Bloomington/Normal Day 3: JJ's

One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Blues Brothers".  In that movie, the part when the brothers go to recruit Matt Guitar Murphy from his verbally abusive wife, played by Aretha Franklin, they go to a really run-down restaurant, resembling a hole in the wall. What I like about that scene, is that Aretha's character refers to their fried chicken as the "best fried chicken in the whole state."  So, very similar, there is this awesome place in Bloomington called Super JJ's.

 
The place is small, has old ceiling tiles, has some old carpet and floor tiles, looks like this:

But there is the kicker: the food is freakin' amazing.  The fried fish is so fresh and clean.  The fries are delicious.  I have ordered their wings before and they are so good they make me and anyone else want to take some "to go" and make the 2 hour drive back home with it.  I ordered something new, which is on that sign in the middle of the counter, near the hot sauce squeeze bottle.  I ordered a chicken sandwich.

It may not look like much, but that fried chicken sandwich was the best chicken sandwich I have ever eaten.  This is a big deal considering that during my teenage years I had lived on a mix of the chicken sandwich from Burger King and Mcnuggets from McDonalds.  It is amazing and perfectly cooked.  An easy 3 out of 5 stars.  Please look them up and go there. 

• 1510 W Market
  Bloomington, IL 61701

Bloomington/Normal Day 2: Destihl

So, Destihl is this brewery/restaurant that had told us the previous day that they only take reservations.  So, I we made reservations and when we got there, we still had to wait for a table.  I'm sure there is a Jerry Seinfeld episode about the purpose of having a reservation and this always reminds me of that.  When I worked at a restaurant and I heard that we had a reservation coming in an hour or even coming at a certain time, I quickly went into action putting a table together.  Under my supervision, I never had a reserved table wait.  I'm not saying wait a few minutes or wait longer, but I mean that the party would come in, tell me their name and their reservation and I would sit them: that easy. 

So, this place does what Schlafly does, for example.  They have a brewery/restaurant combo.  We sat down, ordered our food and was stuck in the curse of slow food and service, which we have been experiencing the whole trip so far then.  So, besides the slow service, what did we get?  The first item was deep fried bacon, tempura style.

Crispy crunchy fried batter on maple bacon.  A 3 out of 5 stars.

I ordered one of their signature dishes: Thai Fried Chicken.

It was a drumstick and breast piece, fried lightly with a thin coating and covered in these Thai flavors, like the flavors in a Phad Thai noodle dish.  It was a 3 out of 5 stars.

So, it was an okay place, not very child friendly and if you are hungry and you want to order, get a beer and get food within 30-40 minutes, then this isn't the place for you.  We also happened to seat in "Spot A" as I had mentioned earlier.

DESTIHL® - Opened November 2007
318 S. Towanda Avenue 
Normal, IL 61761 
P: 309-862-2337  F: 866-381-0349

Russian hamburgers or country fried steak?

While in this Russian, Polish and German cookbook, there was another recipe I was trying: Russian Hamburgers.  Now, what makes this interesting is that this recipe looks like it descended from Wiener Schnitzel from Germany.  Wiener Schnitzel and chicken fried steak, which are almost identical, is basically a meat cutlet, coated in flour or batter and lightly fried in a hot pan.  These Russian Hamburgers are very similar.

What started was I switched out some ground turkey for ground beef, which does change the flavor but makes them less calories.  As per the recipe, I had a bowl of bread crumbs, added milk and mixed them with meat.  I then added the egg and mixed it and created the patties.  I dipped the patties in simple flour and laid them carefully in a hot pan with some extra virgin olive oil.

You cook them for a few minutes on each side and then take them out when they are finished.  I actually under-cooked mine so when they are re-heated for lunches and dinners they come out perfect and not too dry such as some re-heated turkey or chicken items.

These should be served with your favorite condiments and perhaps some cooked cabbage, another recipe from the same cookbook, where you bake some cabbage with some tomatoes and chili powder.

