Tom Douglas

Holidays at the Bakery!/ By Robyn Wolfe, Marketing

Gingerbread men and gingerbread ladies!

December 16th, 2010 | No Comments »

Today in the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook Test Kitchen

Garrett carefully weighing and measuring and developing the recipes for Dahlia Bakery eclairs for our upcoming Dahlia Bakery cookbook (photo left).  Meanwhile, the lovely Kelsey (photo right) is doing production work making eclairs for the Dahlia Bakery!

December 9th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Latkes for Hanukkah/ by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor

I made potato latkes for my husband, Frank, and my cousins for dinner last night.  This might be my most perfect batch ever (and yes, the house still smelled like frying oil this morning).  Tonight will be the 7th night.  Happy Hanukkah!!

December 7th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Dahlia Bakery Cookbook Re-test Team Starts Work!!/By Shelley Lance, Cookbook Co-Author

Work has begun re-testing the recipes for the upcoming Dahlia Bakery Cookbook. The retest team includes myself, Julie Hartley (photo top: Julie is a Top Pot Doughnut manager and the lovely wife of our operations manager, Sean Hartley) and Beth Minker (photo below).  By the way, be sure to click on the link to Top Pot for a fun photo of President Obama eating a Top Pot doughnut!

Our very first day of retesting included these beautiful blueberry muffins!

December 7th, 2010 | No Comments »

Thanksgiving in Chicago/ by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor

My husband, Frank, and I flew to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving in the northwest suburbs with my family.  My amazing sister, Marla, cooked the whole meal (for 18 people) from scratch in her newly remodeled kitchen.  In the photo, left, my beautiful mother is in the back and my beautiful niece, Elyssa, is off to the side.

Instead of staying in my parents’ spare bedroom the whole time, Frank and I spent one night in a hotel on Rush St, near the Magnificent Mile (the Conrad- which I highly recommend- we snagged a luxurious room for a great price!), so we could check out a few Chicago restaurants at our leisure without having to drive all the way back to the burbs.  My cousin, Penny, and her husband, Steve, took us to Davanti Enoteca in University Village (a new name for the gentrification of an old Chicago neighborhood near U of I campus and the old Maxwell Street.)  Davanti is Penny’s latest favorite joint, and since she’s the dining editor of the venerable Chicago Magazine, who better to decide where to eat?  Davanti is owned by the white-hot Chicago chef, Scott Harris, who also owns, or co-owns Mia Francesca, Nella, and the Purple Pig.

Davanti turned out to be a cozy, neighborhood joint serving Italian comfort food with a more than reasonable wine list.  (They have a retail license to sell wine, so all wine in the restaurant is sold at the retail price with $7 corkage. On Sunday, when we dined, there’s no corkage fee.)  My favorite dish was the first thing we tasted- focaccia di Recco, which is Ligurian style and nothing like the yeasted focaccia I’m used to.  Two thin, flaky sheets of pastry held a layer of creamy, fresh cows’ milk cheese.  Delicious, surprising, and unique! (photo below left)

We also ordered the mascarpone polenta with Berkshire pork ragu (photo above, middle).  The waiter makes quite a production of spreading the polenta on a platter and pouring the ragu from a small saucepan. Finally, We shared an excellent grilled half chicken, ‘Pollo Sole Mio’, which was moist and perfect.  But the most amazing thing of all was the check- about $100 for dinner for four (before tip) with one bottle and one glass of wine. Crazy cheap for the quality and abundance or our meal.

The next day, after walking up and down Michigan Avenue and briefly popping (pun intended) into a Garrett’s Popcorn store (photo above, right) -drawn in by the heady caramel corn fragrance you could smell from a block away-we discovered that the Purple Pig was only steps from our hotel, so we headed over for a late lunch. The Purple Pig has a convivial bar atmosphere and serves small plates with a porky (lardo, pig’s ear,etc) emphasis. Packed, noisy, and popular, the Pig was recently chosen one of the ten best new restaurants in the country by Bon Appetit magazine.

My favorite items from a trendy and very creative menu were the delicate winter squash arancini with sage pesto (photo above, second from left) , and the sepia (cuttlefish) with almonds and fried rosemary (photo above, third from left).  For dessert we had the “Sicilian Iris,” a fried brioche bun- greaseless and light as a cloud- filled with ricotta and chopped chocolate (in the photo above and to the right, it’s on a plate below the espresso cup).  Our excellent server overheard me saying it was Frank’s birthday, so he sent out an espresso cup of pistachio gelato with a candle! A sweet end to our day in the city!

December 5th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Andy’s Cocktail at Lola!/ by Dennis Jenson, Operation Manager Catering

1 1/2 ounces Hendricks Gin

1/4 ounce lime juice

1/4 ounce rose water

Egg white

Shaken, strained, and topped off with Cucumber Dry Soda in a Collins glass.

So, so delicious!!

December 5th, 2010 | No Comments »

Work Continues on the Dahlia Bakery Cookbook/ by Shelley Lance, Cookbook Co-author

Garrett is back from his paternity leave (Welcome to our world, Maple Melkonian!) so we’re back hard at work on the upcoming Dahlia Bakery Cookbook!

This chocolate iced chocolate bundt cake (photo top left) from our Pastry Chef, Stacy Fortner, with its fine crumb and moist texture, is just the kind of cake every home baker wants in their repertoire. (Stacy uses a secret ingredient to make this old fashioned cake so moist- any ideas what it is?)

Garrett and I are reworking a recipe I used to make 20 years ago at the original Dahlia Lounge. This chocolate glazed pecan caramel torte (photo top right) is one of Tom’s favorites, and it just needs a little bit of tweaking to be perfect.

Sometimes the little things make you happy, especially when you have to stand on a hard floor testing recipes hour after hour. The happiest event of the week for me- we got new floor mats (small photo left) in the test kitchen!! Thank you, Sarah Schaff, for ordering these mats!

December 4th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

The first customer to buy one of Serious Pie’s new T-shirts!

Look at the cool new t-shirts for sale at the Pie!

December 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Chicken Fried Steak Eating Contest/ by Robyn Wolfe, Marketing

Ten brave souls participated in the Dahlia Lounge Chicken Fried Steak Eating Contest on Tuesday, November 30. The challenge: to consume as many ounces of gravy topped chicken fried steak as possible in 10 minutes.

The winner: Etta’s Josh Neeley, who consumed 9 steaks or 38 ounces!!!  A close second was Dahlia’s Michael Gute who consumed 36 ounces!!      …..burp.

Next contest, in January, will be how many Dahlia doughnuts our staff can eat in 4 minutes!  Open to all Tom Douglas employees!!

December 2nd, 2010 | 3 Comments »

VIDEO RECIPE: Palace Kitchen’s Besse Biscuits and Chanterelle Mushroom Gravy / by Herschell Taghap, Social Media and Seatown Cook

One of our recent diners, Stacy (@laughingwoman), loved our biscuit and gravy dish at Palace Kitchen and had one small request:

Well do we have a response for you! I stopped by Palace on the way back from some early holiday shopping and our Sous-chef Gerard was right smack in the middle of tonight’s biscuit prep! LUCKY. Big thanks to Brian Besse, one of our line cooks, for the solid recipe! It follows below:

Roux and stock, Gerard grating frozen butter, biscuit scraps and preserves

Recipe after the jump!

Editor’s Note: Please note: the recipes below were dictated to me by Gerard.  Neither the biscuit or gravy recipes have been tested in the home kitchen, but as you can see from the video, they turned out beautiful!
Read the rest of this entry »

December 2nd, 2010 | 3 Comments »