Cheers to the Publican, Repast and Present: Recipes and Ramblings from an American Beer Hall [A Cookbook]

To the Mighty Vegetable

Carrot, Turnip,

or Leafy Green,

From Farmyard Dirt

Deep With’een,

Where Roots Do Spread

—nake’d, un’seen—

’Til Yanked & Rinsed,

Now Fresh, Now Clean;

A Gentle Snap,

Roasted, Steamed.

People think of The Publican as this big, meaty restaurant and so often I hear things like, We don’t go to The Publican because I’m a vegetarian. That’s a shame because we believe in putting vegetables front and center. Sure, there are pigs on the wall, but we’ve evolved since we started out with the intention of highlighting gastropub staples like oysters, pork, and beer. In the beginning, we basically had two categories on the menu—meat and seafood—and dishes that progressed from zero manipulation (artisanal hams, oysters) to our big box items like Porchetta with Chicories and Ham Chop in Hay. The vegetable category was in the bottom right-hand corner of the menu, and it was kind of an afterthought. I was younger, and I was all about being bold. But then, to be perfectly honest, when we were getting ready to first open, I got really fat. I had a whole summer of R & D, just working through the menu, perfecting our now-staple dishes, eating country ribs and chicken and mussels and, of course, drinking beer like crazy. I felt sluggish and horrible (and the black circles under my eyes were blacker than usual). Part of what helped me make a change in my life was standing outside, checking in produce, and seeing all these people running through the alley carrying tires and realizing that it was time to join Mike Madonis’s gym, Fulton Fit House, which had opened about a year before The Publican. But what made the biggest difference was that my wife and I completely changed the way we ate at home, adding more and more vegetables to our rotation. And in time that change was reflected at the restaurant, too.

Offering great vegetable dishes on our menu wasn’t just about health. People would come to The Publican and get so excited about the food that they’d over-order and just get destroyed. The first twenty times I ate there, I felt as if I was going to die at the end of the meal, and the kitchen would be like, There’s still a Ham Chop in Hay coming! So I started pushing for more vegetables on the menu to balance things out. Brian Huston got the ball rolling with his California-inspired market connections, and by the time Cosmo came to The Publican—with all his ties to the West Coast and his passion for finding really special produce, including stuff you’d never get in our market, like kinjoki grapefruits, puntarelle di galentina (a kind of chicory), and avocados with more fat content than most cheeses—we were putting out many more plant-forward dishes that were way more interesting and complex than the usual sautéed spinach.

Of course, the quality of our produce is what makes all the difference. The number-one thing for us at all our restaurants, and especially at The Publican, is that our food is driven by the market. (Within reason: There once was a restaurant in Chicago that aimed to be 100-percent seasonal. It went out of business.)

While we buy everything we possibly can from our local vendors—seriously, you wouldn’t believe the pile of stuff sitting outside our back door as soon as asparagus and ramps pop up in the spring—we’ve expanded to bring in produce from warmer climes. It’s important for keeping the restaurant vital and interesting, plus we can get a jump on the season with things like English peas and fava beans because they’re picked in California about two months before we get the first inklings of a pea here.

Even though we buy specific ingredients from other locales, supporting local growers really is everything to us, and I pat myself on the back for helping plant the seeds for the now-thriving farmers’ market system here in Chicago. I wouldn’t say I was the first chef to shop at the Green City Farmers’ Market, which was our city’s first mostly organic market, opened in 1998 by Abby Mandel—chef and author, friend of Alice Waters and Craig Claiborne, author of my wife’s favorite ratatouille recipe, and Chicago Grand Dame—but I was one of the first chefs to shop there. For the first three or four years, the market wasn’t doing so well. Local and seasonal was the talk, but no one was doing it. Abby reached out to Sarah Stegner, Rick Bayless, and me to see if we could get it to work. She believed that people would buy what we bought. And sure enough, our meetings went from five people to fifteen to twenty to all these committees that helped the market pick up steam and find a permanent location.

