El Toro Plans Opening at New Neil St. Location This Week

I'd pulled into the parking lot and was running around peering into all the windows at the new location of El Toro Mexican restaurant on Neil Street when I noticed that I was being watched by two fellas at the far end of the lot. Recognizing one of them, I waved, and he waved back. That fella turned out to be Victor Fuentes, one of the owners of the El Toro chain. A little embarrassed, I got back into my car and was going to zip away, but as I got closer to him I rolled down the window and called out that I was just curious as to the planned opening date.

Victor was very kind, and enthusiastic about the opening, and he offered me a tour of the interior. So, we get a sneak preview of the latest incarnation of this popular string of restaurants.

This is the reception area.

If you veer right, you're in the bar.

The walkway on the left takes you into the dining areas, of which there are several.

To date, there are eight El Toros in Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding area (and when I say surrounding area, I mean as close to C-U as St. Joseph and as far afield as Bloomington). This Neil Street store, while new in the sense of inhabiting a new building, is not an addition to the El T empire; the restaurant has simply moved from its previous location, further south on Neil Street, and it will offer the same menu.

The interior looks like it's going to be very attractive, with its warm-colored walls and floors, pretty light fixtures, vaulted wood ceilings, and skylights.

And there's a fireplace in one of the dining areas. Between that, the skylights, and the many windows on two sides, the restaurant will clearly have a very pleasant atmosphere.

There will be patio seating on the restaurant's south side, bordering William Street.

Here's a shot of Victor showing me into the kitchen area from the dining room. The archways are a nice touch.

The restaurant has been designed and built from scratch, as the interior of the building was completely bare. I think the cooks are going to appreciate the shiny new kitchen and appliances.

So there you have it; a preview of the newest link in the El Toro chain. The plan is for the restaurant to open this Thursday, February 3. There's plenty of parking in the lot behind the restaurant, and, after 5 p.m., you can also park in the Bacon & Van Buskirk Glass Company lot across William Street. Both lots are accessible from either Neil or William Streets.

I have to say that I haven't eaten at the El Toros often. We usually go to the one on West Springfield Avenue, but only for breakfast. If you're a fan, what are your favorite lunch or dinner menu items? I'd like to hear what you think is good, as this new El T would be very convenient for us.

El Toro Mexican Restaurant
723 South Neil Street
Champaign, IL
217-378-7807
Serving lunch and dinner daily starting Feb. 3 9 (new opening date per Christine Des Garennes' "It's Your Business" column in Sunday's News-Gazette).

Menus and more information available on the El Toro Web site.

Quick Bite: Bento Box Lunch at Sushi Kame

For $6.99, you have your choice of teriyaki chicken, steak, salmon, or calamari; a small lettuce salad; several pieces of vegetable tempura; two slices of a California roll; rice; miso soup; an amuse-bouche-size noodle and cucumber salad; and hot tea (if you ask for it).

Yes, you read that correctly. The tasty morsels in the bento's five compartments plus noodle salad bite plus miso soup and hot tea—they're all included in the $6.99 price. And just the food in the box alone—the meat and vegetable teriyaki, the tempura, the sushi, the salad, and the rice—makes for a very filling meal.

I paid $1 more to substitute fried rice for the steamed rice that normally comes with the bento boxes. I love steamed rice, but I must say that the extra dollar was well spent: the fried rice was very tasty and it brought added fat to the proceedings, which I constantly crave on these frigid winter days.

Note that bentos are priced higher at dinnertime (and contain more food).

There are also lunch specials starring various Sushi Kame makizushi (sushi rolls). Our friend, and photographer extraordinaire, Ms. B, enjoyed one such special on the same day that I sampled the bento; feast your eyes on the Love Love Roll lunch special on her blog.

The service was quick and friendly. There's lots of convenient parking in the Hill St. parking garage just steps away. No down side to the lunch specials at Sushi Kame! Go give them some love love back.

Sushi Kame
132 West Church Street (between Nitaya and the Art Theatre)
Champaign, IL
217-356-3366
Reviews on Yelp

Thanks to Tim J. for giving me the heads-up on the lunchtime bentos at SK.

