Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Slow-simmered pork shoulder and spicy BBQ sauce - what could be better?!? A winning lottery ticket, perhaps, or maybe a split of champagne at Fouquet's on the Champs Elysées... but a dreary wet Friday evening in Strafford?!? Pulled pork sandwiches win hands down.
Victor put the pork into the oven at 275° for about 3 hours while I was at work. He used a heavy caserole with a tight-fitting lid. The pork shoulder was seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic - very basic - and he then added a couple of cups of water to the pot. Closed it tight and into the oven.
When I got home, it was fall-apart-tender. I drained the pot, shredded the pork, and added a bottle of Gates Kansas City BBQ Sauce. I popped it back into the oven for another hour just to get it sassy.
And sassy it was!
I seriously thought about making a BBQ sauce but remembered I still had one bottle of the Gates sauce in the cupboard. Gates is definitely one of the better bottled sauces available. "Tomatoes, vinegar, salt, sugar, celery, garlic, spices, and pepper." Can't beat the ingredients.
I baked off a couple of ciabatta rolls and added some Red Dragon cheese. Good ol' Wikipedia states: Y Fenni is a variety of Welsh cheese, consisting of Cheddar cheese blended with mustard seed and ale. It takes its name from the Welsh language name of Abergavenny, a market town in Monmouthshire, south east Wales. Y Fenni, when coated in red wax, is also known as 'Red Dragon', a name derived from the dragon on the Flag of Wales. It really is tasty. It has a good mustard-y tang and the ale undertones are just discernible enough to be complimenting to the cheddar and the mustard seed.
The pork came out great and I'm glad I resisted making a sauce. Sometimes a classic sauce just works best and in this case, it worked perfectly with the cheese.
Leftovers
Yes, we eat leftovers.
More times than not, Victor has them for lunch, but once in a while we start getting a bit of a backlog and it's time to go to work.
I've been craving the pasta dish Victor made Saturday and there was still risotto from Friday. Throwing food away is not an option at our house.
The pasta was easy. I heated it up just as Victor did originally. Sauce in the pan, laid out the slices, a bit more sauce on top, cover, and into the oven.
The risotto took a bit more work.
I knew I wanted risotto cakes but they can be a pain to make. Risotto doesn't necessarily cooperate when one tries to form it into patties. I used a scoop and formed the patties, dredged them in flour, dipped in egg, and then coated in bread crumbs.
True to form, they didn't react well to the initial flour, but handled the subsequent egg-dip and bread crumbs like a pro.
I then sauteed them ("sauteed" sounds so much nicer than "fried") in olive oil in a nice, hot skillet. When they were done I put them into a nice hot oven to make sure they were nicely heated through.
It was just what I wanted. I could eat that pasta seven days a week, and the risotto cakes were perfectly crunchy on the outside and perfectly creamy on the inside.
Perfect for what has been a cold, damp day.
Risotto cakes make a great side dish and really aren't that difficult to make. I purposely didn't add anything to the flour or the bread crumbs. I just wanted the crunch on the outside - I didn't want to take away or compete with the risotto filling.
Give 'em a try next time you have some leftover risotto!
The Ultimate Burger
I pulled a small piece of top round steak out of the freezer this morning without a clear idea of what I wanted to do. By 9am I knew I wanted a burger - a chopped beef burger. The weather has been frightful, pouring rain, hail, wind... Perfect for a barbecue. (We got your weather, Kate!!)
Chopping beef - as in using a food processor - really creates a different taste and texture from a traditional ground beef. And chopping a round steak means it's virtually fat-free.
I fried up some sweet red peppers and a couple of slices of bacon and they added just the right amount of necessary greasiness. Not to mention a ton of flavor. A burger without a little bit of grease just isn't any fun at all!
It was way-bigger than I could finish. Cybil was very happy.
I really would like to see a bit more warmth from Mother Nature. I have a bazillion warm-weather menu ideas floating aound in my head, but I can't get motivated on anything when the weather sucks.
Maybe I'll just start planning Easter and not worry about anything else. There are Peeps to figure out what to do with!
Pork Ribs and Peach BBQ Sauce
It was 75° today. Overcast, but warm. I could wear shorts. I'll take it.
It was also the perfect day to start the BBQ Sauce of the Week.