Our faith in the great work that these local farmers were doing led to some of the most crucial relationships that we have at The Publican, which continue to shape the food that we serve. Dave Cleverdon at Kinnikinnick Farm, who I’ve known for about a hundred years, switched from growing mostly mesclun to baby heads of Little Gem and oak leaf because I wanted those beautiful and tender lime-green heads. He also grows rare varieties of Italian braising greens like spigariello, bietina, and minestra nera; and he’s got the best asparagus I’ve ever tasted. Tim Burton of Burton’s Maplewood Farm, our maple syrup guy, brings us ramps that he forages from the woods near his house in southern Indiana. He drops them off at our butcher shop, Publican Quality Meats, has a sandwich and a beer, and all the other chefs in town come by for their pick-ups. We started giving him bourbon barrels that he now uses to age his maple syrup, which in turn makes a better product for us. Henry Brockman of Henry’s Farm, in the Mackinaw River Valley, grows things we can’t find anywhere else—burdock root, bok choy, tatsoi. He’s the reason (along with Ed Gast and J. W. Morlock & Girls Fruit Stand) someone from The Publican team drives up to the Evanston Farmers’ Market every Saturday. You can’t pre-order with him; you get what you get. We’re always sure that someone’s there at 8 AM so we don’t miss anything. That’s a really good example of what The Publican is about.

I would of course love to say that everything we serve is organic, but it’s just not feasible. I always say that if you’re out of business, you can’t serve any organic food. Whether you’re sourcing food for a restaurant or for your home kitchen, there does have to be balance, but it doesn’t mean compromising on quality. We can guarantee that every farmer we source from is a responsible, conscientious grower. That’s paramount to our philosophy.

THE VEG PLATE EVOLVES

COSMO The biggest transition I saw at The Publican was about five years after we opened. We’d never had a vegetable entrée, only what we’d call a veg plate. If someone came in and requested something vegetarian, every cook on the line had about ten minutes to put up something from their station. Then we’d pass the plate around, and each of us would contribute one element. We’d be doing three to five of those a night, and guests really loved them, so it became pretty clear that we needed more vegetables on our menu. As we added hearty, balanced, fully thought-out dishes, such as Radishes with Red Lentil Falafel, Asparagus and Avocado Salad with Fried Quinoa and Flaxseed Vinaigrette, and Maple-Roasted Winter Squash with Piri-Piri Sauce, the balance of our menu changed. We were giving people a chance to have a healthy, super-satisfying meal instead of coming in and getting hammered with food. Paul is always telling us not to overfeed people, and I know what he means. When I go out to dinner, I want to be able to go have a drink afterward or take a walk and not feel like I never want to eat again.

barbecued carrots

I don’t think there’s ever been a dish at The Publican that people have freaked out about so much. Even chefs. We did a charity event last year and served these, and there was a table of twenty-five big-name chefs just losing their minds over them. We’ve tried new variations, adding different spices, experimenting with other preparations, but it always comes back to this recipe. We use a barbecue rub that I borrowed from Chris Lilly, the owner of Big Bob Gibson’s in Georgia and a world champion of barbecued pork shoulder. He came in to eat once, and we got embarrassed about ripping him off, so we quickly changed the name of these to Chris Lilly Carrots.

We like to serve them with pecans that we get from Blain Farms in California, which are creamier than any other pecan, and then we top it off with an herbed dressing.

Makes 4 servings

1 gallon water

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon BBQ Rub (recipe follows)

¼ cup kosher salt

1 pound carrots, cleaned and halved

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt

1½ teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup pecans, coarsely chopped

2 sprigs dill, torn

1 batch Ranchovy Herb Dressing (recipe follows)

In a large pot, combine the water with 1 cup of the BBQ Rub and the kosher salt. Bring to a boil, add the carrots, and cook until they’re just about fully cooked, about 5 minutes. Drain the carrots and set aside.

Build a fire on one side of a charcoal grill and let it burn down to embers.

Toss the blanched carrots with the remaining 1 tablespoon of BBQ Rub and the olive oil in a large bowl.

Arrange the carrots on the grill over direct heat and cook, moving them around a bit, until they have some char marks and are finished, about 5 minutes.

Pile the carrots on a serving plate, season with the sea salt, drizzle with the lemon juice, and garnish with the pecans and dill. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice, if needed. Dress the carrots with the Ranchovy Herb Dressing and serve.