Kapusta Pork Recipe from America's Pork "Crock-Star"

I kid you not. There really is a Pork Crock-Star, and she lives in Mahomet. Linda Cifuentes competed in an event called Crocktoberfest in New York City last month, and her recipe took top honors. Competitors' recipes had to come together in 30 minutes or less and could include a maximum of eight ingredients. And of course, since the event was cosponsored by the company that makes Crock-Pots and the National Pork Board, the entries also had to feature the other white meat and be slow-cooker-friendly.

Linda put her own spin on what looks to be a traditional Polish dish of pork and sauerkraut. Keith and I can attest to the fact that it is 100% delicious. And, as stipulated in the Crock-Star contest, super quick and easy to put together. The finished dish was kind of stew-like; warm, hearty, full of vegetables, and very flavorful. I served it one night with boiled potatoes and another night with potato gnocchi (in keeping with the quick-and-easy theme, I didn't make the gnocchi myself; I used the Cucina Viva brand from the Art Mart).

Linda, her NYC adventure, and her winning recipe were featured on chambanamoms in December, so I'll let you go there for the particulars if you want to try her dish. And I think you should.

Linda Cifuentes' Kapusta Pork Recipe

Linda won $5,000, a new Crock-Pot (duh!), and 500 pounds of pork for the Community Service Center of Northern Champaign County (the pork was distributed to families in need).

Congratulations, Linda, and thanks for your tasty, nutritious, and simple recipe. It's come in the nick of time to fortify us so we can survive another day on this frozen tundra.

P.S. Though the recipe calls for 3 pounds of boneless pork loin, you can use other cuts. I had a pork tenderloin and some pork chops on hand, so that's what went into the Crock-Pot for our version. Also, don't tell Linda, but I used Mexican beer instead of German—eeek!

Novel Food Winter 2011: Make Plans to Cook from a Book Now!

For several years now, Simona Carini (whose "pizza beans" were the inspiration for my last post) and I have been partners in an online event that we call Novel Food. We started the event after Simona introduced me to the mystery novels of Andrea Camilleri, because Sicilian food is described so lusciously in those books that we thought it would be fun to try to recreate some of the dishes mentioned.

What started with Camilleri expanded to include lots of different authors and types of literary works, and other novel-loving cooks have taken part in the event. The novel you choose doesn't have to have a food focus, per se; it just needs to inspire you to cook and eat. Your dish can be one that's mentioned in the novel, but it doesn't have to be.

For instance, in one early edition of NF I made calia e simenza, a chickpea and pumpkin seed snack that was described in a couple of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano books and sounded scrumptious (it was). For the last edition, I made muffulettas—not because they appeared in David Fulmer's book Chasing the Devil's Tail but because the story is set in New Orleans. So just let your food-loving self be your guide.

We hope you'll join us for this edition of NF. Here are the rules:

• Cook something that's inspired by a published literary work.
• Do a write-up about the dish and book and post it on your blog or site by midnight (Pacific Time) on Sunday, February 13, 2011.
• Reference the Novel Food event in your post by linking to this announcement or to Simona's. Feel free to use the logo if you'd like to.
• Send a message to me (champaigntaste AT gmail DOT com) or Simona (simosite AT mac DOT com) containing your name, your blog's name, and a permanent link to your post.

We'll include links to all submissions in our roundup posts for the event shortly after Valentine's Day (since Simona and I both host the event, we split the submissions and each do a roundup featuring half of them).

If you don't have a blog, you can still take part. Just send a message to Simona or me by the date mentioned above and tell us about the book you read and what you were inspired by it to cook (you can include a recipe if you like, but it's not mandatory). If you can send a photo of the dish, as well, that's great.

To see examples of past Novel Food roundups, go to Simona's Novel Food Collection page, where she has links to every edition of the event from 2007 to 2010.

A novel that I recently finished will probably be the one I cook from this time: World and Town, by Gish Jen. So, if all goes well, I'll have some tasty Chinese food for you next month.

Have you been reading lately? We'd love to hear your book recommendations, even if you aren't able to join us for this event.

Yours in food and books,

Lisa and Simona

P.S. You might have noticed that we have beautiful new Novel Food logo this year; that's thanks to my esteemed partner, Keith. We thank him for his creativity and for generously donating his time to design it for us.