I've been wanting to try a peach bbq sauce for a while and thought I'd start there. Peaches aren't exactly in season right now, so I went for the next best thing - frozen slices. I actually like frozen fruits and vegetables. With produce being grown all over the world with the prime concern being shipping and not flavor, frozen can ofttimes be your best bet. Unlike it's fresh counterpart, it's picked and processed when it's ripe and ready to eat.
So, armed with a 1-pound bag of frozen peaches, I went to work.
Peach BBQ Sauce
- 1 pound peaches, peeled
- 1/2 cup onion, chopped
- 1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 dried New Mexico Chilis, broken up
- 1/4 cup whiskey or bourbon
- 1 can diced tomatoes with juice
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 tbsp molasses
- 1/4 cup white vinegar
- 2 tsp paprika
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- salt and pepper
Saute onion and bell pepper until translucent. Add garlic and quickly saute. Add chilis and dried spiced and cook until fragrant - about 3 minutes.
Add whiskey and mix well. Add tomatoes and continue cooking until thick.
Use an immersion blender and puree.
When it's as smooth as you can get it, strain through mesh strainer, discarding solids.
Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper- or more cayenne - as desired.
This came out pretty good. It had a nice peach flavor, the whiskey gave it a nice balance, and it was just smoky-spicy enough.
If I hadn't been making Phoebe's baked beans - that call for chipotles in adobo - I probably would have made this with chopotles. I think the smoky chipotle would work just a bit better than the smoked paprika. Regardless, this worked well!
Speaking of little sister's baked beans... here's the recipe for those. The only baked beans I ever make, anymore.
Phoebe's Baked Beans
- 1/2 cup minced shallots
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1/2 cup tomato puree (I use tomato paste – I never have puree in the house!)
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 chipotle chiles, canned in adobo sauce, seeded and chopped
- 2 (28-ounce) cans baked beans
Preheat oven to 300°.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add shallots; sauté 4 minutes or until golden. Add cumin and garlic; sauté for 1 minute. Add tomato puree and oil, and cook for 2 minutes or until thick, stirring constantly. Add remaining ingredients (except beans.). Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Combine beans and shallot mixture in a 2-quart baking dish. Bake at 300° for 1 hour or until thick and bubbly.
They are so easy and just soooooo good!
I was on a BBQ roll, so I also made a three-bean salad - with five beans. I mean, who's counting, right?!?
Bean Salad
- 1 cup green beans, trimmed, blanched, and cooled
- 1 cups green and wax Italian beans, blanched and cooled
- 1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can canellini beans, rinsed and drained
- 1/2 red onion, sliced in sticks
- 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 3 tbsp tarragon vinegar
- 1 tsp herbs d'Provence
- salt and pepper, to taste
Mix it. Chill it. Eat it.
I need to think about what I want to do next. Maybe something with a pulled pork...
The wheels are turning...
Shrimp Risotto and Poached Eggs
Mother Nature played a great April Fool joke on us today. Snow.
I was not amused.
I am totally over cold weather. I am ready for open windows and the gentle warmth of Spring. And today it snowed.
It eventually turned to rain - and it's still raining as I type - but it's still cold.
Time for risotto.
The risotto idea came as I watched the snow falling this morning. We needed something a bit substantial for dinner and I had a box of carnaroli rice at home that I wanted to try. Carnaroli is a short-grain rice from the Lombardy and Piedmont areas of Italy. It makes a really fine, creamy risotto. It's only been grown for about 60 years - a relative newcomer - but it's a popular rice because it's quite forgiving. It keeps its creaminess just a bit longer before turning to paste.
Risotto is a pretty easy - albeit time-consuming - process. I generally don't follow a recipe (you're shocked, right?!?) but I went looking through some old Bon Appetite magazines for ideas and found one that is topped with a fried egg. That caught my attention. Victor still has a pasta dish he wants to make that is topped with a fried egg.
I decided it was worth looking into - but poaching the eggs, instead. Timing is everything and it's easier to poach four eggs than fry four eggs simultaneously.
A basic rule-of-thumb with risotto rices - arborio, carnaroli, or vialone nano - is four cups of liquid to 1 cup of rice. The liquid is heated and added slowly to slowly pull the starch out of the rice and make it creamy while still holding its shape. Any number of foods, herbs, and spices can be added.
This easily makes dinner for four people. We have a goodly amount of leftovers!