BBQ RUB

This is just as good on carrots as it is on meat.

Makes 1½ cups

½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

½ cup kosher salt

¼ cup pimentón de la Vera (hot smoked Spanish paprika)

1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

1 tablespoon onion granules

1½ teaspoons celery salt

1 tablespoon ground cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon ground cumin

Combine the brown sugar, salt, pimentón, pepper, granulated garlic, onion granules, celery salt, cayenne, and cumin in a bowl. Mix well. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 month.

RANCHOVY HERB DRESSING

Never use store-bought dressing again.

Makes about 1 quart

2 cups mayonnaise (we like Hellman’s/Best Foods)

1 cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1½ teaspoons white vinegar

1½ teaspoons Tabasco sauce

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1½ teaspoons granulated sugar

1½ teaspoons fish sauce

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1 tablespoon chopped chives

1½ teaspoons chopped tarragon

1½ teaspoons chopped oregano

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Whisk all the ingredients in a bowl and season with the salt and pepper. Taste and add more salt and pepper. Transfer the dressing to a glass container with a lid and refrigerate. The dressing will keep in the fridge for up to 1 week. Give the jar a good shake before using.

jared van camp’s bread-and-butter pickles

Jared Van Camp, who was a sous chef at Blackbird, came up with this recipe. We use these pickles for everything—in remoulade, on sandwiches, in dressings, and, obviously, by themselves. They’re our workhorse pickle. And because we don’t want to waste the juice, we use it in things like brine for fried chicken or instead of vinegar in salad dressings. I highly recommend keeping a jar of them in your fridge.

Makes 5 pounds of pickles

½ cup salt

6 cups water

5 pounds pickling cucumbers, cut in ¼-inch-thick slices, stems discarded

2½ cups white wine vinegar

2½ cups cider vinegar

1 white onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, sliced

½ tablespoon allspice berries

2 tablespoons celery seeds

cinnamon stick

2 tablespoons mustard seeds

2 cups granulated sugar

2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

½ tablespoon turmeric

In a large pot, combine the salt and water and stir to dissolve the salt. Add the cucumbers and place the pot in the fridge to brine for 24 hours.

In a small bowl, combine the vinegars, onion, garlic, allspice, celery seeds, cinnamon stick, and mustard seeds. Let the mixture sit in the fridge for 24 hours.

Add the vinegar mixture to a heavy pot and stir in the sugars and turmeric. Bring the pot to a boil.

Meanwhile, remove the cucumbers from the brine and put them in a large tub or pot. Discard the brine. Pour the boiling mixture over the cucumbers and set aside to let everything cool. Transfer the pickles to an airtight container and store in the fridge—they’ll keep for 6 months.

BREAD-AND-BUTTER PICKLING RATIO

Whereas a lot of pickle recipes are 3-2-1 (three parts water, two parts vinegar, and one part sugar), a bread-and-butter version is half vinegar, half sugar, making them sweet and sour. Adding in seasonings such as turmeric, celery seed, and mustard seeds, also gives them a yellow color.

mom’s icebox tomatoes

During tomato season, my mom would always slice up beefsteak tomatoes and marinate them in red wine vinegar, olive oil, thyme, white onion, salt, and pepper. She’d keep them in the fridge just like that, and we’d go in there and yank ’em out. Maybe grab a slice of bologna, too, toast up some white bread, and put a tomato on top. Now you’ll see these on our menu, which we particularly like with burrata. The tomatoes will keep for a couple of days in the fridge, then they get a little soggy. Still good, but soggy.

Makes 4 servings

½ white onion, julienned

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

¼ cup red wine vinegar

½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Sugar (optional)

4 beefsteak tomatoes, sliced ½ inch thick

In a large bowl, mix together the onion, olive oil, vinegar, and thyme. Add a pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper. If the tomatoes aren’t at peak season, you might want to add a pinch of sugar, too.

Make a single layer of tomato slices in the bottom of a shallow dish or pan and pour over some of the marinade. Make a new layer of tomatoes and repeat until you’ve used up all the tomatoes and marinade. Chill before serving. The tomatoes will last in the fridge for about 1½ days before they start to break down.