My Legume Love Affair: Pizza-Inspired Beans

There was a cute piece in the News-Gazette a week or so ago; children were asked something like "Why do you look forward to being an adult?" One of the replies was "so I don't have to eat disgusting food!" Which reminded me of an article that fellow blogger and friend Simona Carini recently wrote for The Journal, a newspaper out of Humboldt, California.

In the article Simona recalls that her mother would admonish her to say "I don't like it" instead of "it's disgusting" when she wasn't fond of a certain food. At that tender age Simona loathed beans, and, as children are wont to do, she expressed her opinion in no uncertain terms.

Were there foods that you hated as a child and would not touch? C'mon—there must be something.  I'll admit that for me it was the tripe and calamari that my mother would sometimes make. The tripe, with its pale and rubbery honeycomb folds, just looked disgusting. And I considered the slick, jellyfish-like squid, with their sacs of poisonous black ink, gross as well.

I'm still working on the tripe thing, but I do like squid now (although breaded and fried is my favorite preparation). And Simona grew to love beans and other legumes. Which brings me back to her article and to the food blog event that I'm contributing this post to. Simona had a great recipe idea, which was to make beans in the style of pizza. That is, to incorporate the flavors normally associated with pizza—tomatoes, garlic, oregano, mozzarella—into a bean dish.

I whipped up a batch of Simona's pizza beans—delicious. And what a whimsical concept, which I think kids (unless of course they're bean haters!) would get a kick out of.

This dish does require a couple of steps, but it's not at all difficult to make. (For a quicker version, you could try using canned beans. But you wouldn't get the subtle flavoring that you do if you cook the beans yourself, and canned beans might turn the dish into a mush-fest. If you happen to try this dish and you use canned beans, let me know how it turns out.) It's also a pretty economical dish. You can eat pizza beans either as a main (we ate ours with rice and salad) or as a side.

In a nutshell, what you do is first cook the beans, let them cool, and drain them. While the beans are cooling you saute onion and garlic in olive oil, add the tomatoes and then the beans and cook for a bit, season, cover with mozzarella and let the cheese melt, and serve. I'll let you go to the Journal article to get the particulars:

Pizza-Inspired Beans Recipe

I used dried Great Northern beans (on sale for $1 per 1-pound bag), dried oregano, and a ball of "fresh" mozzarella that had been pre-divided into many tiny balls (which came in handy for this recipe). The rice I served the beans with was Mexican pearl rice, which is my new favorite (short, plump grains). I procured all of the aforementioned items at Schnucks in Champaign. And, as it was last month that I made the dish, I actually put the last of the farmers' market tomatoes into it (the tomatoes had come from a farm in southern Illinois).

Next time, I'd like to try pizza beans with fried mashed-potato cakes, as Simona suggests in her article (although they were great with lightly buttered rice). If you make these beans, let me know what you think. I just loved them; they really were reminiscent of pizza because they had the same fabulous flavors. Oh, and here's a shot of the beans and rice piled up in quasi haute-cuisine style, just because it's fun to play with your food.

As I mentioned, this is my contribution to the 31st edition of the food-blog event called My Legume Love Affair, started and coordinated by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted this month by Simona on her blog Briciole (see Briciole for the event announcement and details). If you're a blogger and you'd like to take part in the event, there's still time! The deadline for making a legume-centric dish and posting about it is January 31.

Thanks, Simona, for your article and the recipe idea. Ciao for now.

Belgian Waffles Coming Soon to a Street Near You

I'm bursting with excitement over my discovery that a new food-truck venture is in the works. It's called The Crave Truck, and it's going to serve one food item only: Belgian "street waffles." These waffles, as explained on the Crave Truck Web site, are quite different from the American variety: they're made from a yeast dough rather than a baking powder batter, so they're reportedly both thicker and lighter. And they get wonderfully crispy on the outside—something about red-hot cast iron and the caramelization of Belgian pearl sugar. I think I'm feeling woozy.

Though the menu isn't necessarily set in stone yet, you'll have your choice of the default Classic Street Waffle (dusted with confectioner's sugar) or one topped with a flavor enhancer like maple syrup, ice cream, whipped cream, fruits, or Nutella. And you'll be able to enjoy a coffee, hot chocolate, or caramel apple cider with your waffle, should you so desire.

