EZ Livin

Hot Mix 9/26-10/14

By EMAY | Published: October 23, 2012

The Freddy

Ham & Cheese Okonomiyaki

“French Dip” Banh Mi with Pho Jus

Salt Beef Beigal

Trinidadian Doubles

Posted in E-Dogz, Hot Mix | Tagged Chicago foods, E-Dogz, Freddy, Gringo, Hot Mix, neighborhood, Street Food | Leave a comment

Hot Mix at “Ground Floor” Opening 9/23

By EMAY | Published: October 23, 2012

Install shot in the Hyde Park Art Center

Image courtesy of Michael Christiano

Posted in E-Dogz, Hot Mix | Tagged Chicago foods, E-Dogz, Hot Mix, Signs, Street Food | Leave a comment

Announcing Piranha Club #5: A Pigeon Dinner

By EMAY | Published: October 15, 2012

October 29th, 7 PM

Piranha Club meets Pleasanthouse

uptown to bring you pigeon pies!

at Roots & Culture. 1034 N Milwaukee Ave.

$30 includes wine, a personal Royal Pie, vegetable side, and dessert

made from heirloom recipes and local ingredients.

Vegetarians fear not- we’ve got some foraged pigeon-of-the-woods

mushrooms to stuff in your pie!

SOLD OUT

25 seats available.

The R@+ with wings?

How can you say such things!

A domestic fowl indeed.

Upon which we shall feed!

The Romans roasted them up nice!

Egyptians stuffed them with rice!

The French put them in a pie,

Which chuffed the English, aye!

Landing on Thanksgiving tables,

A dish forgotten now to fables.

This now despised critter-

May not be so much better-

Than another uninvited guest-

We, who called this the US.

Who are we to judge this beast,

We, after all, brought them to feast.

Lets cast our prejudice aside,

And come together to dine.

The pigeons we will be serving are domestically raised

and processed according to Dhabihah Halal methods.

Posted in Edible Invasives, Piranha Club | Tagged Edible Invasives, pigeon, Piranha Club, Pleasanthouse | Leave a comment

9/14: E-Dogz @ Afterimage

By EMAY | Published: October 3, 2012

A Real Mutha For Ya!

Posted in E-Dogz, Hot Mix, Projects 2012 | Tagged Chicago foods, E-Dogz, Hot Mix, mother-in-law, Street Food | Leave a comment

Announcing “Hot Mix” An Exploration of South Side Foodways

By EMAY | Published: September 10, 2012

Fall 2012, Chicago:

Eric May and E-Dogz Center for the Preservation and Advancement of Street Food Present:

Hot Mix:

An Exploration of South Side Chicago Foodways

When asked where I am from I typically say “the South side”. This is not an entirely true statement, which I usually get called out on in the company of folks that grew up on the right side of the city border. And please don’t ask me which baseball team I followed as a kid… To my credit, I did grow up just about 6 miles from the city limits and I do have deep south side roots- my great great great grandmother remembered the days of Pottawatomie traders landing in their canoes on the beaches south of Roosevelt Rd- an area at the time that “was wooded and provided good hunting”. These days, you just don’t meet many south siders (or south suburbanites for that matter) outside of the south side, so what’s wrong if I flaunt pride in my heritage for the sake of visibility for a region that my family has called home for five generations. I could romanticize the no- nonsense, working class earnesty of the folks that generally hail from the area. But the south side is more complicated than that- its narrative is also one of segregation and prejudice- a site of shifting cultural populations that haven’t always behaved so neighborly. That said, sometimes wonderful things result from cultures rubbing up on one another and the clearest demonstration of this cross pollination can be found in food traditions. The south side has produced iconic foods that have been born of cross- cultural exposure. Take the Chicago style hotdog for instance- a product of that great egalitarian, entrepreneurial breeding ground, the Maxwell Street Market. Built on a Hungarian spiced, kosher all beef sausage, a canvas to which Jewish vendors contributed mustard and pickles, Greeks added tomato, while the relish has English origins, and the sport pepper was brought up from the south during the Great Migration. Food traditions such as this are evidence that the south side truly has its own unique hybridized culture.

This fall in a series of events staged at Chicago cultural institutions, I will be navigating through the foodways of the South Side of Chicago attempting to celebrate and unpack the cultural lineage of these great food traditions. A calendar of events follows below. More programming may be added in the later months of the fall, so please stay tuned!

