What’s New

JOBS

Caregiver Responsibilities:Assisting with personal care, Following a prescribed healthcare plan, Ensuring my Mother home is organized according to her needs. Providing mobility assistance may be required, for example helping my Mother with her motorized wheelchair, appointments, grocery. Meal and watch over. Work Schedule is 5 days a week and 5 hours per day. Salary is $26/hr. Contact by email Daniel ([email protected]) for more details.

Software Developers, Schaumburg, IL: Participate in all phases of system development, deployment, configuration, & monitoring including performance and availability, alerting, data integrity, security, & Disaster Recover planning. Working as application performance requirements liaison between the customer & development, operations, & infrastructure teams. Travel/reloc to various unantic locs. Send res to: Rigelsky, Inc. at 120 W Golf Rd, Suite 106, Schaumburg, IL 60195 or email: [email protected]

Operations Manager: Direct, coord activities of employees of constr comp for optimum efficiency to max profits. Plan & develop org policies & goals. Coord marketing, sales, advertising. Comm w/ clients, employees, subcontractors. Resp for marketing campaigns. Plan/ manage business budget. Analyze financials. Prep contracts, proposals & estimates for constr bids. Prep docs for accountant, 2 yrs exp as operations manager or in any business management related position. HS. Must speak Polish. Res: All Concrete Chicago, Inc. 9707 S 76th Ave, Bridgeview IL 60455

Electronic Interconnect Corporation seeks Vice President – Global Development for Elk Grove Village, IL, to develop marketing strategies to enhance revenue growth. Bachelor’s in Business Admin/related field +3yrs. exp req’d. Skills Req’d: Creating marketing strategies targeting Indian & Southeast Asian Markets; exp. in client facing roles; creating & administering internat’l sales mgmt processes; sales analytics; mgmt of channel partner networks; identifying & screening targets; structuring negotiation; internat’l business agrmnt mgmt. Travel to various client sites as needed. Up to 20% travel req’d. Send resume to: [email protected]. Ref: RR, 2700 West Touhy Ave, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007.

DePaul University seeks Professional Lecturers for Chicago, IL location to teach courses to grad & undergrad students in the Dep of Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse. Ph.D. or ABD in English/related field req’d. Req’s: submit a cover letter, CV, teaching statement, & research statement. Send resume to: J. Bokser, 1 East Jackson, Chicago, IL 60604

Des Plaines Clinical Lab, Inc. d/b/a NTL Laboratories seeks an Medical Laboratory Technologist. Mail resume to 8833 Gross Point Road, Suite 308, Skokie, IL.

Federal Home Loan Bank Chicago is seeking a Sr. Credit Risk Analyst in Chicago, IL. Lead the assessment, development and redesign of processes; serve as a general technology resource and advisor to the Credit team on the ways data extraction or analysis tools can be useful to improve analysis, presentation, or communication of information. Blended operating model, employees can work from home 3 days per week and must live within commuting distance of office. Apply on-line at fhlbc.com/careers.

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning.com

RENTALS & REAL ESTATE

Remodeled 1Bed/1Bath garden apt, West Rogers ParkNew Bathroom, Kitchen, Floors, Appliances, Laundry Room on Premises, Heat Included. Near LSD and Edens/Kennedy. 5845 N. Maplewood. 7732933399

2br – 1400ft – Rent Free Apt for Senior (Evanston)Do you have a senior mother (or yourself) who would like to share a large, two-bedroom apartment (private bathroom) with women who is blind and elderly (my mother). Most of the home care hours are covered by caregivers and family, but we need someone to be at the apartment overnight (9PM to 9AM) and be in the apartment at least 1-5PM daily. She doesn’t need overnight care, just someone home in case of emergency. Female, Background check, proof of vaccination. Non-smoker. [email protected]

RESEARCH

Have you had an unwanted sexual experience since age 18?Did you tell someone in your life about it who is also willing to participate? Women ages 18+ who have someone else in their life they told about their experience also willing to participate will be paid to complete a confidential online research survey for the Women’s Dyadic Support Study. Contact Dr. Sarah Ullman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Criminology, Law, & Justice Department at [email protected], 312-996-5508. Protocol #2021-0019.

