Category: In the Kitchen

Oh my goodness, I love pork fat. Trafe in the extreme, but oy vey, so delicious and soft and rich. Sorry the picture is such crap, but we were mostly done snarfing this one up before I realized I needed to photograph its glistening chestnut-brown fabulousness.
So whilst shopping for noodlefest ’05 (post promised soon, according to tallasiandude) we picked up a piece of pork thigh, bone in skin on, at the Super 88 Market. We never used it for the noodles, so we stuck it in the freezer, and today I didn’t feel like going out to shop so I grabbed it and cast about for recipes. Big Book of Chinese Goodness came through as usual, with two recipes that I combined: Red Cooked Pork and Dong Po Pork (i suspect this of being a version of the Tung Po pork I loved so much in LA).
pork shank (mine was less than 1.5 lbs), with skin, fat & bone
1/3 cup dark soy sauce (this is the thick black sweetish kind)
1/3 cup light soy sauce (ie, normal soy sauce)
2/3 cup shaoxing wine
2 cups water
half a star anise
10 or so peppercorns
5 slices ginger, smashed
3 scallions tied in knots (or 1/4 onion, cut up)
Boil water in a saucepan large enough to hold the pork, and blanch it for about 5 minutes (less than 10). Drain and rinse. Put into a braising pot with the rest of the ingredients, bring to boil, then lower heat to low and simmer covered 3 hours, turning occasionally, until the meat is falling off the bone.
This will give you a luscious mahogany-colored mess of a dish, full of flavorful meat, soft creamy fat, and unctuous skin. Eat it with rice, and lots of vegetables, perhaps some pickles — the meat is so rich, you want clean veggie things to cut through the fat. Also note that this 1.5 lb piece of meat was a paltry $1.20 at the chinese market; granted, it only fed two with no leftovers, but we are *happy* with our dinner, let me tell you.

Made the Sticky Vietnamese Chicken from the current Gourmet, and it was pretty good — but I would put more fish sauce in it next time, as it was a bit mundane in flavor. Perhaps also the lack of lime juice didn’t help; I had to use the last-resort lemon juice from a bottle. Tasty with the pickle-slaw and sriracha that went with it though, and I can’t complain.
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp sugar
1.5 tbsp fish sauce (use more)
1.5 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1.5 tsp sriracha (aka rooster sauce in some circles), or more
1.5 lbs skinless boneless breast or thigh of chicken; i used thigh
Cut chicken into slices — I cut each thigh piece into 3-4 bits — for better grilling. Whisk rest of ingredients together, and marinate chicken 15 minutes. Grill on grill pan or on outdoor grill (recipe says 1 min per side; use your judgement).
Serve with rice, more sriracha, and pickle-slaw (shredded carrot and/or daikon and/or cabbage, in dressing of white and/or rice vinegar, 2 cloves garlic minced & smashed to paste w/ 1 tsp salt, splashes of fish sauce and sherry, and a few tablespoons sugar, plus a bit of vegetable oil).

We ended up with a big pile of grape tomatoes teetering on the edge of spoiling, from a friend who couldn’t figure out where she’d use them up. Happily, the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated had a recipe for roasting grape tomatoes to make a pasta sauce, which had struck me as intriguing.
Works pretty good, and if you ignore their instructions to mix things in a bowl, and just dump everything onto a baking sheet and stir, it’s easy to do and to clean. I would say you need a LOT of tomatoes, so it’s not necessarily economical, but if you can’t stand another day without a fresh tomato dish, this’ll do ya. It would also be pretty nice for company, since it doesn’t take a lot of doing.
lots of grape or cherry tomatoes, halved (2-3 pints)
3 large garlic cloves, sliced thin
olive oil to coat tomatoes well
salt
pepper
red pepper flakes
sugar (if your tomatoes are very sweet, skip this)
splash of balsamic or any wine vinegar
Heat oven to 350F. Dump the halved tomatoes on a baking sheet with the garlic slices. Glug a bit of olive oil over it, sprinkle with salt, pepper, sugar and red pepper flakes to taste. Stir to coat the works. Splash the vinegar over and stir again. (Cook’s said to slice some shallots, mix with some oil and put them on top, but i didn’t have any — it’s fine without.) Roast without stirring 35-40 minutes, until the tomatoes are a little shriveled and soft, but the garlic isn’t yet burnt.
I mixed this with some sliced pepperoni (paprika salumi, really), and reheated it in the oven for 5 minutes, then dumped it onto penne and topped with thin slices of strong provolone. You could mix in all kinds of stuff — artichokes, capers, cheeses, herbs, tuna, whatever you happen to have around. I think it would be pretty nice with a roasted chicken, which you could do in the same oven, and a green salad. We ate it plain, since we are clearing out the fridge this week and don’t have much to work with.

Hungry last night, not a ton in the house, trying to cook economically these days… here’s the delightful dinner we ended up with. Get a supermarket rotisserie chicken, ideally a cold leftover one that’s marked down 2 bucks. Boil some potatoes. Slice up a bit of green cabbage, and chuck into skillet with a hefty drizzle of heavy cream, some salt & pepper, and a pinch of dried thyme, and saute on medium until cabbage is soft and cream is reduced. If you have no cream, use a bit of butter and whatever liquid dairy you do have. Mash potatoes with butter, a bit of cream, and paprika paste (which i got from a friend in Hungary, but I suspect can be approximated with some very spicy paprika or cayenne, a bit of tomato paste and/or butter and/or water). Put the chicken legs and chunks of breast into the cabbage to reheat. And then you have spicy mashed potatoes and creamed chicken with cabbage, which is intensely satisfying, quick to cook, vaguely French, and dead cheap.

