Pork Chops with Asian Peach Salsa

I had some beautiful bone-in pork chops that were just screaming to be grilled tonight!  Of course, I didn't want just plain ol' pork chops...  I decided Asian was the ticket!

I made a marinade of:

  • soy sauce
  • garlic
  • sriracha sauce
  • sesame oil
  • black pepper
  • black sesame seeds

and marinated the chops for about an hour.  Onto a hot grill they went.

Meanwhile, I made an Asian-Inspired Peach Salsa, similar to what I made for the Peach Iron Chef Cookoff.

  • 3 Peaches, diced
  • 1/4 Red Onion, diced
  • 1/2 tsp Sambal Oleck (Chili Paste)
  • 1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
  • 1 Tbsp Rice Wine
  • 1/2 tsp Sesame Oil
  • Cilantro, chopped
  • Basil, chopped

Dice peaches and onions and place in bowl.  Add remaining ingredients and lightly mix.  Chill until ready to serve.

I topped the pork chops with the salsa, plated some rice and voila!  Dinner was served!


Iron Chef Barbecue

 

Kenny's leaving - being transferred to Ardmore.  This is a tough good-bye.  Kenny started our Iron Chef competitions.  While it's a good move for him, it shall leave a void in our Culinary Competitions unless someone else steps up to the plate right away.  I am bereft.  I have never won one of the competitions, but I've always walked away with a full stomach and a lot of ideas.

His last day with us is Thursday, July 3rd, so, in honor of his last day, we're having Iron Chef Barbecue.  The rules of the past competitions don't apply this time.  It's a wide-open dish-has-to-come-from-the-grill-event.  I'm ready.

Today, I made sausage.  A bit of an Asian-inspired recipe. Victor's mom - the consummate Italian Mother - was over as I was boning the pork and starting the marinade.  She could not believe I was actually putting soy sauce and other Asian-type ingredients in the marinade.  She thinks in terms of Italian Sausage.  Mild or Spicy.  Certain foods are sacrosanct.  (She wouldn't touch the Amaretto Pizzelle's I made years ago, only to begrudgingly say they were "okay" when I made them again the following year.)  But I digress...

I bought an 8 1/2 pound bone-in pork shoulder and boned and marinated it in:

  • Soy Sauce
  • Chinese Rice Wine
  • Sriracha Sauce
  • Fish Sauce
  • Black Pepper

I ground it up with:

  • Onions
  • Peaches
  • Cilantro
  • Black Sesame Seeds

And then stuffed it into casings.

I'm heading out to the grill right now to cook some up for dinner at Victor's brother's house.

Lookin' good.

And they taste GREAT!!!


Excellent Enchiladas

We've been cooking up a storm at work, recreating all of the recipes submitted for the recipe contest.  It has not been an easy task.  We actually received too many good recipes!  (okay - so everyone should have such a problem!)

And the tastes linger well after leaving work and coming home...

One recipe today did just that.  It's a Chicken and Blue Cheese Dip.   The flavors mixed well and the tasting panel really thought it would make a great filling for something like crepes, or even whole wheat tortillas (besides its original intent as a dip!)  In our personal cooking, we don't limit ourselves to a few ingredients, and the ideas were flying - crisp steamed vegetables folded in and rolled into a crepe was one of my favorites. I think it's a sign we're all pretty serious foodies (or totally nuts - you be the judge!) when the first thing out of our mouths is what else we could do with something...

So I got home tonight and started thinking about dinner, and thought that a chicken and blue cheese enchilada would be the ticket!

The only actual ingredient I had at home from the original recipe was the chicken breasts.  But did that stop me?!?  Of course not!

I poached the chicken breasts in water.  I added garlic powder, turmeric, cumin, and chipotle powder and let the chicken stew.

Into a bowl I crumbled a bit of roquefort cheese and sour cream.  I added a bit of cheddar for body and balance.  I have some Calypso Hot Sauce (really, really hot!) and added a few drops for heat.