ADULT SERVICES

Danielle’s Lip Service, Erotic Phone Chat. 24/7. Must be 21+. Credit/Debit Cards Accepted. All Fetishes and Fantasies Are Welcomed. Personal, Private and Discrete. 773-935-4995

WORK IN ADULT FILMSNo Experience, All Types, Sizes & Races!Call/Text AdultTalentX.com: 1-800-846-6180

Want to add a listing to our classifieds?

See classified advertising information at chicagoreader.com/ads.

Read More

Nobody makes eating fresh pasta at home easier than Tony Quartaro. Since I wrote about him last summer, the former Formento’s chef installed his roving fresh pasta delivery service Gemma Foods into a permanent Grand Avenue brick-and-mortar. Now you can watch your farro mafaldine rolled out and cut in the window, take it home, and plate it up in your own kitchen with creamy mushroom ragù, just like Chef Quartaro.

Maybe not exactly like him. Before he led pasta programs at the Bristol, Balena, and Formento’s, he paid his dues in the San Francisco pasta palace A16, so you might have a bit to learn. And sure, you can get canestri alla vodka or bucatini cacio e pepe plated up hot at Gemma’s stall at Time Out Market, but the man is busy bringing pasta to all the people. He delegates that.

There’s only one time and place where Quartaro’s going to personally spool out a tangle of collard green linguine with fresh razor clams in a pool of warming poblano brodo for you alone, and that’s at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn.

Corretto. This October 3, Quartaro takes over the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn with a seasonal menu that demonstrates the wide breadth of Gemma’s fresh pasta portfolio.

But you’ll want to start with Gemma’s “famous meatballs” with giardiniera focaccia. “A16 was like ‘Meatball University,’” says Quartaro. “‘Ball So Hard University,’ so to speak.”

He’s bringing tortelloni stuffed with koginut squash from Frillman Farms, in sage brown butter sauce and balsamico, showered with squash seeds prepped in the style of the crumbled amaretti cookies you’d eat this dish with in Tuscany. He’s gently braising chuck flap to pull and roll up in the braciole with caciocavallo, Sicilian oregano, and chile bread crumbs; and he’s smoking Nichols Farm Yukon Gold potatoes to fill the Sardinian-style culurgione hole in your heart, with lemon and sage cream sauce (“You can just tip that back and drink it,” he says). And then there’s that spicy take on linguine in clam sauce, sprinkled with lemon bread crumbs, the poor man’s Parmigiano. Maybe you’ll even take home a pasta kit or two, to coax out your inner Tony.

It’s an evening of exquisite pastabilities starting at 5 PM this Monday at 4100 N. Kedzie. Limited walk-in orders will be available, but secure your full load of fresh carbs now by preordering.

Meantime, feast your eyes on the full fall Monday Night Foodball schedule, now with Laos to Your House.

Kirk WilliamsonRead More

JOBS

Caregiver Responsibilities:Assisting with personal care, Following a prescribed healthcare plan, Ensuring my Mother home is organized according to her needs. Providing mobility assistance may be required, for example helping my Mother with her motorized wheelchair, appointments, grocery. Meal and watch over. Work Schedule is 5 days a week and 5 hours per day. Salary is $26/hr. Contact by email Daniel ([email protected]) for more details.

