The highly anticipated debut cookbook "The Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes From the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau" (Ten Speed Press, $35) finally drops Oct. 25. Authors, award-winning chefs and co-owners Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo reveal recipes from their corner of Chicago's Logan Square with co-author and opening sous-chef Hugh Amano.
Fat Rice is more than just a restaurant _ literally, with a new Macanese bakery and a Macanese-inspired cocktail lounge. It's essentially a cultural center, "for the study, exploration, and sharing of global Portuguese cuisine." Wait, Portuguese? "Macau was the last established territory in the Portuguese empire; therefore, its cuisine had influences from all of the places Portuguese travelled along the way," the authors write.
But this will never be a dusty history book. The front sports a comics-style illustration that shows an "Attack of the Chilli Clam!" Inside, similar drawings clearly yet gently translate the technique for "Butchering the Surf Clam," which are followed with funny-pages panels walking us through the recipe, step by step. They're the work of illustrator Sarah Becan, whose colorful posters paper the restaurant's storefront windows.
But there are photographs too _ exquisite images of not only the food, but also a documentary snapshot of the deep, emotional research done by Conlon and Lo, captured by adventurer and author in his own right Dan Goldberg.
With such a carefully crafted and inspiring guide in hand, you will truly believe that you too can make the namesake dish, arroz gordo (fat rice) at home. For a platter that serves six to eight of your best friends and family no less.
At the restaurant, the big bowl serves possibly two and is currently priced at $48, so that's temptation enough. Seduced by stories woven with personal and global history, you want to believe.
You may well achieve the glory of arroz gordo. But understand that this one recipe includes ingredients that are 10 whole other recipes. What's even more surprising is that it could have been 12 recipes within the recipe. Because at Fat Rice, they make their own salted preserved duck legs and Portuguese linguica sausage. But, playing along at home, we can just buy them.
So maybe save that one for the weekend. A long weekend.
Meanwhile there are other daily doable dishes, most important the minchi _ perhaps the most beloved and typical home-cooked dish in Macau. "It's a really delicious comfort food of minced ground pork and beef flavored with three soy sauces, Worcestershire sauce and bay leaf," said Conlon.
He and Lo are not ready to rest on their well-deserved critical acclaim. "This year will be a new direction for the restaurant as far as our exploration of what Macanese food is and how it was built and what influences Macanese food and kind of tracing its roots back," said Conlon. "We're going back to Portugal and seeking out small Portuguese producers to bring back into the restaurant."
"And you never know, we might start on another book."