BUYING TOMATOES

Buying good tomatoes is crucial, especially if you’re eating them raw. Start with the best at the height of tomato season. Get the tomatoes from the guy whose prices are twice as expensive as every other guy’s. Trust us; it’s worth it. There’s this guy at our market who’s from Tomato Mountain Farm in Brooklyn, Wisconsin. He won’t even let you touch his tomatoes because he’s so proud of them. It’s annoying—and they’re not cheap—but they’re the best. If we’re serving tomatoes raw, we have to buy his.

WHAT WOULD SUZANNE GOIN DO?

Suzanne Goin and I were Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs together, and our careers have, to some degree, been parallel—the number of restaurants, the cooking style. Lucques was her first; mine was Blackbird. Then she did AOC, and I did avec. We’ve traveled together and cooked together and, while she likes me just fine, we at The Publican love her. We’re always asking ourselves, Would Suzanne like this? Whether it’s adding green garlic to our labneh (her suggestion), adding suckling pig confit to our menu (her recipe), or tracking down the best possible ingredients (by badgering her to share her purveyors), she’s always inspiring us to up our game—especially when it comes to honoring great product and keeping things simple. Seriously, one of the things we love most about her is that she always has a guy—a fig guy, a plum guy, a pistachio guy, a hazelnut guy. We get connections out of her a few at a time. As chefs, whenever we do an event with her or go to eat in her restaurants, we’re always super jealous of at least one thing she has. It kind of ruins and makes your day at the same time. We’ve even shared a lot of talent between our kitchens over the years. What can we say? We’re big fans.

elotes

Elotes—or traditional Mexican street corn—is usually an ear of corn that’s been slathered in mayo, queso fresco, chile powder, and lime. That’s how we do it at Big Star, another one of our restaurants, but Brian Huston came up with a mutation that we started serving at The Publican because, as I like to say, any culture is fair game here. We take the corn off the cob, sauté it in oil, and then finish it with salt, a little butter, and lime juice. Then we add freshly grated Parmesan cheese for its salty nuttiness, Espelette pepper, and our Garlic Aioli (this page), which is like a mother sauce for us. We roast a ton of garlic in olive oil to make roasted garlic marinade, so we use the oil that we roasted the garlic in as the base for the mayo. There’s not much more to it, besides salt, and it ends up tasting really savory, almost cheesy. We serve this dish in a casserole that you just scoop into, and it’s like.…oh my God!

COSMO We start getting corn in late August, if we’re lucky, so when we do eventually get great, super-sweet corn from our farmers, we hoard it. We feature it all over the menu, and it’s one of our favorite things to preserve—as demonstrated by the 250 quarts of corn relish (also known as chow chow) that we put up last summer.

Makes 4 servings

1 teaspoon high smoking-point oil, such as rice bran, sunflower, grapeseed, or peanut

3 cups corn kernels (from 4 to 5 ears)

1½ tablespoons unsalted butter

Juice of 2 limes

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons Garlic Aioli (recipe follows)

1 teaspoon piment d’Espelette

4 springs cilantro, leaves picked from stems

Parmesan cheese

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the oil and let it get to the point of almost smoking, it’s so hot. Add the corn and sauté until it’s tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the butter and half the lime juice with a pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper. Taste, and adjust seasoning if you think it needs it, adding more lime juice if you want.

Transfer the corn to a serving dish and spoon the aioli on top and sprinkle on the piment d’Espelette. Garnish with the cilantro. Grate about ¼ cup of Parmesan over the top (at the restaurant we always do this at the last second because it tastes better that way) and serve.

GARLIC AIOLI

COSMO Paul always refers to this aioli as one of The Publican mother sauces because we use it for so many things. We rub it on fish (instead of oil) to keep it moist, whisk it into salad dressings to thicken them, and, of course, serve it with our frites and other fried foods. It’s simple, basic, and delicious.

Makes 1 quart

10 cloves Garlic Confit (this page)

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of 2 lemons

4 large egg yolks

1 raw garlic clove, finely grated

3 to 4 tablespoons ice water

½ cup oil from Garlic Confit (this page)

3 cups grapeseed oil

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the garlic confit, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg yolks, grated garlic clove, and 1 teaspoon of the ice water.

