and such at Disney World later this month. One can only hope.

Fresh out of the Lou Malnati’s oven on Wells.

If you say you don’t like deep dish, I would wager that you have never had Lou Malnati’s. Now, a lot of people have had Giordano’s, simply because there are so many freaking Giordano’s restaurants, you can’t avoid them, but Giordano’s really specializes more in stuffed pizza, and I find that their pizza has (and I never thought I’d be saying this, but it is possible) too much cheese. Other people have had deep dish from Pizzeria Uno or its twin, Pizzeria Due, but something about this “original” never really cut it for me, and neither does the deep dish from Gino’s East, whose real attraction is the graffiti you can add to on the inner walls of their River North restaurant.

What makes Lou Malnati’s special? Just about everything. They really produce Chicago’s greatest pizza, from juicy tomatoes to savory mozzarella and to-die-for butter crust. If you’ve had it, you know. If you haven’t, you must!

For years (yes, years) my mother begged me to bring pizza back with me when I returned to Honolulu from the Midwest, but it would have been a logistical nightmare to try to keep an already-baked pizza from spoiling, and virtually impossible to keep a frozen pie frozen. A few years ago, I broke down and ordered a couple of Lou Malnati’s pies from tastesofchicago.com, but the shipping costs were so prohibitive, I pretty much told Mom she wasn’t going to get anything else for her birthday. And then, when we got the pizza, I was disappointed to find out that I had to buy round baking pans, defrost the frozen pizzas and then bake them in the round pans. What? I didn’t even have round baking dishes, so I had to go out and buy those, too.

I feel like I am totally making that part up because I just ordered some Lou’s last week, and it was SO EASY this time, it’s ridiculous. First of all, the price was much better: I feel like I paid only slightly more for six pies this time around than I did for two a few years ago. Second, I didn’t need to thaw anything: I took a pizza right out of the dry ice-laden box, unwrapped it, wiped off the condensation inside, slathered a little olive oil between the pie and the aluminum pan, and popped it into my preheated oven for 45 minutes. Crazy easy! So easy, in fact, that I baked a second one to take to work the next day — and yes, my co-workers loved it, even though it wasn’t fresh out of my oven.

Fresh out of MY oven.

If you can’t decide what to get as far as “toppings” go, go with the sausage. You really can’t go wrong. Chicagoans are very serious about the solid disk of Italian sausage than spans the entire area of the pie, and for good reason: It is amazing and adds a whole ‘nother dimension of wow to a deep dish. Sure, you could go with spinach, but seriously? It’s deep dish, you’re already splurging, so why lie to yourself about veggie being healthy?

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. Don’t forget to come back and say thank you. ;o)

As I explain on the About  This Site page, the blog is mostly for our reference, because, as we age, my friends and I have gotten pretty bad at remembering what dishes we’ve enjoyed at certain establishments, when certain places are open, what special tips we need to remember (e.g., order at least a half-hour in advance, make reservations) and, most importantly, what our menu options are! We’ve found that lots of local places don’t have their own websites, and even when they do, they don’t necessarily have online menus with prices. And then I thought, what the heck, if we’re gonna put this together, we may as well make it available to other frustrated diners, as well.

So there you have it. If you have any suggestions as to places we should include, let me know — though I can’t promise we’ll get to everything. I have become rather obsessed with adding restaurants to the blog, so chances are, if you suggest it, I’ll either try it myself or get one of my partners in crime (mainly Tina, Kara and Ju) to do the dirty work. In the mean time, just enjoy!

We were only in the Midwest for a slightly extended holiday (Kamehameha Day) weekend, which meant only three full days. Somehow, those included two baseball games, both involving the Milwaukee Brewers. Todd and I had already done a Miller Park tour with our friends Kathleen and Jim back when Jim was working in Wisconsin, but we’d never seen a game there, and in all honesty, I was just dying to see the legendary Sausage Race. When I found out that the Brewers were going to be playing the Cardinals at Miller Park the weekend we were planning to be in Chicago, I knew it was destiny: We had to go. Of course, our friends Leesa and Scott offered to drive and make it happen.

Todd and me in the Miller Park bleachers before the game.

Sausage Race! So. Awesome.

So was the Sausage Race all it was cracked up to be? YOU BET. Plus, because it was “Sausage Sunday” (that’s what she said . . . really, that is what the girl at the Meat Locker — not kidding — said), all souvenirs having to do with the Sausage Race were 10% off at the gift shop! I mighta kinda gone bananas purchasing omiyage and souvenirs for myself (including a pair of Chorizo earrings and a stuffed Chorizo doll), but what a bargain! Plus, who else is gonna bring home Sausage Race gifts, right?

Totally weird: Because Chorizo is my favorite of the Sausage Race dudes and I bought mostly stuff with him on it, the cashier seemed to assume that I was Mexican and made a sympathetic remark about me having missed Cerveceros Day by one day. Do I need to start taping my eyelids or what!

The next day was another Brewers game, but this time, it was the Brewers vs. my Cubbies at our “home” stadium, Wrigley Field. Todd and I have had a paver at Wrigley since the brick program started in 2007. The Cubs keep moving it around as they do renovations at the ballpark, but we managed to find it again this season:

The brick! Yay!

And, of course, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at the game.

The iconic Wrigley Field scoreboard.

Not a better place in the world to watch a ball game.

My favorite Cub, Ryan Dempster, was the starting pitcher!

By enjoying ourselves, I mean there was some serious whooping and screaming going on. OK, so maybe only I was yelling . . . which would explain why I was a little hoarse afterward. What can you do. And hey, maybe it worked: After all, Cubs did snap their gazillion-game losing streak and take the first of three games they would eventually win in the series against the Brewers. Now they’re no longer in last place in the National League Central!

