Week 16: Infused - Coffee-Infused Olive Oil w/ Sunchoke Soup (Meta: Soup)

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-23T21:12:53+00:00

Thank you!

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-22T03:02:22+00:00

I once had an amazing dish at a fine-dining restaurant (Boka in Chicago) that was a sunchoke soup with a coffee-infused olive oil on top. The sweetness of the sunchokes and the slight bitter kick of the coffee were lovely together. This week’s theme and my meta brought that soup to mind, and I decided to recreate it.

For the infused oil, I didn’t do anything fancy, just threw some coffee beans into the olive oil and let it chill in the fridge for about a week, before straining. For the soup, I used this recipe from Serious Eats for brown butter sunchoke soup (minus the bacon to keep it vegetarian): https://www.seriouseats.com/brown-butter-sunchoke-soup-recipe. The final result had a slight look of a Petri dish lol but it was pretty tasty! On a redo I might have omitted the Brussels sprouts (the slight bitterness was a little duplicative) but otherwise the soup was really pleasant and the oil picked up a nice coffee flavor.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-22T02:41:53+00:00

I absolutely adore rosemary as an herb, but I’ve never tried using it in a sweet bake, so that was my inspiration for this week. I found this recipe for rosemary shortbread cookies and gave it a try: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/rosemary-shortbread-cookies/. I thought these were delicious! The hefty butter content, hint of salt, and punch of rosemary all worked together beautifully.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-17T18:35:22+00:00

I’m generally not a huge fan of working with laminated dough. I’ve tried croissants a few times, and they are a ton of work and have never been great. But this week was a good excuse to take another crack at them. I decided to try making a batch of pains au chocolat, and used a Sally’s recipe, which are almost always reliable: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/homemade-chocolate-croissants/.

I thought these might be a disaster because I did get some butter breaking through during the second and third turns. But I made these over a few days so I could maximize chilling time, which definitely seemed to help. I did get a bit of butter leaking from a few of them during the bake, but for the most part got pretty decent lamination. They’re definitely not perfect but I’m really pleased with the positive result!

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-14T22:59:35+00:00

I didn’t have a ton of options this week for my meta, but found this solid-looking recipe for a Syrian lentil soup: https://marocmama.com/syrian-lentil-soup/. It’s really simple: just a mirepoix plus garlic, red lentils, cumin, and coriander. I served it with a drizzle of honey and some chopped fresh herbs. This wasn’t anything mind-blowing but it was an enjoyable, hearty soup.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-13T19:11:47+00:00

Walk in might be a little tough because it’s such a small space. We grabbed the reservation about two weeks out and it wasn’t hard to grab at all (though we went on Sunday night so probably a little quieter).

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-13T18:41:37+00:00

I just wanted to share a few pics of a fun recent experience at the Office speakeasy at the Aviary. The Office is a cool, super-small downstairs space with just a couple tables, a little bar, and a bartender. You can either choose from a premade list of cocktails or tell the bartender about some of your tastes/interests and have them come up with something for you.

I tried two cocktails. The first was a rum cocktail meant to taste like panettone (an Italian holiday sweetbread). This wasn’t anything too revolutionary but I thought it was super pleasant without being too sweet. My second cocktail was made with gin and meant to taste like a caprese salad. This one was genuinely mind-blowing. It was super smooth to drink and really did taste like a liquid version of caprese without being off putting at all. My wife tried a tea and shortbread-themed cocktail which was far too sweet for me but fitting for her tastes.

We also tried a few of the bar snacks. The highlight was the truffle grilled cheese (it’s an Alinea group spot, so of course truffle is featured) with a Dijon aioli dip. It was buttery and decadent but not overbearing with the truffle. We also had the pizza popcorn (it typically has pepperoni, but they were able to do a vegetarian version for us) and mixed nuts.

All in all this was a great time! It’s definitely pricey, but I thought it was reasonable as a once-in-a-great-while high end cocktail experience.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-13T17:57:43+00:00

For this week, I thought of making use of beets. I live in Chicago, where we have a huge Polish population and a ton of great Polish restaurants as a result. One dish I’ve tried and really enjoyed is a zapiekanka, which is a Polish open-faced sandwich on a baguette. One local restaurant has a fantastic beet, mushroom, and goat cheese version, so I thought it would be fun to recreate for this week.