The Crave Truck is a joint venture between Zach Ware and his mother Marisa. Marisa is a baker by trade, and Zach has lots of restaurant/bakery experience—and he's also skilled in working on cars. Which is coming in extremely handy right at the moment, as he's remaking a basic FedEx-type van into a sweet little mobile waffle haus.

You can follow Zach's progress on the Web site.

I know—we always get these trendy foodie things late (think cupcakes, pho, and Korean tacos). But at least we get them eventually. Move over, Kogi! Champaign-Urbana is revving its engines!

Please go right away and follow The Crave Truck on Twitter. Although their waffle show won't be on the road until April, they could use your support now. And then when the operation does start up, and your friends start to tell you about it, you can drily explain that you know all about it and you've been following them for months now.

The Crave Truck will cruise downtown Champaign, Campustown, and downtown Urbana, day and night. You'll be able to keep tabs on the truck's location via Twitter so that you can position yourself accordingly.

I personally think that whether for morning breakfast, afternoon snack, or late-night carb fix, this roaming wafflemobile is going to be a huge hit. And there you have it: The first CT prediction of 2011!

Do you like waffles? If so, what kinds of toppings would be your faves? I'm thinking peanut butter melting into a warm waffle and topped with b-b-b-bacon. And possibly maple syrup as well.

Thanks to Marisa and Zach for allowing me to use photos from their Web site in this post.

Get Cooking with Urbana Adult Education Center Classes

If you've resolved to branch out and try new things, and maybe meet new people this year, I've got an idea for you. The Urbana Adult Ed Center is offering cooking classes starting next month. The classes are a one-evening affair, usually lasting a couple of hours, and here's some of what's on the buffet. The cost is $30 for each one-evening session, and you have to be hungry when you go, because there's lots of good food to eat. I've even taken food home from classes I've attended.

• If you're cooking for one and need some inspiration, you might try the session titled "So You Are Single - Cook!" Instructor Shirley Splittstoesser will show you how to make French toast blintzes, mac and cheese, a tilapia dish, and more. Class meets April 11 from 6 to 8 p.m..
• Instructor Mary Hosier is doing a gluten-free extravaganza on April 20 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.  If you're interested in gluten-free cooking, you're invited to submit your favorite recipes so that Mary can show you how to remake them on the night the class is held. Mary will also share recipes, tips, and local gluten-free resources.
• Local chef Bob Rowe (of Classic Events Catering) is leading an array of classes this semester: a "tiki party," a class on Caribbean treats, a brunch class, and a cocktail-party class, to name just some of them. Bob's classes start in February and run through April.
• Tien Douglas is back with great-sounding sessions this year. In one of her classes you can learn how to make your own butter, ghee, and crème fraîche. In another, she'll teach you some Vietnamese rice dishes. Tien is also leading classes on vegetarian meals and Thai dishes. Her classes will be held in March and April.
• Chef Carlo Anzelmo is hosting classes on Italian cooking. If bruschetta with Gorgonzola and honey, rigatoni with creamy mushroom sauce, pasta with sausage, beans, and mascarpone cheese, lemony white bean and arugula salad, or Amaretto torta sound tasty to you, sign up for one of Chef Carlo's classes (to be held in March and April).
• Finally, for your sweet tooth: Buffy Vance, of Madeline's Confectionery Arts Studio and Gallery in Urbana, is teaching classes on how to make beautiful designer cupcakes and cookies. Buffy promises to demystify cake decorating by showing you how to work with fondant, butter cream, and more so that your cakes and cookies have that professional look. The classes meet in February, April, and May.

You may remember that I reported on Tien Douglas's "how to make pho" class on this blog a couple of years ago. That class was fun and interesting, and the pho was delicious. And my friend Angie wrote a post about a class she took on how to make the Indian cheese called paneer, which is making me want to eat deep-fried cheese right this minute.

These popular foodie classes fill up quickly, so even if the class you're interested in is still a month or more off, you'd be wise to sign up with the UAEC well in advance. You'll find complete descriptions and details on the UAEC Web site. Registering is super easy; if any of the classes I mentioned above have whetted your appetite, you can call the Center at 217-384-3530 to reserve a spot now.