I made an enchilada sauce from a half-jar of Salsa Autentica, a can of tomato sauce, and a bit of the simmering chicken water.

I rolled the filling in corn tortillas, topped with sauce, and baked at 350° for about 20 minutes.  I also made rice and served it all with sour cream and a quickly-prepared uacamole.

Dinner start-to-finish was about 45 minutes.

And I am pleasantly stuffed.


Vaguely Korean

I grew up eating Korean food.  And Filipino food, and Chinese, Mexican, Italian... While my father had a bit of a midwestern opinion about certain foods, my mom - the consummate Californian - embraced it all with a flair that could only have come out of the 1960's.  Filipino neighbors across the street had me eating Lumpia and Adobo before I could spell them.  And we were eating Chinese food at Kwan's on Geary Street when there were only three kids in the family. (Numbers four and five were born in 1957.)

For years I lived up the street from a great Koren restaurant.  First time I walked in, I was a bit intimidated with the menu.  The waitress, sensing my discomfort, asked if I would trust her.  I said YES - and what a dinner I had.  From then on, I never ordered from the menu, I just said "Dinner for two" (or three, or four) and food would magically appear.  Magic, indeed.

While I have cooked a fair amount of Asian foods in my life, I have never really cooked a lot of Korean.  No particular reason, other than  bazillion condiments to prepare, and I always had immediate access to a really good Korean restaurant.

That was then, this is now.

Out here in my white-bread Philadelphia suburb, ethnic food of any stripe is difficult to find.  Restaurants tend to be a bit more upscale (read expensive) or national chains, which I tend to avoid at all costs.  (I generally don't care for cookie-cutter food.)

So, I tend to cook a lot at home.  It's good, because i eat healthier, but bad, because I cook for 12 when there's only two of us.  Healthy+big portions+quitting smoking=weight gain.  Yeah, I'm getting fat.

Which really has nothing to do with tonight's meal.  A Korean-inspired beef.  "Inspired" because it was about as authentically-Korean as I am, but it did have those great flavors.

I took some thin-sliced beef and marinated it in a pseudo-Bulgogi marinade:

  • soy sauce
  • sugar
  • rice wine
  • white vinegar
  • sesame oil
  • garlic
  • leeks
  • sesame seeds
  • cayenne pepper
  • black pepper

Into a zip-lock it went.  Onto the grill.  Onto the plate.  Into my tummy.

I had a bunch of mushrooms in the 'fridge that needed cooking, so I sauteed them in a bit of butter, soy sauce, a splash of fish sauce. garlic, a splash of rice wine...  they wre great!

And simple white rice to round it all out.

Now to find some good kim chee!


Chinese Takeout - At Home!

 

I had a hankerin' for Chinese food the other night.  I really miss our weekly Andy's delivery.  Chinese food outside of San Francisco just isn't the same...

So... I decided to do a bit of a noodle stirfry...

First, I marinated the beef in soy sauce, rice wine, chili paste, and lots of garlic.  Then I grilled it  (Yum all on its own...)

I boiled up some thin spaghetti (Chinese noodles not readily available at my local Super Fresh) and stirfried celery, carrots, red bell pepper, onion, broccoli, garlic, and water chestnuts.

I put them off to the side and stirfried the noodles in a bit of oil, browned them a bit, then added the vegetables back in, along with some Mandarin oranges and bean sprouts.  I heated it all through with some fish sauce, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil and onto the platter it went.  Beef on top, and dinner was served!

Sides of rice in our new Vietnamese Dragonfly bowls from Cost Plus, and dinner was complete.

Okay - it wasn't nearly as good as Andy's, but it worked! :)


Cassoulet Today

Back home.  No more restaurants.  Our own kitchen and a semblance of normalcy.

It was a bit chilly the other night and beans really sounded good.  My mom used to make great beans, and I still need a bit of comfort food, right now.  Beans, it was.