Shrimp Risotto with Poached Eggs
- 2 cups chopped mushrooms
- 2 carrots, diced
- 1 cup Italian beans (cut asparagus will also work)
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 cups arborio rice
- 1 cup white wine
- 7 cups chicken broth, hot
- 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 cup peas
- 1 pound shrimp
- 1-2 eggs per person
Saute mushrooms and carrots until barely done. Stir in beans. Se aside.
Melt 2 tbsp butter and 2 tbsp olive oil in heavy risotto pan or heavy skillet. Add onion and sauté until beginning to soften. Add garlic. Add rice and stir until translucent at edges, about 3 minutes. Add wine. Stir until liquid is absorbed. Add 1/2 cup hot broth, stirring until broth is absorbed. Continue to add remaining broth, 1/2 cup at a time, until rice is just tender and mixture is creamy, stirring often and letting almost all liquid be absorbed after each addition - 25 to 30 minutes total.
Add shrimp. Stir in 1 cup cheese, peas, and mushroom mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Mound onto plates, create indentation with spoon and top with eggs - poached or fried.
Drizzle with additional olive oil and sprinkle with cheese.
This was really fun and a perfect cold-weather dish. It was warm and filling.
I also baked the last of my bread dough - fresh bread finished the meal.
Grilled Lemongrass Beef
Opening kitchen cupboards is always a bit of a thrill at our house. You never quite know what you're going to find.
I'm pretty good at going through and actually using things, but when I do those wild and crazy shopping treks at places like Assi, there can be a lot of things lurking in the corners...
Like Lee Kum Kee Lemongrass Sauce.
I don't use a lot of jarred sauces, but as I have said before, Asian cooking slightly eludes me. These have definitely come in handy! Asian cooking just isn't as intuitive to me as other cultures can be. And growing up in San Francisco didn't help matters. Bad Chinese restaurants are better than most restaurants elsewhere. Why cook it when you can get it down the street at a great price? When I lived at 9th and Judah, there was a Chinese bakery 3 doors down from me that had BBQ Pork Buns at 3/$1.00. There's no incentive to learn to cook!
10 years away from it has me buying jarred sauces. One of these days I may have to think about honing my skills a bit better.
In the meantime, Lee Kum Kee will have to do!
I had the steak from yesterday all ready to go, so I just sliced thin strips and marinated them in a few tablespoons of the sauce. Onto a hot grill for a few minutes and Instant BBQ! White rice and broccoli steamed with Asian Mushroom Stew Sauce. (Sorta like a mushroom soy sauce!)
A really quick and easy - and quite tasty - meal.
Pasties
I had taken a piece of round steak out of the freezer this morning with no clear idea of what I was going to do with it. When I got to work, we had the BBC playing on the radio and the idea of making pasties came to me. Gee. I wonder where that idea came from?!?
But pasties were on the mind and, I figured I had the ingredients at home. I love not having to shop.
Pasties for dinner.
For a nano-second I toyed with the idea of buying a pre-made crust but immediately discarded it. Homemade is better.
And as I was getting ready to chop the beef for the pasties, I saw a pretty good-sized hunk of meatloaf in the 'fridge. Waste-not-want-not. The beef went back in the 'fridge and I cubed the meatloaf for the pastie. Came out excellent! It really was the perfect way to use up leftovers.
I made a full batch of dough and used half to make four pasties. Victor used the other half to make a tart.
Pastie Dough
- 2 cups flour
- 1/3 cup pastry/cake flour
- 2 sticks butter, frozen
- pinch salt
- 1/2 cup ice water
Using a food processor, add flours, salt, and sugar. Pulse to mix.
Chop up frozen butter and add. Pulse until butter is incorporated and mixture looks grainy.
Slowly add ice water and pulse until mixed.
Turn out onto counter. Press and form mixture into two disks . Wrap in plastic and refrigerate about an hour to allow the flour to properly absorb the water and to relax the gluten.
Pasties
- 3/4 pound beef, chopped
- 1-2 medium-sized potatoes, small dice
- 3 carrots, small dice
- 3 stalks celery, small dice
- 1/2 onion, minced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup shredded cheese
Cook vegetables in skillet until almost tender. Add beef and cook until done.
Add seasonings. Add heavy cream and heat through.
Remove from heat and add cheese. Cool.
To assemble:
Divide dough into 4 balls. Roll each out on floured board to about 8" circles. Scoop generous cup onto each round. Brush edges with beaten egg and fold in half to seal. Use fork to crimp edges.