Software Developers, Schaumburg, IL: Participate in all phases of system development, deployment, configuration, & monitoring including performance and availability, alerting, data integrity, security, & Disaster Recover planning. Working as application performance requirements liaison between the customer & development, operations, & infrastructure teams. Travel/reloc to various unantic locs. Send res to: Rigelsky, Inc. at 120 W Golf Rd, Suite 106, Schaumburg, IL 60195 or email: [email protected]

Operations Manager: Direct, coord activities of employees of constr comp for optimum efficiency to max profits. Plan & develop org policies & goals. Coord marketing, sales, advertising. Comm w/ clients, employees, subcontractors. Resp for marketing campaigns. Plan/ manage business budget. Analyze financials. Prep contracts, proposals & estimates for constr bids. Prep docs for accountant, 2 yrs exp as operations manager or in any business management related position. HS. Must speak Polish. Res: All Concrete Chicago, Inc. 9707 S 76th Ave, Bridgeview IL 60455

Electronic Interconnect Corporation seeks Vice President – Global Development for Elk Grove Village, IL, to develop marketing strategies to enhance revenue growth. Bachelor’s in Business Admin/related field +3yrs. exp req’d. Skills Req’d: Creating marketing strategies targeting Indian & Southeast Asian Markets; exp. in client facing roles; creating & administering internat’l sales mgmt processes; sales analytics; mgmt of channel partner networks; identifying & screening targets; structuring negotiation; internat’l business agrmnt mgmt. Travel to various client sites as needed. Up to 20% travel req’d. Send resume to: [email protected]. Ref: RR, 2700 West Touhy Ave, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007.

DePaul University seeks Professional Lecturers for Chicago, IL location to teach courses to grad & undergrad students in the Dep of Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse. Ph.D. or ABD in English/related field req’d. Req’s: submit a cover letter, CV, teaching statement, & research statement. Send resume to: J. Bokser, 1 East Jackson, Chicago, IL 60604

Des Plaines Clinical Lab, Inc. d/b/a NTL Laboratories seeks an Medical Laboratory Technologist. Mail resume to 8833 Gross Point Road, Suite 308, Skokie, IL.

Federal Home Loan Bank Chicago is seeking a Sr. Credit Risk Analyst in Chicago, IL. Lead the assessment, development and redesign of processes; serve as a general technology resource and advisor to the Credit team on the ways data extraction or analysis tools can be useful to improve analysis, presentation, or communication of information. Blended operating model, employees can work from home 3 days per week and must live within commuting distance of office. Apply on-line at fhlbc.com/careers.

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning.com

RENTALS & REAL ESTATE

Remodeled 1Bed/1Bath garden apt, West Rogers ParkNew Bathroom, Kitchen, Floors, Appliances, Laundry Room on Premises, Heat Included. Near LSD and Edens/Kennedy. 5845 N. Maplewood. 7732933399

2br – 1400ft – Rent Free Apt for Senior (Evanston)Do you have a senior mother (or yourself) who would like to share a large, two-bedroom apartment (private bathroom) with women who is blind and elderly (my mother). Most of the home care hours are covered by caregivers and family, but we need someone to be at the apartment overnight (9PM to 9AM) and be in the apartment at least 1-5PM daily. She doesn’t need overnight care, just someone home in case of emergency. Female, Background check, proof of vaccination. Non-smoker. [email protected]

RESEARCH

Have you had an unwanted sexual experience since age 18?Did you tell someone in your life about it who is also willing to participate? Women ages 18+ who have someone else in their life they told about their experience also willing to participate will be paid to complete a confidential online research survey for the Women’s Dyadic Support Study. Contact Dr. Sarah Ullman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Criminology, Law, & Justice Department at [email protected], 312-996-5508. Protocol #2021-0019.

ADULT SERVICES

Danielle’s Lip Service, Erotic Phone Chat. 24/7. Must be 21+. Credit/Debit Cards Accepted. All Fetishes and Fantasies Are Welcomed. Personal, Private and Discrete. 773-935-4995

WORK IN ADULT FILMSNo Experience, All Types, Sizes & Races!Call/Text AdultTalentX.com: 1-800-846-6180

Want to add a listing to our classifieds?

See classified advertising information at chicagoreader.com/ads.