August 19th- November 11th: Hot Mix at Ground Floor at the Hyde Park Art Center. This exhibition will be the main site of Hot Mix with an installation of original artworks in the gallery and a regular schedule of E-Dogz programming happening in front of the Art Center. The opening exhibition on September 23rd from 3-5 pm will feature E-Dogz serving a menu of Chicago street food classics. E-Dogz will keep regular hours serving street food classics and mongrelized creations onWednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from noon to 3 beginning September 19th, through November 10th. Please note, E-Dogz will not be serving October 26th- 27th. A publication of interviews, essays, recipes, maps, and other ephemera will be available at the opening exhibition and onward. More info here: http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/

5020 South Cornell Avenue Chicago, IL 60615 (773) 324-5520

September 14th, 5- 7:30 pm: A Real Mutha For You at the Afterimage exhibition opening at the Depaul Art Museum. E-Dogz takes a ride north of Roosevelt to serve an original creation, the “Real Mutha For Ya” an Italian beef Mother-in-law. The Mother- in- law is a Chicago style tamale (a factory produced Mississippi style, made with corn meal and ground beef) smothered in chili nestled in a hotdog bun, optionally dressed as a Chicago style hotdog. The Real Mutha For Ya will be a Mississippi style tamale stuffed with home made Italian beef in a bun covered in chili and giardiniera. An original artwork will be on display in the museum as well through Nov. 18th. More info here: http://museums.depaul.edu/exhibitions/upcoming/

935 W Fullerton Chicago, IL 60614 (773) 325-7506

October 14th, 1-3pm: Gringo Authenticity. E-Dogz will be serving up Americanized Mexican cuisine with family and friend’s recipes from my childhood. At Hyde Park Art Center.

Hot Mix is a name with twofold references: On one hand it represents my deep love of Chicago house music, another great south side cultural tradition. The Hot Mix 5 were a DJ crew of the 1980’s who played DJ sets on “Saturday Night Live A’int No Jive” on WBMX. Hot mix is also the name for a delicious fresh giardiniera produced by Pop’s Beef, where I ate my first and subsequent hundreds of Italian beefs during my childhood, always topped with “hot mix”.

E-Dogz operates as a non-profit business model, with foodstuffs available for reasonable donation charges. Proceeds are re-invested in the project.

Posted in E-Dogz, Hot Mix, Projects 2012 | Tagged Chicago foods, E-Dogz, Hot Mix, hotdogs, mother-in-law | 2 Comments

8/9: Cooking Chapulines

By EMAY | Published: August 10, 2012

Yesterday I experienced a culinary milestone, I successfully cooked bugs, grasshoppers to be exact. It was a true pleasure to collaborate with Andy Yang and his Insectology class at Ox-Bow, who collected about 60 grasshoppers over the course of their two week class with hopes that we might prepare something tasty.

I’ve had experience eating these bugs- about seven years ago in a dimly lit cantina in Oaxaca I was scarfing down little piles of various salty snack foods as part of a botana plate. I eagerly devoured a mysterious little tangle of some shredded salty stuff which I only realized was insects after inquiring of my server- chapulines it was! I hadn’t quite yet mustered the courage at that time to sample the fried critters which were ubiquitous at the markets of Oaxaca city. The shredded variety, eaten in low lighting proved to be the perfect gateway. At the market they offer several sizes of chapulines starting with the shreds and working up in size. By the end of the week I was giddily scarfing down the biggest hoppers I could get my hands on. And I always hoped that one day I might prepare them myself. But where to get so many grasshoppers? Employ a team of amateur entomologists working on 115 acres of pristine wilderness, obvi.

I did a little research and read certain info regarding cleaning the grasshoppers, and most sources mentioned removing the wings and legs. I clearly remember eating chapulines with legs intact, so that step seemed unnecessary. After inspecting the product though, the wing coverings and wings seemed tough and fibrous, so I put the class to task of picking off the wings.

I infused a few cups of olive oil with garlic which I used to deep fry the hoppers. It was rather remarkable how quickly they turned to the toasty brown color I remembered from Oaxaca, almost as soon as the hit the hot oil. It seemed as though they should cook through a bit, so I gave them a few minutes. I removed them from the oil with a slotted spoon and blotted off excess oil. Seasoning was as simple as a dusting of my buddy Dave’s habanero salt and a squeeze of lime.

