Family food history. A slice of Americana. Useful cooking tips. The Berghoff Café Cookbook has it all — and more. Chef, owner, and author Carlyn Berghoff had me at ‘Deviled Eggs with Three Fillings’ (page 3). The three fillings: Caper Deviled Eggs, Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs, and Horseradish Deviled Eggs. These are deviled eggs redux.

This cookbook is full of recipes for things we all know well; food we have eaten with our families as children and as adults. Dishes that bring comfort and are ’simple and satisfying’ like the cover promises. Ms. Berghoff starts off telling the reader how her great-grandfather came over from Germany in the late 1800s eventually opening the Berghoff Café in Chicago in 1898; and how it ended up in her hands several decades later. As she wends her way through the family history she throws in interesting historical tid bits about food, eating and dining from the early days. Like the story of a ’shot and a wash,’ a riff on a boilermaker. A stein of favorite Berghoff beer with a shot of their seven-year old Berghoff bourbon thrown in. It started in previous centuries when water was impure giving whiskey a bad taste. The solution? Drop a shot glass of whiskey into a mug of beer; when drinking it the drinker caught the shot glass with their teeth, the beer masking the taste of the whiskey. The drink is still on the menu albeit updated.

When I first picked up the book I was a little unsure; I guess I am more of a food snob than I want to admit. The design, and the food and recipes inside are more traditional, more down home than where my tastes usually run in cookbooks. I’ve recently seen too many flashy books by well-known chefs. However, after reading through it, and trying several recipes — the Potato Soup being a favorite — I changed my tune. This books embodies the Midwestern lifestyle. It evokes what a downtown, local Chicago restaurant can be. It is warm and homey. Ms. Carlyn’s maxim of ‘reuse, recycle and reinvent’ that she applies in the restaurant works perfectly in the home kitchen.

The Berghoff Café Cookbook offers recipes across the food gamut from bar snacks to paninis and pizzas to yummy desserts. Dishes like Alsatian Onion Soup, Apple Pie Squares with Cheddar Crust, and Westpahlian Ham Panini with Granny Smith Apple and Applesauce are a few of the standouts. Ms. Carlyn has updated the restaurant menu since her great-grandfather’s day while also keeping his spirit and food very much alive. She calls it ‘tradition with a twist,’ and I’d say that is quite apt.

I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for straightforward, comfort food pure and simple. It’s all there. Nothing fancy; nothing pretentious. The next meal I want to prepare is from the Daily Specials section: Classic Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Jus Lié and Spaetzle. Salisbury steak is a dish my Nebraska born grandmother made often when I was growing up. Comfort food.

My Status: Settling into fall, happily. New cookbooks to try, some to review; new kitchen equipment to try out. More cooking, eating, writing, blogging coming soon.

Upcoming Posts: ‘gleaning,’ or the act of gathering public produce, or leftover farmer’s market produce, and giving it to the poor, needy and hungry. A history of the movement, and those that are involved with it. Reviews: Cooking Light, a review of the redesign of the Time Inc. magazine.

I hate flying. And I don’t particularly relish staying in hotel rooms. Being a tourist is not a favorite pastime either. But I still love to travel. What I really like is being in a place. Letting the effects of a place slowly seep into my awareness, slowly take over my senses. At times one must kick start that process by being a typical tourist, bus tours and all. But that’s just a primer to really starting to know a place. Travel is ultimately about discovery. Discovery of a new place, culture, language, food. There’s a mysteriousness to uncovering, and exploring a new city, a new country. I don’t know Spain the way I do France. Before this recent trip, I’d been to Madrid for a day before flying to the island of Mallorca for a week long wedding. Mallorca was total, complete heaven. I could have stayed and never left. That trip was long ago. Being back in Spain for an extended period of time allowed me to re-discover and discover more of this wonderful country. I’d definitely like to spend more time there.

After my year long stay in France when I was eighteen, I went on a three-month tour of western Europe by train. I saw almost all of the western European countries except for Spain. It was the late 70s and it was still this fairly unknown place with a recent quasi-facist past . And it was far away; stuck down by itself along with Portugal. It just didn’t quite fit into the big geographic circle I was making through France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Greece, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, Ireland and England. And on return trips I never quite made it there either. I didn’t know what I was missing.

France, as stated in my last post, is still my home away from home, my self-adoptive country but I do have a new appreciation for Spain and the Spanish. Robert and I found the people to be warm, friendly and open. There was a sort of laissez-faire attitude that was very comfortable to us. Barcelona was a dream place. I had heard that it was. With Gaudi leading the Modernist movement, and building amazing buildings like the Sagrada Familia cathedral, the city couldn’t help but be dream-like. The food followed suit. Bold, direct and vibrant. I learned how to eat and order tapas (finally!). The city is dotted with cervecerias on every corner. They’re open morning, noon and night. Stop in for a cafe con leche and a montadito of egg and potato for breakfast, go back in the evening for beers, sangria and five or six tapas dishes. I’ll be writing more about our food experiences as soon as I am over my jet lag and back on track but some of the delicious things we ate included: tortilla (potato omellete), patatas bravas (fried potatoes in spicy red sauce with garlic mayonnaise), pimientos del padrón (deep fried peppers), montaditos (little sandwiches with all manner of ingredients), oxtail stew, grilled shrimp and much more (to be revealed).

One of our favorite places, a block away from our amazing hotel, was Cervesería Catalana. Always busy with people spilling out on to the street. Traditional tapas; very well prepared. Our first night, and our initiation into ordering tapas, was at Cervecería Ciudad Condal. A big, bustling place with a wait for a table. After we were seated at a corner table in the back of the restaurant, we both looked at our all Spanish menus then at each other: what now? Robert speaks Spanish fluently and I can easliy get by. It wasn’t that the menu was in Spanish; it was that we had no idea what the things listed on it were. The very nice waitress (used to clueless tourists) offered to bring us an assortment of dishes. It was perfect. Just enough, not too much. All amazingly delicious. We’d managed to successfully order and eat tapas in Spain. We walked off into the warm night, sated and happy. We were falling for Barcelona fast. By our third and final night it was full on love. I now understood why everybody raved about this city. Our final night in Spain was spent in Madrid, and it was another love fest; a magical city that felt a bit like London due to the cool, damp weather and a bit like Paris in its vast grandness. We both liked it all over again. Spain was quickly becoming a new favorite European country. One we’d both like to explore further.

¡Buen provecho!

Watch this spot for more about our travel and food adventures in Spain (and France).

My Status: Robert and I returned home on Saturday, June 6. I am recovering from jet lag, getting caught up and wishing I was still in France and Spain!

Upcoming Posts: France and Spain: more detailed blogs about food and travel adventures in France and Spain. The Wedge Salad: a recipe, the origins of the salad and of Iceberg lettuce.
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