Read More

Nobody makes eating fresh pasta at home easier than Tony Quartaro. Since I wrote about him last summer, the former Formento’s chef installed his roving fresh pasta delivery service Gemma Foods into a permanent Grand Avenue brick-and-mortar. Now you can watch your farro mafaldine rolled out and cut in the window, take it home, and plate it up in your own kitchen with creamy mushroom ragù, just like Chef Quartaro.

Maybe not exactly like him. Before he led pasta programs at the Bristol, Balena, and Formento’s, he paid his dues in the San Francisco pasta palace A16, so you might have a bit to learn. And sure, you can get canestri alla vodka or bucatini cacio e pepe plated up hot at Gemma’s stall at Time Out Market, but the man is busy bringing pasta to all the people. He delegates that.

There’s only one time and place where Quartaro’s going to personally spool out a tangle of collard green linguine with fresh razor clams in a pool of warming poblano brodo for you alone, and that’s at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn.

Corretto. This October 3, Quartaro takes over the kitchen at the Kedzie Inn with a seasonal menu that demonstrates the wide breadth of Gemma’s fresh pasta portfolio.

But you’ll want to start with Gemma’s “famous meatballs” with giardiniera focaccia. “A16 was like ‘Meatball University,’” says Quartaro. “‘Ball So Hard University,’ so to speak.”

He’s bringing tortelloni stuffed with koginut squash from Frillman Farms, in sage brown butter sauce and balsamico, showered with squash seeds prepped in the style of the crumbled amaretti cookies you’d eat this dish with in Tuscany. He’s gently braising chuck flap to pull and roll up in the braciole with caciocavallo, Sicilian oregano, and chile bread crumbs; and he’s smoking Nichols Farm Yukon Gold potatoes to fill the Sardinian-style culurgione hole in your heart, with lemon and sage cream sauce (“You can just tip that back and drink it,” he says). And then there’s that spicy take on linguine in clam sauce, sprinkled with lemon bread crumbs, the poor man’s Parmigiano. Maybe you’ll even take home a pasta kit or two, to coax out your inner Tony.

It’s an evening of exquisite pastabilities starting at 5 PM this Monday at 4100 N. Kedzie. Limited walk-in orders will be available, but secure your full load of fresh carbs now by preordering.

Meantime, feast your eyes on the full fall Monday Night Foodball schedule, now with Laos to Your House.

Kirk WilliamsonRead More

Read More

The invasive fish formerly known as Asian carp was renamed “copi” earlier this summer by the Department of Natural Resources. Short for “copious,” the state hopes that a vaguely Mediterranean-sounding rebranding will entice consumers to eat more of the bony, obscenely prolific, freshwater filter feeders that have outcompeted native species for all that good Illinois River algae and zooplankton since the aughts—after they’d apparently escaped the southern catfish and water treatment ponds they were imported to clean up.

The state’s Choose Copi campaign brought in the big guns, recruiting chefs like Brian Jupiter of Ina Mae Tavern and Frontier, Beverly Kim of Parachute and Wherewithall, and Paul Virant of Gaijin and Vie, to extol the firm, clean-tasting, healthy flesh of the leaping leviathans.

It’s not the first attempt to redeem the erstwhile Asian carp, a group of four surface swimming species—silver, bighead, black, and grass—whose nominal association with their whiskered, bottom-feeding, muddy-flavored cousins have kept them out of markets and restaurants, just as much as their obstinate, unfilet-able bone structure.

Neither factor has ever been an issue in southeast Asia where they’re a staple—valued additions to hot pots and soup bowls, either chopsticked whole or emulsified into cakes and fish balls.

That was Jaren Zacher’s thinking a year ago when he embarked on an independent R&D project in his home kitchen, looking for a “holistic” approach toward eating the fish into oblivion, or at least environmental manageability. “It doesn’t present as a filet really well just because of the Y bones and general structure of the fish,” says Zacher, who runs a copi-focused bar snack pop-up called Chả Cá Nuggs. “A lot of Americans aren’t exposed to fish that hasn’t been fileted. But I come from a Jewish background. I’ve been eating gefilte fish since I was a kid. I think that’s why I felt comfortable going into it like this. I looked at where these fish were originally coming from—southwestern China, Thailand, Vietnam—and what they do there is they use it in fish cakes. So, ‘Ok, let’s look at it that way.’”

