Playing with Potli 14 What Do cooking

Playing with Potli

Stopping to think about it, it’s wild how much things have changed. Some fifteen, twenty-odd years ago, cooking with cannabis was still something entirely taboo, reserved in our minds for college students trying to spice up a Betty Crocker brownie mix, or patchouli-smelling, Cheech & Chongwatching stoners. These days, tides seem to have changed. It would be remiss not to acknowledge the ways that this ‘newfound’ cultural embrace of cannabis has been marred by a history of persecution, propaganda, and injustice. One particularly exciting part about this post-prohibition moment that we’re living through, though, is the way that cannabis brands are driving innovation in the food world. With so many incredible, original brands and products out there, it can be hard to know where to start. A brand that I’ve come to fall in love with since beginning my experimentation with cannabis-infused cooking is Potli. I might be a bit biased, seeing as I’m the overly proud best friend of Potli’s Chief of Staff, Georgia Lewis, but in all seriousness, plug or no plug, upon first use of Potli products, I’m pretty sure it’s impossible not to be intoxicated by the taste, quality, craftsmanship and ethos of Potli provisions! On a regular basis, I find myself reaching for Potli’s awardwinning Dream Honey and the brand’s Sriracha. Speaking to the quality of these products, the honey is locally harvested in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it an especially potent antihistamine when combined with pot’s other healing properties. With 120mg of CBN per serving, CBD’s nighttime cousin, it’s one of the higher-concentration products available on the market, which makes it great for ritualized, and intentional night use. The sriracha on the other hand, which was modified from a family recipe passed down through three generations, is nano-emulsified and therefore much more recreational, with the product’s effects mimicking the instantaneity of a vape. As compared to other product lines, Potli’s ability to isolate and honor the plant’s most important properties is truly unmatched. Moving into the colder months, I invite you to think about ways to ritualize the practice of cooking and eating. Playing with Potli’s products, and infused products in general, has been a massive source of food inspiration for me. If it’s legal where you are, I encourage you to think about trying one of these highlyadaptable and shareable recipes next time you’re seeking peace, relaxation, and calm.

BY SOFIA TORRIENTE PHOTOS BY KARINA MAK

prep 15 minutes cook 20 minutes makes 4 servings

1 8oz brie wheel 2 tbsp Potli Dream Honey 1 tsp herbs de Provence 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes Crackers, baguette, and/or fruit of your choosing

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 2. Remove the brie wheel from its packaging. Score the top of the wheel in a crisscross pattern, being careful to only penetrate the rind (deep cuts will cause leaks of the melted cheese). 3. Drizzle the scored wheel with the honey and sprinkle with the herbs de Provence and crushed red pepper flakes. 4. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the brie is soft and begins to ooze. 5. Serve immediately with fruit, crackers, or bread of your choosing!

Roasted Sriracha Snacking Beans

prep 15 minutes cook 20 minutes makes 4 servings

15 oz can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed 1 tbsp avocado oil 1 tbsp sriracha ½ tbsp Potli Sriracha ½ tbsp Potli Dream Honey 1 tbsp. Lemon juice ½ tsp salt ½ tsp paprika ½ tsp garlic powder Black pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 2. Drain and rinse chickpeas in a strainer. Pour out onto a cutting board lined with paper towels. Pat dry as needed. 3. In a medium bowl, add the siracha, lemon, honey, avocado oil, and chickpeas. Toss well to coat, then leave to marinate for 10 minutes. 4. In the meantime, prepare your spice blend in a small bowl by combining the paprika, salt, black pepper, and garlic powder. 5. Pour chickpeas out onto your lined baking sheet and spread out evenly to avoid overcrowding. Bake for 20 minutes, shaking the pan at the 10-minute mark to ensure crisping on all sides. 6. While hot from the oven, sprinkle seasoning blend over chickpeas and toss well to coat.

Transfer to a plate to cool, the chickpeas will crisp a bit more during this process. 7. Enjoy by themselves as a snack or add as a flavorful topping to a bowl or salad. Enjoy!

What Do Cooking Classes Really Teach You? By Cayla Volandes Illustrations by Victoria Kielb

4onions, minced. Throw it in a dutch oven with olive oil and butter until caramelized. What’s next on the recipe list, Mason?

Recently, my friend Mason and I went to a cooking class together for my birthday. It was a class on FrenchMoroccan cuisine, the perfect fusion allowing me to prepare for my time abroad in Paris this upcoming winter. We hopped in a car, a bottle of rosé in hand, and headed off to our destination with Tikki the chef. We were ready to be illuminated and let someone whisk us away into a realm of culinary fantasy. Downtown Chicago offers a variety of delicious restaurants, but as bustling, busy UChicago students, trips Downtown are a luxury. Cheffing up a meal in Hyde Park saves time and money, and for those who may need an extra culinary boost, cooking classes are the way to go.