Now, as I have listed up there; it is thought that this recipe derived from Wiener Schnitzel.  A theory is that German immigrants brought this recipe to America where it was turned into a Southern favorite: chicken or country fired steak.  Wikipedia suggests that perhaps it had changed names because of the war with Germany.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_fried_steak

A sage is a sage no matter how wise....

I don't know if that is a real saying or not, but I vaguely remember it as being so.  If you look up sage sayings on google you get things like "that which does not kill you, makes you stronger" and I frankly don't want that in my blog.  (Until now, Conan).

Sage is a great plant and herb.  I have had a sage plant in front of my house for almost 5 years now.  The Romans and Greeks used this herb to ward off evil and eventually it moved to culinary uses.  It has large green leaves and even has purple flowers that grow up from a stalk.  It is an incredible plant and when used, can add flavors to anything.

But...

I did something new to it.  I invented something.  Like all good recipes, I am calm in knowing that if anyone wishes to recreate this recipe and do what I did, that simple nod back or a credit to me would suffice.  First of all, it was a spin on an old classic.  Fried sage leaves are all over the internet as a new and healthy herb-y snack, but what they are missing, is that it is sage leaves cooked in oil.  That's not the right way to do them.  My way of doing them is wayyyyy better.

I did this using some bread crumbs, pepper and 1 egg.

I whisked the egg in a small bowl, and then poured the crumbs into another bowl with the pepper.  I then set the oven to 400 degrees.  Now, technically, they don't get fried in the oven, they get baked.  But also if you cook sage leaves in a bit of oil in a pan till they are crispy, they are not fried either: they are sauteed and then burnt.

So, you coat them with the egg, then make sure all the globs fall off and then dip in the crumbs.  Place them on a greased,  foiled baking sheet and toss in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes.  Out they come like this.  The crunch is a great mix with the sage flavor that is actually not to overpowering.  It does taste awesome with Ranch.

They were so good, that my dad told me that if he ever opened a restaurant, they would go on the menu.  I know that doesn't mean much, but I can say that I did this version of fried sage leaves first.

I am a Highlander...

And so the Highlander was hungry and thirsty and found himself a good lunch meal at the Highlands Brewing company in Kirkwood.  My friend and I decided we needed a drink along with some good food and as we didn't have the hour to wait to get a table at the Bottleworks, we decided to go to Kirkwood and enjoy the Highlands Brewing company.  The place is nice as they do brew their own beers, all for draft.  We first sat down and I tried their 5 beer flight and unlike other places that have beer samplers, I had the opportunity to choose what beers became part of the sampler.

Next we had to have some appetizers.  I ordered the fresh chips and an order of fried greenbeans.

The chips were simply made, good chips where all of them were cooked all of the way through, unlike other bars that serve fresh made chips.  They had some Parmesan cheese on them and they were lightly salted.  They were also served with a Santa Fe ranch sauce.  The sauce really didn't go well with the chips and they tasted great with a few splashes of malt vinegar.  The chips were better than other Saint Louis bars/pubs and I give them about a 3 out of 5 stars.

The fried green beans, I had to get as I never heard of them before, outside of that traditional German casarole.  The beans were coated with the same beer batter that they often use on onion rings and then fried, just so the beans were still crisp and very tender and the coating was crunchy.  They were very good and I would give them a 4 out of 5.

We then ordered and I had a simple burger.  The reason for the burger as while it may have sounded like a Scottish restaurant, there was more Italian things on the menu.  Who goes into a bar for Chicken Marsela?  I ordered their burger, without the cheese, because by default, it was a cheese burger.  I also ordered it medium, so I expected some amount of pink.  When I go it though, it was beyond well done, with some areas on the outside charred.  Normally this is a good thing, but in my experience, places char the outside of a burger when they want to hide something: in this case, the burger had no flavoring.  The burger was okay, as in, it wasn't cooked the way I wanted it and it tasted like a very dried out hamburger.  A 2 out of 5 stars in my book.

Now, overall, I would give the place a 3 out of 5 stars as the only things that were really good were the starters.  My friend ordered a Reuben sandwich and it hardly had any thousand island dressing and tasted okay but wasn't great.