Zacher, who’s 28, has worked in restaurants since he was teenager, mostly in the front of the house—and for a two-year stint in Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’s accounting department. He became interested in the carp problem when their potential threat to the Great Lakes made headlines about a dozen years ago. “I tuned in on that, and it was something always in the back of my mind. Like, there’s definitely a way to solve this problem from a food perspective. But I was a young twentysomething; I didn’t really have the experience to figure out what that was.”

Zacher found his way into the kitchen often enough. As the lead food runner and expeditor for LEYE’s rotating chef concept Intro, he volunteered to stage in the kitchen throughout its one-year-and-change run. When he took off for Australia in 2018, he landed a stint in the kitchen of Josh Niland, the Sydney-based chef at the forefront of sustainable fish cookery. “He’s all about using as much of the fish as possible—kind of that nose-to-tail mentality—he uses offal; he makes charcuterie. It made me reevaluate how I was looking at copi.”

When Zacher returned home last fall he cleaned out the limited minced Asian carp reserves at Dirk’s Fish and then reached out to the DNR who pointed him in the direction of Roy Sorce of downstate Peoria’s Sorce Freshwater Company, a “family-owned purveyor of tasty invasive fish.”

“He works directly with a cooperative of fishermen who fish the Peoria Pool of the Illinois River. He’s got a processing facility that backs up to the river down there. The guys pull the fish right out of the water and drive their boats right up to the facility. They’re processed straightaway, so it’s a quick, clean, fresh process. You don’t get any of the stagnation that can happen with river and lake fish.”

Zacher started out with small amounts of Sorce’s minced copi, and began experimenting with binders, seasonings, and batters until he settled on a standard fish cake base he was happy with, emulsifying the fish with cassava flour and cornstarch for elasticity and chew; seasoning it with onion and garlic powder, salt and pepper, and bit of paprika; and dredging McNugget-sized cakes in cornmeal and rice flour tempura before deep frying.

He named his concept for Hanoi’s storied turmeric-seasoned freshwater fish dish, Chả Cá Thăng Long, and incorporated a magnolia blossom into his logo to refer to New Orleans and the undersung cross-cultural Vietnamese-Cajun cuisine that emerged along the Gulf coast starting in the 80s. “I wanted to pay service to the food traditions I was pulling from without appropriating. I see the fish as cross-cultural. The preparation is inspired by where the fish are from, and the flavor profile demonstrates how it could adapt here. I’m trying to present both angles to show how much of a blank slate copi can be.”

He debuted his deep-fried copi nuggs at a pop-up at Kimski in June, served with a handful of vegan dipping sauces: miso BBQ, honey mustard, lime cilantro crema, and remoulade. “It surprises a lot of people that I’m making a vegan remoulade. It’s not like I need to make vegan sauces, but I want to showcase this fish as much as I possibly can.”

He offered a trio of po’boys too, built on Ba Le bread, which included a riff on a banh mi, with a variant steamed and fried fish cake; a take on a traditional New Orleans oyster po’boy subbing in carp nuggs; and a nod to the McRib, with pickles, onions, and barbecue sauce.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” he says. “This is definitely a one-man show, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.” But the feedback was encouraging enough that he followed up with two more pop-ups at Ludlow Liquors in August and September. His fourth is this October 10th at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. More on that later.

For now Zacher’s not trying to get into food manufacturing or restaurant supply. His efforts are purely public-spirited.

“This is a self-funded brand awareness campaign,” he says. “Maybe I’m a little too altruistic about it all, but I think it’s a good quality fish, and I’ve got no problem putting my time, sweat, and effort behind it to get more people to try it out.”