Oh, how I do love a Cubs game. Even when they’re losing, even when they’re on rain delay, there’s nothing quite like it.

The weather, by the way, was superb: 60s and 70s with wind chills in the 50s and 60s. I loved every minute. When the fog cleared away, you really couldn’t beat the view . . .

The Chicago River, as viewed from the Michigan Avenue bridge.

. . . and, of course, it’s hard to beat Chicago food:

Mochomos (crunchy threads of grass-fed beef brisket), Topolobampo.

Borrego en Mole Negro (lamb leg w/Rick Bayless’ prize-winning Oaxacan molé), Topolobampo.

The Mastodon, Kuma’s Corner (most Yelped restaurant in Chicago).

Portillo’s cheese fries: They may not look like much, but they are the best cheese fries out!

Ahh, Chicago. I miss you already. When’s our next adventure?

I thought I’d tackle salads first. Here are my favorite salads from this trip:

Pea shoot & fennel salad, Terzo Piano. Isn’t this one pretty? I can’t say I’d ever had pea shoots in my life up until this point, and I was slightly intimidated by the thought, but I was ordering off the Restaurant Week menu, and I believe all they had otherwise was soup. Even though it was completely vegetarian, I really liked this salad. The goat cheese provided a nice contrast with the earthiness of the greens, and the tarragon dressing wasn’t overwhelming.

Braised rabbit salad, The Gage. OK, so you can’t see the rabbit – but believe me, it’s there, and there’s a lot of it underneath all those greens. Apparently, the green stuff was arugula, which I usually can’t stand, but it was pretty tolerable here. Sorry, vegans, this one is not for you at all, though (in case you didn’t get the hint from the name of the salad): The Langhe Robiola and crisped rice were nice, to be sure, but the rabbit was truly the marquee item. Had I known it would be so plentiful and savory, I would have stuck gotten this as my meal instead of as a starter. It was better than the pork chop I didn’t end up finishing anyway. The meat was pulled, tender and smoky, like kalua pig. Mmmm. Definitely going back for this one.

Macho salad, Bandera. I’m not sure how it is that I’ve passed Bandera by so many times over the years and not gone in. Maybe I was wary of it because it sits perched above Michigan Avenue with its name in that really tacky font . . . but anyway, then I heard a couple nice things about it and thought I should give it a shot. This salad made the 15-minute wait for seating (alongside the whiniest middle-aged metrosexual wannabe ever, by the way) totally worthwhile. Look at this salad. LOOK AT IT! That’s chicken, tomatoes, dates, avocado, goat cheese, corn . . . I don’t know what more you could put in there before your head exploded. (OK, maybe rabbit. But then you wouldn’t need the chicken, and the chicken is actually pretty good.) It’s pretty much a chopped salad on steroids. And now that I know it exists, I am pretty sure I can order it to go in the future, thus circumventing waiting among the whiny and dining in an that relatively uncomfortable booth.

So that’s it for salads. Maybe next time I’ll write about deep dish. ;o)

I’m always up for a good cold soup. I haven’t had too much experience with vichyssoise, but Assagio makes a pretty decent one. Alan Wong makes the best basic chilled tomato soup ever, and I order it all the time at the Pineapple Room. But my absolute favorite cold soup is gazpacho: Everybody makes theirs with different ingredients and garnishes with different veggies, so every soupy shot glass full is a little adventure for your taste buds.

The challenge with gazpacho, then, is to find a recipe that you really like. And I mean really like, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the counter space to leave my blender out, and the base of that sucker is too heavy to be lugging around for the sake of a mediocre recipe. The last recipe I found and ended up sticking with for a while was one that was heavy on tomato juice, which I didn’t really care for, as I felt like I wasn’t making the bulk of the soup from scratch. I was thrilled when someone asked Rick Bayless for his gazpacho recipe, thus prompting the chef to point out one that he’d posted on the Frontera website.

Unless you live in the southwest – OK, or maybe if you just live in Hawai‘i – you may have difficulty locating poblano chiles in the store. I went to Whole Foods, which seems to be the only place in Honolulu that has them, and someone had beat me to the punch the night before and bought them all! I hit three specialty grocery stores before I even came across the next best thing: anaheim peppers. (BTW, kudos to the Whole Foods grocery guy for being brutally honest and warning me that nothing else they had in stock would work.) Probably not good enough for Rick, but definitely good enough for me.

Anyway.

I loved, loved, loved how this gazpacho turned out. Roasting the tomatoes and chiles gave the soup itself a really nice flavor, and the blackened skin of the peppers lent a really cool look to the garnish. I may add some avocado to the garnish next time – oh, and use actual poblano chiles!

This one was originally constructed by a co-worker as a salad, but some people at the office thought it was a salsa and consumed it as such. Either way, it’s an easy, fresh, zesty treat that’s easily adapted to your tastes – and there’s no “cooking” involved, so it’s super quick!

Corn & Black Bean Salad/Salsa

Ingredients:
1 or 2 avocados (how many depends on the size of the avo), cubed
1 15-oz. can black beans, drained
1-1/2 cups fresh corn (or frozen corn, thawed)
1/4 cup chopped basil
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1-1/2 cups grape tomatoes, quartered
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Prep:
Toss all ingredients together. Seriously, that’s all there is to it! The sugar is supposedly there to balance out the acidity of the tomatoes and lime juice, but it’s such a negligible amount, I suppose you could leave it out if you really wanted to.