With the food processor running, slowly stream in the garlic oil. Once the mixture is thick, add 1 tablespoon of the remaining ice water. With the processor running, slowly stream in the grapeseed oil, adding the remaining ice water a few drops at a time until the aioli is a little thinner than store-bought mayonnaise. Season the aioli with the lemon zest, salt, and pepper to taste. Transfer the aioli to a jar with a tight-fitting lid and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

radishes with red lentil falafel, yogurt, and spiced honey

COSMO The pound of radishes in this dish adds spark to what would otherwise be a falafel plate (and gives us justification for sneaking this recipe into the vegetable section of our menu). After Paul came back from eating at Shaya in New Orleans and said he’d had the best falafel ever, it was like the falafel challenge had been thrown down. I tried a hundred different variations to make one that even came close, but every time Paul just said, You gotta go back to the drawing board. Paul even called Alon Shaya to ask for his recipe, and we still couldn’t get it right. The taste was good, but the texture was off—you want falafel to be crunchy and crispy on the outside and herby and clean on the inside. Then I had this lentil croquette at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, and I thought about using lentils in the falafel instead of the traditional chickpeas. Sure enough, they made the falafel creamier, whereas chickpeas can be a little dry and crumbly. Paul finally let us put it on the menu and ten people told us it was the best thing ever. (Paul still said it was okay, or more specifically, Do whatever you want, Cosmo…I would rework it if I were you.) We refined the recipe a bit more and twenty people said it was the best ever the next night, and so on. We just kept trying to improve it every time, and Paul was always pushing us to make it better, too, which was how we knew we were on to something great.

Makes 6 to 8 servings

3 cups dried red lentils, soaked in hot water for 1 hour

1 tablespoon pimentón de la Vera (hot smoked Spanish paprika)

1½ teaspoons ground cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1½ teaspoons ground seaweed

1½ teaspoons bonito flakes

4 cloves Garlic Confit (recipe follows)

1 cup chopped scallions, white and green parts

2 scant teaspoons neonata (see note, this page)

1½ teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1½ teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1½ tablespoons onion granules

¾ cup ricotta

½ bunch cilantro

½ bunch parsley

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

High smoking-point oil, such as rice bran, sunflower, grapeseed, or peanut, for frying

1 lemon, cut in half

1 pound mixed radishes, cut into bite-size pieces

Extra-virgin olive oil

⅓ cup plain Greek yogurt

2 tablespoons Spiced Honey (recipe follows)

2 tablespoons chopped herbs, such as mint, parsley, dill, and cilantro

2 teaspoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons sunflower seeds

Strain the lentils and measure 5 cups. Set aside.

Toast the pimentón, cayenne, cumin, and coriander in a dry skillet over medium heat, 1 to 2 minutes. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the toasted spices and the seaweed, bonito flakes, Garlic Confit, scallions, neonata, baking soda, fish sauce, sugar, flour, onion granules, ricotta, cilantro, and parsley. Pulse into a coarse paste. Add the lentils and pulse until they just start to break up. Season with a healthy pinch of salt and pepper.

Heat the about 4 inches of oil in a deep fryer or a large heavy pot to 350°F on a deep-fat/candy thermometer.

Make a tester falafel by taking a couple tablespoons of the lentil mixture and forming it into a ball in your hand. Fry it for 3 to 5 minutes or until golden brown. It should be crispy on the outside and a great mix of creamy and coarse on the inside. If it’s too coarse, pulse the mixture a few more times and test again. You can also adjust the seasoning.

Form the remaining falafel mixture into balls that are 3 to 4 tablespoons (1½ to 2 ounces) each, to make a total of 12 to 18 balls. Fry them, turning continuously, until they’re golden brown and crispy, 3 to 5 minutes. Season with salt and lemon juice as they come out of the fryer. Set aside.

Toss the radishes in a small bowl with a generous amount of lemon juice and olive oil, plus a good pinch of salt. Set aside.

Spread the yogurt on the bottom of a serving plate. Place the crispy falafel on top and drizzle with the honey. Dance the radishes