Read More

The invasive fish formerly known as Asian carp was renamed “copi” earlier this summer by the Department of Natural Resources. Short for “copious,” the state hopes that a vaguely Mediterranean-sounding rebranding will entice consumers to eat more of the bony, obscenely prolific, freshwater filter feeders that have outcompeted native species for all that good Illinois River algae and zooplankton since the aughts—after they’d apparently escaped the southern catfish and water treatment ponds they were imported to clean up.

The state’s Choose Copi campaign brought in the big guns, recruiting chefs like Brian Jupiter of Ina Mae Tavern and Frontier, Beverly Kim of Parachute and Wherewithall, and Paul Virant of Gaijin and Vie, to extol the firm, clean-tasting, healthy flesh of the leaping leviathans.

It’s not the first attempt to redeem the erstwhile Asian carp, a group of four surface swimming species—silver, bighead, black, and grass—whose nominal association with their whiskered, bottom-feeding, muddy-flavored cousins have kept them out of markets and restaurants, just as much as their obstinate, unfilet-able bone structure.

Neither factor has ever been an issue in southeast Asia where they’re a staple—valued additions to hot pots and soup bowls, either chopsticked whole or emulsified into cakes and fish balls.

That was Jaren Zacher’s thinking a year ago when he embarked on an independent R&D project in his home kitchen, looking for a “holistic” approach toward eating the fish into oblivion, or at least environmental manageability. “It doesn’t present as a filet really well just because of the Y bones and general structure of the fish,” says Zacher, who runs a copi-focused bar snack pop-up called Chả Cá Nuggs. “A lot of Americans aren’t exposed to fish that hasn’t been fileted. But I come from a Jewish background. I’ve been eating gefilte fish since I was a kid. I think that’s why I felt comfortable going into it like this. I looked at where these fish were originally coming from—southwestern China, Thailand, Vietnam—and what they do there is they use it in fish cakes. So, ‘Ok, let’s look at it that way.’”

Zacher, who’s 28, has worked in restaurants since he was teenager, mostly in the front of the house—and for a two-year stint in Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’s accounting department. He became interested in the carp problem when their potential threat to the Great Lakes made headlines about a dozen years ago. “I tuned in on that, and it was something always in the back of my mind. Like, there’s definitely a way to solve this problem from a food perspective. But I was a young twentysomething; I didn’t really have the experience to figure out what that was.”

Zacher found his way into the kitchen often enough. As the lead food runner and expeditor for LEYE’s rotating chef concept Intro, he volunteered to stage in the kitchen throughout its one-year-and-change run. When he took off for Australia in 2018, he landed a stint in the kitchen of Josh Niland, the Sydney-based chef at the forefront of sustainable fish cookery. “He’s all about using as much of the fish as possible—kind of that nose-to-tail mentality—he uses offal; he makes charcuterie. It made me reevaluate how I was looking at copi.”

When Zacher returned home last fall he cleaned out the limited minced Asian carp reserves at Dirk’s Fish and then reached out to the DNR who pointed him in the direction of Roy Sorce of downstate Peoria’s Sorce Freshwater Company, a “family-owned purveyor of tasty invasive fish.”

“He works directly with a cooperative of fishermen who fish the Peoria Pool of the Illinois River. He’s got a processing facility that backs up to the river down there. The guys pull the fish right out of the water and drive their boats right up to the facility. They’re processed straightaway, so it’s a quick, clean, fresh process. You don’t get any of the stagnation that can happen with river and lake fish.”

Zacher started out with small amounts of Sorce’s minced copi, and began experimenting with binders, seasonings, and batters until he settled on a standard fish cake base he was happy with, emulsifying the fish with cassava flour and cornstarch for elasticity and chew; seasoning it with onion and garlic powder, salt and pepper, and bit of paprika; and dredging McNugget-sized cakes in cornmeal and rice flour tempura before deep frying.