My parents froze some turkey for me at Thanksgiving, and I’ve been using it this past week, just to make room for the meyer lemon granita I wish to make with the rest of hedge’s lemons. *drool* And you know, turkey cacciatore is okay, but really just sort of un-thrilling. But just now I made turkey salad out of the last of it for lunch, and I hope I don’t throw out my shoulder patting myself on the back, but damn it was good.
Dice cooked turkey fairly small. Also small-dice scallion, celery and granny smith apple to taste. Sprinkle with a couple pinches of dried tarragon, crushed, a good shake of lemon pepper, some extra fresh ground pepper, and a bit of salt. Mix all of it with equal parts mayonnaise & miracle whip. This can be put on a sandwich, but to make it even better, put it on top of torn romaine & some sliced granny smith apple tossed with olive oil, sherry vinegar and a pinch of salt. Yum!

A salad made of shredded escarole, leftover steamed broccoli, chopped parsley and bits of pretty white goat brie, mixed with Trader Joe’s creamy cilantro dressing and a bit of salt & pepper, makes the prettiest monochromatic dish I’ve seen in a while. Yum. (Sorry no picture; tallasiandude has the camera, but I’m sure you’ll reap the benefits of that shortly.)

I made this recipe for lamb stew, with some modifications for laziness. It came out OK, but mostly it’s interesting for the use of split peas (or lentils as I used) to make the stew into a thick mush texture. I expect this is not news to y’all, but I never did it before, and it is a nice easy idiot-proof method. It would have been a nice savory stew of lamb & carrot & turnip & potato, but the mostly-dissolved lentils made it thick and warming without need of any flour or thickener, which was much nicer for this icky cold rain we’re having. And probably healthier.

Here’s an easy dinner that could almost be dressed up for company with a little clever presentation.
Make garlicky slaw.
Saute an onion sliced into thin wedge-slices until soft & starting to brown. Mix 3/4 tsp coriander, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp salt & some ground black pepper in a dish. Slice either some raw steak or some deli-end roast beef or leftover cooked roast beef into bite-size pieces, and roll these in the spices. Saute in more olive oil until cooked/warmed. Mix the beef and the onions.
Make a quasi-chimichurri by chopping a handful of fresh parsley, mincing a shallot, and mixing together with a tsp of sugar, half-tsp salt, some ground pepper, and enough olive oil & cider vinegar to just float the greens.
Put the slaw on a plate, top with beef & onions, put a big dollop of parsley sauce on it. Good with thick yogurt & toasted dark rye or pita bread. If you made the toast into points & arranged things prettily, it would almost be fancy. As it is, it’s garlicky, vinegary, savory, filling & healthy.
(It’s the lazy-girl’s ripoff of the spiced beef & onions recipe in the current issue of Gourmet, if you must know. I was hungry, I couldn’t be bothered to haul out the food processor for the sauce. *grin*)

Mom & Dad went to a Cuban-themed pig roast in Seattle this past summer, and there they had something called “coconut bread” that was kind of halfway between a dessert bread and an accompaniment to a savory meal. They haven’t (or rather, Mom hasn’t) shut up about it since then. Mom found a likely-looking recipe on line, and we made it last night to go with some pork steaks and turnip greens and carrots. (Pork steaks, btw, are slices from the roast cuts of pork, and seem to be much more flavorful than the wan fat-free chops we get in supermarkets. Keep your eye out for them. [Update: I saw some today in Whole Foods labeled “pork cutlets”. They’re the oblong, floppy-looking ones with a more darkish color than the chops.])
Mom’s right — it’s awesome. This is a very easy recipe, and has a nice moist crumb and lovely coconut flavor (and a very crunchy crust, at least in the crappy convection oven I baked in). It would be a nice change from the usual sweet tea breads on a dessert plate, and it goes well with Caribbean and Southern dinners of salty spicy savory dishes.
Coconut Bread (Haitian)
(from The Complete Caribbean Cookbook by Pamela Lalbachan, via some website my mother found)
makes 2 loaves
4 cups flour
3.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pinch salt
2 c grated coconut (sweetened or unsweetened ok)
2 c sugar (use less if using sweetened coconut or it will verge on over-sweet as mine did)
2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 c evaporated milk or buttermilk
1/2 c butter, melted (calls for unsalted, I used salted with no ill effect)
1 tbsp water
Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg & salt in large bowl. Stir in sugar & coconut. Beat in eggs, milk & butter. Add water, stir well. (NB: midway through adding the wet ingredients, beating with a spoon became pointless — i kneaded & squeezed it with my hands like a pastry crust or dough until everything was well combined. You end up with a very cohesive lump of dough, like a bread dough.) Divide into two equal balls, and press gently into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake 1 hour at 325F. Toothpick in middle should come out clean.

Got the idea from da*xiang to make salami/cheese rollups using Trader Joe’s pizza dough, and finally tried it out on the family this week. Works great! Easy as can be, just buy the 99-cent dough, stretch it out on a board into a rectangle, rub with a bit of olive oil, layer in whatever you got in the way of thin sliced cured meat & cheese — I used oregano salami from Salumi and stanky aged provolone from Tony’s Colonial on Federal Hill in Providence, so this was pedigreed pizza roll — then roll it up the long way, so you get a nice snake of pizza. I layered my fillings closer to one long side than the other, sort of the way you do with makizushi, which worked out well.
I cut mine in half so it fit onto the baking sheet, then rubbed the top with a bit more oil. I tried a bit of shaved cheese on top of part of it, but my parents only have a (seriously crappy) convection oven, so that ended up more burned than useful — you may have better luck with this approach in a sane oven. However, the rest of it was fabu — very very crunchy crust, nice soft savory yeasty insides, all in cute tidy little bite size slices. Perfect for a casual gathering or cocktail party. Yum yum.