The results were delicious! They fried up very crisp and had a toasty richness and savory note reminiscent of eating shell on crustaceans (which makes perfect sense, right? arthropods they’re all). You may notice the variety of sizes. The larger specimens had more flavor diversity with a slightly bitter aftertaste and some had just a hint of grit, not unlike a shrimp with “mud vain” intact. These bigger guys proved more challenging for some of the kids in the class that were new to eating bugs. I was impressed by the almost 100% willingness and participation by the class in entomphogy (the practice of consuming insects, a term taught to me by Andy). Being very interested in foraged foods, eating grasshoppers seems like an obvious and delicious ingredient and protein source. In this pedagogical context, there was an eagerness amongst the group to eat bugs, but I also can’t help but wonder if culturally we are ready to overcome our prejudices over creepy crawly things. The hardest moment is looking the critters in their little beady eyes, but if they are prepared well, the moment their savory crunch hits our pleasure receptors, we can realize that hey, this is more than just a novelty, this is actually food that is enjoyable to eat. Now only if I had a crew of 12 art students armed with bug nets scouring the woods for me day in, day out. Again, big thanks to Andy Yang and his Insectology class for helping me realize one of my life’s cooking goals!

Posted in Ox-Bow | Tagged Chapulines, Entomophagy, Ox-Bow | 3 Comments

One Hour Nap

By EMAY | Published: July 31, 2012

I found myself in a precarious situation at Ox-Bow this summer. My job is the best- not only do I get paid to live in Shangri-La all summer, but we, the staff are provided with room and board AND a modest studio. Idyllic, right? Actually… after 12 entire summers here I have certain issues that remain sacrosanct to my well being in this intensely social environment. Primarily the need for privacy is crucial for me to maintain my well being at camp. I happen to live in one of the more remote cabins on campus, so when I began to hear rumblings prior to the season opening that a new cabin was to be raised behind my place- my place on the perimeter of campus, as far back as camp goes with only one neighbor to my left- I felt threatened. Fortunately the powers that be (read: my good friends) dodged a bullet on that one and offered to let me use this new cabin as my studio. And of course, what’s my first impulse- to open the space up as a gathering place. Y’all should know by now that I don’t really do studios, preferring instead to let social forms dictate the use function of spaces. And what a weird studio- a cabin?! But I had to ask myself- do I really want to advertise some sort of cafe or party zone type of experience back in my sacred, serene woods? Aw hell to the no. So what to do with this cabin? Use it as a cabin, clearly. I got to thinking about privacy, antithetical to the typical perception of what it means to be social. Yet, sociability might not be possible (or at the very least healthy) without the repast of privacy, a kind of cognizant sleep, aloneness. And here at this art camp- 100 bodies crammed into 20 acres- you can’t even have your morning cup of tea without facing at least a handful of social encounters, sometimes you can’t even relieve yourself in the morning without some sort interaction standing in your way, its maddening. And I, privileged I, get to hide out in my remote bungalow removed from the day to day, a luxury afforded to only a chosen few “senior” staff members. I got thinking about my time as a student here- assigned to a dorm style room with a randomly chosen room mate, sleeping together, eating together, in class with a dozen other people all day, no day off! That’s the real shit. Granted most students are only here for a few weeks as opposed to the entire season. But I do remember how suffocating it could feel without a moment of alone time. So it made perfect sense for me to share the cabin, open it up for allotted time periods during the week, give the public the gift of one hour of privacy. I think folks mostly signed up for the free cookies, though aloneness in such a social world is precious.

Posted in Ox-Bow, Projects 2012 | Tagged Ox-Bow, privacy | 1 Comment

Hors d’oeuvres & Cocktails in the Garden at Iceberg Projects: 5/20

By EMAY | Published: June 4, 2012

"Brandade"

"Crispy Noodle"

"Mac & Cheese"

"Paté"

"Layer Cake"

"Punch"

Locality has become one of those culinary buzzwords. A shift towards an appreciation and stewardship towards the local production of food can not be a bad thing, supporting local economies and connecting us closer to the sources of our food. Yet this preoccupation can become fetishistic, evidenced in a popular skit on the sketch comedy show, Portlandia, which portrays a hipster couple dining at restaurant who quiz their server about the provenance of the chicken offered on the menu to the point where they leave the restaurant to visit the chicken farm to verify its legitimacy. Those with the privilege of education and expendable income, such as myself, are willing to shell out upwards of $4.99 per pound for simple groceries such as apples and potatoes that are grown organic- ally, sustainably, and locally. We know that potatoes grown conventionally soak up off the charts amounts of pesticides and fungicides and that fragile hybrid apples are also doused with more icides than any other fruit. And we pay for it.