He named his concept for Hanoi’s storied turmeric-seasoned freshwater fish dish, Chả Cá Thăng Long, and incorporated a magnolia blossom into his logo to refer to New Orleans and the undersung cross-cultural Vietnamese-Cajun cuisine that emerged along the Gulf coast starting in the 80s. “I wanted to pay service to the food traditions I was pulling from without appropriating. I see the fish as cross-cultural. The preparation is inspired by where the fish are from, and the flavor profile demonstrates how it could adapt here. I’m trying to present both angles to show how much of a blank slate copi can be.”

He debuted his deep-fried copi nuggs at a pop-up at Kimski in June, served with a handful of vegan dipping sauces: miso BBQ, honey mustard, lime cilantro crema, and remoulade. “It surprises a lot of people that I’m making a vegan remoulade. It’s not like I need to make vegan sauces, but I want to showcase this fish as much as I possibly can.”

He offered a trio of po’boys too, built on Ba Le bread, which included a riff on a banh mi, with a variant steamed and fried fish cake; a take on a traditional New Orleans oyster po’boy subbing in carp nuggs; and a nod to the McRib, with pickles, onions, and barbecue sauce.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” he says. “This is definitely a one-man show, and I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.” But the feedback was encouraging enough that he followed up with two more pop-ups at Ludlow Liquors in August and September. His fourth is this October 10th at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. More on that later.

For now Zacher’s not trying to get into food manufacturing or restaurant supply. His efforts are purely public-spirited.

“This is a self-funded brand awareness campaign,” he says. “Maybe I’m a little too altruistic about it all, but I think it’s a good quality fish, and I’ve got no problem putting my time, sweat, and effort behind it to get more people to try it out.”

Read More

Read More

The Chicago Blackhawks will be a terrible team in 2022-23. The main focus of the year will be following the prospect’s journeys throughout all the leagues in the world. A few of them have been on display in the preseason already.

On Wednesday night, the Blackhawks headed up to Michigan to take on the Detroit Red Wings. It was a great game for them as they beat them 4-2. Chicago mostly used their non-NHL players and went up against a Detroit Red Wings team with a lot of regulars playing.

The highlight of the game was the second goal for Chicago. At the time of the game, it put them ahead 2-1 which made it look like they actually could compete in this game which they did. The goal was scored by Lukas Reichel and assisted by Kevin Korchinski.

For the Blackhawks, this is the future of the team as of right now. They are certainly hoping to add a big piece of their future in the 2023 NHL Draft but these two are also very important.

The Chicago Blackhawks had a nice look into the future on Wednesday night.

Korchinski is a very gifted defenseman that can make amazing plays using his speed and offensive abilities. He found Lukas Reichel for a breakaway here and he didn’t miss on his opportunity. It was amazing to see these two connect for a great chance and a goal.

Korchinski is probably going to be sent back to the WHL soon. He may get into a few NHL games to start but he will play in no more than nine games so they don’t burn a year on his entry-level deal yet. He will dominate all season there and be ready for when the team needs him.

As for Reichel, the AHL is an option for him which can’t be said for Korchinski. Reichel already burned a year of his deal already, however, so there is no reason for him to play anywhere else but Chicago.

He is one of their nine best forwards so he should be playing. There will be growing pains but that is all a part of it. He has the skills to be a part of this team and help them grow back into a playoff team.

Aside from this beautiful goal, there is another young player to be excited about and that is goaltender Arvid Soderblom. He might be the best goalie in the organization and that means he could be the full-time starter one day.

However, there is absolutely no reason for him to play behind this horrid team in 2022-23. It would be in his best interest to play for the Rockford Ice Hogs with a few NHL appearances in there. On Wednesday, with his brother skating for the other team, he made 31 saves on 33 shots.

The Blackhawks have Alex Stalock and Petr Mrazek to take on the workload this season. That also probably makes them a worse team and we know that deep down inside, the lottery is the Blackhawks’ biggest concern this year.

All of these young guys are going to make 2022-23 worth it in the end. They didn’t have as bright of a future going into the offseason as they do right now which speaks to Kyle Davidson’s work as a GM so far. This win over Detroit was a look into the future and that’s exciting.

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CREDIT: ThoughtPoet

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