Food Writing

Mince Meat Pies, Beef Tendon, and Salt: The Week in Food Writing

Mince Meat Pies...
Mince Meat Pies… Photo: adactio/Flickr

• Mike Sula gives a fitting tribute to his colleague Cliff Doerksen by cooking a lot of mince meat pies. He uses the recipe that Doerksen made famous in his James beard award winning article, Real American Pie. That article is worth rereading, too. . [Chicago Reader]

• How long does it take to cook beef tendon? According to Greg Biggers, executive chef at Cafe des Architectes, it requires a nice eight to ten hours of simmering. But once it is done the tendon is “really pliable, nice, soft, velvety texture that’s really great.” [Chicago Reader]

• Justin Large, the head chef at Big Star, reminisces about first learning the power of salt: “I began to learn what salt was capable of — not to make things salty, but to coax deep flavor from raw ingredients, allowing for a more layered and complex dish.” [Sun-Times]

• David Hammond learns from Leopold chef, Jeff Hedin, that cooking in a real kitchen is different from culinary school. In fact, he compares it to an ambulance driver or EMT: “You train how to save someone’s life using a practice dummy, but try and handle a screaming, flailing, non-English speaking victim, [high] on an unknown substance, with multiple stab wounds in the dead of winter. Different.” [Sun-Times]

Mince Meat Pies, Beef Tendon, and Salt: The Week in Food Writing