I taught in Chicago Public Schools for five years. I was appalled by the diets of my students. At lunch they were served industrially produced, hydrogenated fat laden, pink slime infested sub par junk food. Likely the result of a hefty contract between the school and an industrial agri- giant corporation like Tyson. It sad- dened me even more to hear about what my kids ate for dinner, snacks picked up from 7-11’s and corner liquor stores on their way home from school. Their single parents were likely going to be working late that night. And that neighbor- hood had a plethora of cheap food options available. And so does my neighbor- hood, yet when I’m picking up some beer on my way home from work I routine- ly watch (right around dinner time) mothers buy four or five bags of chips, soda, and a Hostess product for dessert. You may have heard of food deserts, urban neighborhoods lacking basic accessibility to fresh groceries. But even in bounti- ful neighborhoods such as Albany Park, Noble Square, and Roger’s Park kids are still eating Flamin Hot Cheetos for dinner (I’ve seen kid’s on their way to school in the morning eating like this as well). Its not just a question of access- ibility, but also of education. And power structures- the contracts, the incessant marketing, the prolific availability.

I ask this question- is a conventionally grown apple, exposed to pesticides less healthy than a bag of Cheetos? I don’t need to spell out the 30 ingredient list of the former to prove my point. The junk food is definitely more filling for the buck- even at a seemingly affordable .89 cents per pound, a single apple contains 65 calories as opposed to the 25 cent bag of Cheetos with 150 calories. And the liquor store doesn’t sell apples. And the apple doesn’t have a colorful mascot and pervasive PR strategy. I watched my kids throw away apples everyday at lunch. What does it take to get kids to eat apples? And I’m not saying organic $5 per pound apples grown the next county over by farmer John. Conventionally raised produce can serve a purpose- cheap, accessible nutrition.

Eating locally is great, its healthier for those of us that can afford it. But I ask, can local also include a consciousness towards the health of others, our neighbors?

Posted in Food Writing, Projects 2012 | Tagged Food desert, Kool Aid Pickles, Liquor Store | 3 Comments

E-Dogz goes Invasivore with Co-op at the Feast Symposium: 5/5

By EMAY | Published: June 4, 2012

On May 5th Mike Bancroft of Co-op Image and Co-op Sauce and I served a menu of street snacks prepared with Midwestern invasive species.

Mike had visited my “You Art What You Eat” class at SAIC earlier in the spring and though I’ve been a longtime fan of his work as a educator and hot sauce maker, I hadn’t been aware of some of the provocative and humorous approaches to cuisine that he and Anne Kostroski had been serving up at their monthly pop-up dinner parties, The Stew Supper Club. One such meal featured an armageddon menu complete with pigeon which naturally sparked a conversation between us- cooking with invasive species seemed to be an obvious palette for our first collaboration.

Needless to say, cooking with Mike was a true joy, especially in his and Anne’s amazingly new decked out facility at 6338 N Clark. The menu was concocted in true E-Dogz fashion, a call and response of sorts. In my previous experiments, smoking the bighead carp seemed to be the best way to get the meat off its intricate bone structure. Mike mentioned he had plenty of garlic mustard growing in his garden, which would add the right pungent zing to a whipped cheese spread. We had both recently learned that the highly nutritious purslane was also invasive, so Mike pickled some from his garden to garnish the fish, which along with the cheese was constructed on fresh bagels, served open faced. Our second snack featured dandelion greens which I was familiar with from certain Korean dishes. I thought the greens might be interesting to cook in a pajeon, a scallion pancake. Mike had plenty of fix ins to construct a take on gochujang, the traditional Korean fermented chile paste. So we served the pajeon with a Co-op chile mash and house made miso- based hot/sweet/funky sauce.

We set up in front of the Logan Center on the U of C campus next to the Enemy Kitchen food truck. I had been slinging dogs until 2 am the night before on the northwest side, so I was running (typically) late. Unfortunately, in the frenzy of delivering our goods to hunger symposium- goers I did not find the time to snap any pics. I’d like to thank my friend Cathy2 from LTHForum for coming out that day and sharing a few pics of the food. Otherwise, imagine E-Dogz set up in Hyde Park with a fairly healthy line of folks waiting for invasive snacks and Mike and I hustling (with smiles on our faces) on the trailer.