Bake in 375° oven 35-45 minutes or until well-browned and heated through.
These really were a lot of fun. Totally different and perfectly filling.
And speaking of fillings... the possibilities are endless!
Chicken Soup
I am just so over cold weather!
Really. Over. It.
And depending upon how Mother Nature decides to play, we may get snow on Friday. Happy April Fools Day, indeed.
So... I had a couple of bone-in chicken breasts that would have gone perfectly on the grill tonight - but it was cold outside. Did I mention how much I am loathing the cold?!?
Chicken soup seemed such a better option, tonight.
I browned the breasts, added 2 quarts of chicken broth and let it all simmer until the chicken was done.
I pulled the chicken out and added a jar of roasted red pepper and artichoke tapinade, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, some dried tortellini, and a bit of pasta. I cooked the pasta, added the shredded chicken, and dinner was served.
I also made a small loaf of bread since the dough was in the fridge.
The tapenade really added a fun twist to the soup. Roasted peppers, artichokes, just a hint of tart from the vinegar.
I'm going to have to remember that one...
And, hopefully, this was the last winter-type meal of the season.
Meatloaf and Fresh-Baked Bread
It's still colder than cold outside. Spring has not sprung.
I have all sorts of plans for the coming warm weather... Lots of salads, of course, but I also want to play with a "BBQ Sauce of the Week" idea... There are just so many BBQ sauce ideas out there that I think it might be fun to see just what I can come up with. I want to redo the Root Beer BBQ Sauce - it just didn't have enough of a root beer kick, and I'm thinking different fruits - peaches, definitely - and different chilis, some regional differences... the possibilities are pretty endless and should keep me busy for a while.
But that's tomorrow - or, next month. Whenever the weather starts getting better. In the meantime, it's winter food. Meatloaf.
Meatloaf is a non-recipe meal, generally. I just put stuff together and that's that.
But every now and again, I need to do something just a little bit different. I started hunting through old recipes and found this in an old Gourmet MNagazine:
Meatloaf
Gourmet | February 2008
Ian KnauerThis is the perfect antidote to the Sunday blues, not least because there will be enough left over to pack sandwiches for Monday's lunch. A mix of beef, pork, and bacon ensures meatiness, with Worcestershire sauce, chopped prunes, and cider vinegar added for good balance and occasional suggestions of sweetness. Because the loaf is baked without a loaf pan, there's plenty of well-browned crust to go around.
Yield: Makes 6 servings with leftovers
Active Time: 30 min
Total Time: 1 1/2 hr
ingredients
- 1 cup fine fresh bread crumbs (from 2 slices firm white sandwich bread)
- 1/3 cup whole milk
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 medium celery rib, finely chopped
- 1 medium carrot, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/4 pound bacon (about 4 slices), chopped
- 1/2 cup pitted prunes, chopped
- 1 1/2 pounds ground beef chuck
- 1/2 pound ground pork (not lean)
- 2 large eggs
- 1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Garnish: cooked bacon
preparationPreheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.
Soak bread crumbs in milk in a large bowl.
Meanwhile, cook onion, garlic, celery, and carrot in butter in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Cover skillet and reduce heat to low, then cook until carrot is tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, allspice, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper. Add to bread-crumb mixture.
Finely chop bacon and prunes in a food processor, then add to onion mixture along with beef, pork, eggs, and parsley and mix together with your hands.
Pack mixture into a 9- by 5-inch oval loaf in a 13- by 9-inch shallow baking dish or pan.
Bake until an instant-read thermometer inserted into center of meatloaf registers 155°F, 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.
Of course, I didn't follow the recipe, but it was my base.
I didn't use bacon, prunes, ground pork, or parsley. I more-or-less followed the rest of the recipe, using three pounds of ground beef, three carrots and three stalks of celery.
I also didn't bake it in a baking dish.
It really came out good.
And I baked bread.
I've been a bit remiss in my artisan bread-baking and thought it time to get back into it.
The bread is just super-easy to make.
- 6 1/2 cups flour
- 1 1/2 tbsp yeast
- 1 1/2 tbsp salt
- 3 cups water
Mix all ingredients, cover, and let rise three hours. At this point you can punch it down and refrigerate.
When ready to bake bread, cut off 1/4 of the dough and for into a ball. Place on cornmeal-sprinkled baking sheet or bread peel. Let rise 30 minutes. Cut deep slits into dough with very sharp knife.
