10/25/2007

Mom's cooking, on white tablecloths

By Trine Tsouderos
Chicago Tribune

Taste John Hogan's braised short ribs at Tavern at the Park and you're savoring the delicious memory of his late mom's pot roast, braised in Guinness Stout.

"I remember walking home from school and you could smell her cooking a block away," Hogan said.

Not that the short ribs are a carbon copy. Like much of the upscale comfort food appearing on menus at some of Chicago's hottest new restaurants, it's part dear old mum, part chef daughter or son.

In this case, Hogan exchanged his mother's pot roast for more trendy short ribs ("a hot, buzzy dish right now," Hogan said) and braises them in red wine rather than beer.

Art Smith's Table Fifty-Two serves the Smith Family Twelve-Layer Chocolate Cake, inspired by his family's 200-year-old recipe ("the birthday cake of my family," Smith said). Daryl Nash's menu at Otom features a beef pot pie that echoes his mom's chicken pot pie, complete with her rather unconventional addition of noodles.

And Chalkboard offers an upscale knockoff of chef Gilbert Langlois' mother's grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup -- blue cheese on brioche with roasted tomato bisque. "I remember this being the best thing as a child, but my mother used white bread," Langlois noted on his menu.

Comfort food is, of course, nothing new. It's what you crave when you want to feel warm and safe and nourished. Depending on where you're from, it could be pot pie or pho.

And though serving up comfort food is a restaurant trend that has probably flowed more than ebbed over the decades, Chicago's experiencing a mini-boom in posh restaurants serving Mom's home cooking with a refined twist.

"I think people really want to know that there is a mother behind you," said Smith, whose restaurant serves dishes like fried chicken and macaroni and cheese from family recipes. "It really shows a lot about the person. I grew up on a farm with a mother and a family that loved to cook, and I want that to be reflected in what I do. People want to see and taste authenticity, and a family recipe is as authentic as you can get."

It's a winning concept, Nash said.

Comfort food "fills your belly, it fills your heart," said the chef, who learned to cook from his mother on a corn and soybean farm in Moweaqua, a tiny town about 20 miles south of Decatur. "When you are eating filling food that fills your heart and your mind and your spirit and your belly, what could be better?"

For Nash, comfort food is, in part, pork bellies. Sure enough, his mother's braised uncured pork belly appears on the Otom menu.

"Mine is the exact same thing," he said. "It's pork belly seared, caramelized and braised to give it that good wintry fall flavor."

Except it's not really the exact same thing -- it's her recipe informed by the mind of a creative, trained chef. First, Nash tweaked the classic mirepoix base (carrots, onions and celery) his mother used, stirring up fall root vegetables like celery root and rutabaga instead. Then, he added a distinctly modern pairing: a puffed barley and turnip hash, with a rosemary puree and a beet and coriander puree.

"My experience through education and professional kitchens has given me insight into more refined techniques," he said.

For example, his mom often made a roux. She didn't know what she was making was a roux, or exactly why cooking flour and butter together in a certain way was a great way to start a sauce, but she did it, he said.

After years of culinary training, Nash knows, and that gives him room to be creative.

"When you know how to control the reasons you do things a certain way, you can understand how to give it a twist," he said.

Still, it's not as if his dishes would be unrecognizable to his mom. "I think she would see a lot of herself in the dishes," Nash said. "And she would know that it was me. She would see a lot of me in them as well."

Smith, author of the cookbook "Back to the Family," said he has changed his family recipes here and there, sometimes to make them a little healthier, sometimes to improve them. "There is nothing wrong with tweaking them so the product is better," he said.

Hogan sees his cooking as something of a tribute to his mother, who cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for Hogan's father and their seven children every day and whom he credits for nurturing his passion for food.

"She would cook a nice rare roast beef and make a good gravy and mashed potatoes. I remember her making for my father Welsh rarebit. I loved it. She would make a Swiss steak and noodles I was crazy about," he said. "She lives on through me and my cooking.

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