Cooking classes first and foremost enlighten us in the delight of cooking’s simplicity. Food Network can delude us into believing cooking is for the professionals, the Martha Stewart and Ina Garten’s of the world. From my times in cooking classes, however, I’ve learned the opposite; cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. I’ve learned how to make pie dough, how to correctly sear meats before putting them in the oven, how to craft spice combinations depending on the dish. All of this is to maximize flavor with minimum time. When the intricacies and specificities of those recipes escape my mind so quickly, then what’s the point of taking these classes? Are they just time fillers, a way to lose some cash while eating a delicious meal?

On the surface, cooking can seem like an individual, robotic activity. Measure ¾ of a cup of this, chop one pound of that, and throw in a pinch of salt. When we think of cooking classes, we imagine them in an open warehouse: sterile, steel tables with ingredients pre-chopped in ceramic bowls, and a big distance between teacher and students. There’s an air of coldness, of detachment. Instructors bark their orders, students scamper around to ensure their filet mignon is grilled just right. Why do our minds go straight to a scene out of Kitchen Nightmares? Why are so many afraid of cooking?

I’ve taken cooking classes with my family at the Institute of Culinary Education on Tuscan Classics, PastaMaking, and the Art of Pastry making. I’ve helped my Aunt Michelle in her gluten-free bakery, measuring chocolate chip cookies and filling pop-tarts. I’ve listened to my mother’s “classes” throughout the pandemic on the most versatile Greek spice combinations. Throughout all of these classes, the element that has stuck with me the most is the communal aspect of cooking. The form of cooking classes themselves — a group activity — demonstrates the shared aspect of the sport. Cooking is made up of people, shared with the people you love: we are happiest and most effective with others. These classes teach us that we need others: to catch a spill when our partner knocks over a glass, to stir the risotto when our partner cleans kale, to flip the burger when our partner chops potatoes. Although it’s in close quarters and intimate, you can learn so much about an individual through those few hours at the counter.

Chef Tikki invited us into her home, a personal and vulnerable space, for my most recent cooking class. We cooked grilled vegetables, french onion soup, almond-crusted lamb chops, and a couscous salad. As we sat together at the kitchen island, legs dangling, Mason, Tikki, and I munched on crostini and talked about the future and past. Our families, our college experience, and our trips around the globe. The lamb chops had to spend some time in the oven after we seared them, after all. Mason and I will most likely never see Tikki again, but she imparted on us not only the best way to make couscous, but her trials coming to America from Indonesia, raising her daughter as a single mother, and moving to Chicago. The stove was sacred, a vault sealed in time.

Cooking classes allow us to strengthen bonds with those we love and form strong ones with those we meet. Some little informational nuggets stay with us too, though… only a little bit of clove is necessary because otherwise, it overpowers.

HOW TO FALL IN LOVE WITH COOKING

by Markis Cheng / photos by Karina Mak

Let’s be honest - cooking is never love at first sight. It takes work, lots of work, and those who tell you otherwise are lying. Although challenging, it is the most rewarding to take a bite of a dish you pour your heart and soul into. Cooking is what gives us energy in the morning. It's the magic that transforms the seemingly normal daily meal into whimsical creations. For something vital to our physical livelihood, we need cooking as much as it needs us. The artist and their paintbrush can gracefully cast away strokes on the canvas of our dinner plates while the muse of our empty bellies are satiated

But like every relationship, none is ever perfect. While cooking may seem like an illustrious affair, realistic relationships with cooking are more like coming home after a long day at work and seeing your roommate left his dirty dishes in the sink for the third day in a row. It’s a chore— a necessary evil that must be conquered three square meals a day. Too many times have I heard, “What am I cooking next?” with the pains of disappointment. While no relationship expert, I have a personal philosophy on how I fell in love with cooking.

CARE

With busy schedules and little energy to spare, cooking can be an uphill battle destined for frustration and takeout boxes of leftovers in the fridge. However, it’s important to frame cooking as an extension of self-care, a way to tell us we love ourselves by nourishing our bodies with what we want and what we need. Nothing is more fulfilling than satisfying that craving, and to do it with one’s own intention in the kitchen is truly an act of self-love. Cooking should bring us a sense of comfort — it is a natural part of our lives after all — knowing will make us feel better after a day that just feels a bit too long.