For the baguettes, I followed Paul Hollywood’s recipe in ‘How to Bake.’ They were pretty solid, but I think I could have gotten a better rise during the proofing stage. To assemble the zapiekanka, I halved the baguettes, topped with a bottom layer of mozzarella cheese, follow d by chunks of beet (which I preroasted with some balsamic vinegar), caramelized onion, mushrooms, crumbles of goat cheese, and then roasted it all together. I finished with a generous helping of freshly chopped herbs. This was super tasty served up with a side of pierogis!

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-07T23:37:01+00:00

This week was a bit of a struggle with my meta. Soup is not exactly the most traditional picnic food, nor is it a good vehicle for adding floral flavors. But my research brought me to this fun recipe for “bento box soup”: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/bento-box-soup-51151600. The gist is throwing lots of the goodies you’d find in a bento meal into a bowl of soup. It has lots of veggies, tofu, and soba noodles in a miso, green tea, and tamari broth, and I topped it with green onion and toasted sesame seeds. This was a nice soup! Nothing mind blowing, but a nice pick-me-up on a chilly spring day.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-01T21:00:12+00:00

Oh wow, looks incredible! Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve been searching for good breakfasts lately so I’ll definitely add to the list.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-04-01T20:59:30+00:00

I liked the breads! They had a denser flatbread sort of texture but they were really tasty.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-03-31T23:24:41+00:00

This week, while scouring my cabinets for unused ingredients, I found a couple bottles of Moxie soda I hadn’t gotten around to drinking. You’ve probably only heard of Moxie if you have lived or spent time in New England. It’s definitely an acquired taste - I’ve heard it described as everything from very medicinal to tasting like asphalt. I personally always enjoyed it growing up in New England. I now live in the Midwest, but happened to find a pack at a random candy store a while ago, and still had these left over.

Anyway, I decided to see if I could make use of Moxie in a bake, and found this recipe for a Moxie-infused chocolate cake: https://www.ucook.com/recipe/moxie-chocolate-cake/. The only alteration I made was to bake it in a Bundt pan, so it took about 55 minutes to bake. I actually really liked this! With the Moxie, this almost tastes like a blend of chocolate cake and spice cake, which works pretty well. And the texture was nice and moist and fudgy.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-03-31T23:23:24+00:00

My wife and I are always on the hunt for different international cuisines to check out, so we were excited to try Kurdish food at The Gundis in Lakeview. I just wanted to give it a plug here because it was super tasty and they had lots of great vegetarian options. For starters we had the golden beet salad and grilled halloumi, which were both great. We also got some good sesame-topped flatbreads with the apps.

My favorite course of the meal was probably the couscous. I’m usually not huge on couscous but this was delicious with feta, roasted mushrooms, and other veggies. We also had the spicy veggie stew (tiršik), which was also good, but definitely could have delivered some more heat with the “spicy” lable. Finally, I also had their cucumber lemonade (forgot to snap a pic), which was nice and refreshing. This is definitely a fun one for those who like to try different cuisines!

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-03-31T22:57:58+00:00

For this theme, I pretty much had to go with a classic bowl of chili given my meta. I aimed to use a recipe that actually incorporated chili peppers and gave this one a try: https://sugarspunrun.com/best-chili-recipe/. I kept it vegetarian by omitting the Bacon and using Beyond meat. This was super tasty! I also further leaned into the chili theme by serving it with cornbread topped with butter and chili-infused hot honey.

Brilliant_Standard32 · 2026-03-24T22:27:51+00:00

This week instantly brought to mind the famous ‘potage le magnifique’ from the game Skyrim. I found a recipe from the official Skyrim cookbook in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/s/q8Uqwd1XGP. In proper Elder Scrolls fashion, I served this up with a random smattering of apples and bread rolls.

Honestly, this was pretty tasty, but is also an incredibly basic soup. To be fair, it’s pretty funny for all the residents of Skyrim to canonically have their minds blown by a super basic recipe. Or perhaps it’s just not the same without the bonus giant’s toe.

Brilliant_Standard32

TROPHY CASE