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Paul Kahan never wanted to write a cookbook just for the sake of it. Nor was he keen on the idea of a book that framed him as the sole driving force behind The Publican, his almost decade-old European-inspired tavern, and a beloved Chicago institution. "I'm a huge underachiever," says Kahan, who is one of the city's most prolific restaurateurs. "I didn't want to be involved with a book and have it be in the cutout record bin like an afterthought."
It wasn't until Cosmo Goss, The Publican's chef de cuisine and a Forbes 30 Under 30 star, helped Kahan define the scope that the restaurant's first ever cookbook, Cheers to The Publican, really took shape. It was intended to be about "the people who make us look good," Goss says. The stunning cookbook is an homage to their purveyors, and it also follows the expansion of Kahan's restaurant group across Chicago, looking at the dishes they've cooked along the way.
The book will teach you how to recreate many of The Publican's most beloved dishes, like Ham Chop "in Hay," the Farm Chicken, and steaming bowls of mussels. But you're also given the secrets to one of its most impressive and underrated dishes: the pork pie.
A "ridiculously hearty, quintessentially European peasant food," cold meat pies are popular across the pond, but not so much in the United States. The Publican's pork pie recipe in particular came about years ago in piecemeal, first inspired by a vendor selling meat pies at a Chicago farmers market. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/pork-meat-pie-recipe-how-to-make/food-and-drink