CONNECTION CREATIVITY

It’s amazing how food is ubiquitous. Cooking allows us to speak a universal language, connecting people from all over the world to share experiences and culture. Flavors, ingredients, and techniques permeate across all time and space, and a shared glance over the same plate speaks more than a thousand words ever could. Cooking exists as the ultimate love language – to tell someone that you made their favorite dish or something they’ve never tried before and say, “I made this special for you.” A meal made by someone else is arguably better than one made on one’s own. While it might be unspoken, cooking brings us closer to the ones we love, and thus, how we fall in love with cooking.

Artists, writers, musicians: they all fear the day of dreaded artist’s block, when ideas run dry, when muses turn to ruin. However, cooking has its perfect muse — our stomachs — that tell us what we want and how we want it. We are free to experiment and play with the medium, our ingredients, to our heart’s content. There is no pressure: in fact, we are encouraged to deviate from the recipe. Our muses are very forgiving and tolerant of our ideas. As with any art, the more we cook, the more we get better. It is a muscle that we must use, and with time and effort, our food will evolve to elaborate canvases, displayed in our minds until it is time to paint, or cook, our next masterpiece.

THE CRESCENT

INTERVIEW AND REVIEW OF CRESCENT CHEF'S TABLE

by Abby Yuhan photos by Jiahe Wang

A college apartment complex is an unlikely location for a fancy, five-course meal. But the Crescent creates a tasting menu experience in the most unexpected of places, run entirely by fellow University of Chicago students.

Arthur Frigo, Neel McDonald, and Chris Elson met on the club crew team at UChicago, and they found common ground in food. All of them learned to cook in high school as a way to help their respective families. Last year, every Thursday, they would take turns making meals for each other in Neel’s apartment. But their competitive spirit also found its way into the kitchen: they would spend every week one-upping the last person’s meal, until finally, they wondered if people would pay for their work. And people did. It began with just their close friends, but slowly grew into somewhat of a mysterious and exclusive weekly event.

I got the opportunity to try the Crescent on a Thursday evening this October. The living room of Neel’s apartment was transformed into a restaurant with three tables, tablecloths, candles, and paintings. When I arrived, Ileona, another member of the Crescent and the resident dessert expert, was waiting on tables, and the two other groups of people in attendance that night were deep in conversation. One couple brought multiple bottles of wine to enhance their meal and enjoy the full BYOB experience.

The first dish brought out was a mocktail, a light, summery drink that reminded me of a really good green juice. The first food course was smoked sturgeon and cucumber noodles in a dill cream sauce, and this dish surprised me the most. The combination of flavors from the smoky fish and tangy pickles complemented by a creamy sauce was a flavor combination that was both familiar yet new. The second course was a turnip taco with crispy pork, asian pear slaw, and gochujang mayo. The influence of the Asian flavors was surprising to me, and it exceeded my expectations through enhancing a simple dish by bringing in other ethnic influences and textures. The third course was a corn soup with gouda foam and toasted couscous, meant to emanate Mexican street corn. I loved the way that they were able to take a typically casual dish and elevate it through texture and presentation while maintaining the original flavors. The fourth course was peri-peri chicken with microgreens, and the tasting menu was topped off with a dessert of my dreams. I was presented with a butternut squash ice cream, butter cake, and toasted marshmallow with a miso caramel, delivering an instant umami flavor to the mouth. Overall, the presentation of every dish was intentional, incorporating simplicity and elegance into every dish: their use of many seasonal flavors added to how much thought was put into each dish. I thoroughly enjoyed the flavor profiles of each dish, combining tanginess, saltiness, and sweet, with flavors complementing each other in a way that I would not expect. The intimate eating experience in Neel’s dining room crafted one with lots of chef interaction.

Speaking to Arthur, Neel, Ileona Rodrigues, and Alex Urqhart (the newest addition to the group) after the meal, I was able to gain a better perspective on why the Crescent began and what their goals are. While none of them want to be professional chefs, their love for food has blossomed into an appreciation for an art form. Between Neel and Arthur’s ridiculous brainstorming sessions at Jimmy’s and their dishes that flip familiar dishes on their head, their vision for food goes beyond the scope of an athome chef. They don’t make a profit off of their work, breaking even every week to keep their food affordable and accessible to the people on campus. They spend six hours in preparation for their weekly tasting menu, and another three hours running the actual restaurant. Because of all of the hard work put in, I was eager to understand how and why the Crescent continues due to their indifference towards making a profit and a culinary career.

In conversation with Arthur, a moment stuck out to me. He emphasized the idea that “food will be with you as long as you live” and that “the best conversations have been over food.” The idea that eating food can be a shared experience between people is the underlying inspiration behind the Crescent. This is a concept that every person experiences: a memorable date over Italian food, a drunk conversation over a slice of pizza, or a huge feast shared with family on a holiday. Anyone can understand the way that food brings people together in the most unexpected of ways, and the Crescent achieves this concept on our very own college campus.