Preheat oven to 450° with pizza stone on middle rack and rimmed sheet pan on bottom rack.
Slide dough onto hot pizza stone and immediately add 1 cup of hot water to sheet pan.
Quickly close oven and bake for 30 minutes.
You can add different flours to the basic recipe. I usually do 4 cups white to 2 1/2 cups whole wheat. Today I did 1/2 cup rye and 1/2 cup buckwheat to 5 1/2 cups white.
It came out great.
Asian-Inspired Flank Steak
I have a recipe for flank steak that I have been making for years... It's double-marinated and, served cold, is a great hors d'oeuvre or salad topper, and makes a great sandwich.
I was kinda thinking of that recipe when I picked up this flank steak yesterday, but decide today to streamline the process and just do a simpler single marinade.
Rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, black pepper, and chili paste (sambal oelek.)
And it worked quite well! Lots of oomph and lots of flavor.
An Asian-inspired flank steak needs an Asian-inspired vegetable to go along with it. I had green beans and peas in the freezer - the green beans won. I sauteed a bit of onion in sesame oil, added the beans and a splash of rice wine and soy sauce and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.
And white rice. Yes, I know that brown rice is better for you, yada yada, yada, but white rice works so much better with Asian flavors.
I just used up the last of my favorite rice - Lundberg - and none of the local stores carry it, anymore. It's whole-grain rice with a really rich, nutty flavor and chewy texture. I bought up the last of it when the local PathMark stopped selling it.
However... the internet and free shipping means I'll be having more delivered next week right to the door. Every now and again, technology really makes me smile.
C'mon Spring! I'm seeing some nice rice salads in my (warmer-weather) future!
Chicken with Strawberry BBQ Sauce
A couple of years ago I had a plethora of strawberries and came up with a pretty good Strawberry BBQ Sauce. I was going through a "let's make a weird BBQ sauce" time. The Root Beer BBQ Sauce was definitely up there with the weird - but it was pretty good, too.
So... I had strawberries today and decided it was time for another round of BBQ sauce. But I didn't want to take the time to make the last variation. So I made a quick version - and just enough for dinner tonight.
Strawberry BBQ Sauce
- 1 cup strawberries
- 1/2 cup chili sauce
- 1/2 tsp tabasco sauce
- salt and pepper, to taste
Put all ingredients in food processor and puree.
That simple.
While the original version was really good with a lot of different flavors going on, this one was simple, had a pronounced strawberry flavor, and worked quite well. Plus it took three minutes to make!
As soon as the weather gets a bit better I think I'm going to revisit the root beer BBQ sauce and see what I can do to make it even more fun!
Broiled Salmon and Cauliflower Purée
I knew last night that salmon was for dinner tonight. What I didn't know was exactly how I was going to make it.
Fish in and of itself is extremely easy to cook. Almost any fillet can go into a 350° oven for 10 minutes or under a broiler for about 5 minutes. That's it. No flipping, no turning. Done.
And a simple marinade before or a topping of sauce or salsa when it comes out can make ordinary into spectacular.
I went for the marinade and broiler tonight: Lemon balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, and dill. Under the broiler for about 5 minutes.
The fun part of dinner, though was the cauliflower purée. I had seen a recipe recently for a scallops with cauliflower purée somewhere, but when I went looking for it today, I couldn't find it. The only thing I remembered was that it had a potato in it, so...
Cauliflower Purée
- 1 head cauliflower, cut into florettes
- 1 russet potato, peeled and cubed
- milk
- salt
- pepper
- garlic
- 1/2 cup shredded pecorino romano cheese
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
Place cauliflower and potato in pot and add just enough milk to allow vegetables to simmer. Cover and cook about 15 minutes on low heat or until vegetables can be easily mashed.
When fully cooked, drain milk, reserving some to thin, if necessary. Add heavy cream and purée vegetables (I used an immersion blender) until smooth. Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste. Add additional cooking milk to thin to desired consistency.
The salmon went very well atop the purée. One could taste each of the flavors independently, yet they all blended perfectly together. On the side was a rice and grain mixture of brown rice, red rice, mahogany rice, black barley, red radish seed, black onion seed, and wild rice.
And for dessert, Victor made a chocolate orange cake with an orange buttercream icing.
More on that, later...