I  cooked up a bit of onion, celery, and carrot, and when they were about half-way cooked, I threw in some white wine.  (There's always a bottle of wine by the stove for cooking...) b Then added 2 cans of white beans and a bit of French herbs and a bit of dill.

I grilled some andouille sausage, a chicken breast, and a duck breast, cut them up and added them to the pot.  Mixed, and put it all in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes.

A bit of crusty French bread, and dinner was served.

Granted, it wasn't a traditional "Mom" recipe for beans, but it had the desired effect.  I felt much better after eating them.


Con-Fusion

Dinner is served

"Fusion" - in culinary terms - is the blending or combining of different cultures and styles of food.  Tonight, our dinner was definitely fusion.  CONfusion...

I started off with Chimichurri Rice.  Chimichurri is a sauce or marinade originally from Argentina, but popular in parts of South and Central America.  On our last trip to San Francisco, we stopped off at Cost Plus and picked up some chimichurri spice mixture.  The directions say to make it into a marinade.  I thought rice was a better idea.

I first sauteed onions, bell pepper, the chimichurri spice in olive oil and then added canned diced tomatoes.  One cup of rice went in next, along with beef broth.  Cover, simmer 20 minutes.

I took boneless pork steaks and covered them liberally with ancho, pasillo, birdseye, and arbol chili powders, and a bit of salt.  Onto the grill they went.

Spicy Pork

The confusion part comes with the serving - in pitas!

Lettuce and chopped heirloom tomatoes and a Greek yogurt, cucumber, dill, and lemon sauce.  The yogurt abd cucumber sauce was really necessary - the pork was s-p-i-c-y!  It was yumlicious.


Beef Braised in Guinness

St Patrick's Day...  I have a few vague memories of the last time I actually went out on St Patrick's Day.  Well over 20 years ago, I was in San Francisco, had just opened up a Westin Hotel, and we had a banquet captain named Sean Hennigan who had just transferred there from Chicago.  I showed him how San Francisco celebrates the day - and night...  Somehow, we survived...

Fast forward to this weekend...

My cousin, Tom and his lovely wife Barb were in town from Omaha for a conference.  They had limited time because of 2 functions they had to attend.  After almost 6 years, my schedule had just changed a few weeks ago and I was now working Saturday. I did a quick “I need to leave early on Saturday” plea with work (no problem!!) and made plans to meet at 3:30 at an Irish Pub a few blocks from their hotel.

What we didn’t plan for was it being March 15th - 2 days before St Patrick’s Day.  Every college kid and their Italian roommate had put on their green and were packing the city’s three Irish bars.  So much for a quiet cocktail and conversation.  We ended up at the Bellevue (Park Hyatt) and spent a lot of money for quieter surroundings.  It was worth it!

St Paddy's Day was a fun one in my youth, but - let's face it - I ain't no youth, anymore.  Today, I'm more apt to want to enjoy a nice dinner than a noisy, crowded bar with beer being spilled on me.  Growing older is a good think...

So... we invited Victor's mom over and I made Beef Braised in Guinness.

Beef Braised in Guinness

We came up with this recipe years ago.  It's a great dish for parties, because it can be doubled, tripled, or quintupled with ease. It was definitely a huge hit when we had Pop's cousin's from Omaha over for St. Paddy's dinner years ago. They still talk about it!   I also brought it in to UCSF one year and it became a staple on the Moffitt Cafe menu for St Paddy's Day.  It's a refreshing change from Corned Beef and Cabbage!

Beef Braised in Guinness

  • 2 pounds beef steak, cut in pieces
  • 3 medium onions, sliced
  • 1 pound carrots, sliced into sticks
  • all-purpose flour
  • Salt and pepper
  • Garlic powder
  • 3 tbsp butter
  • 1 tbsp fresh basil, minced
  • 1 bottle Guinness
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 1 cup beef broth

Cut the meat into serving sizes. Pound them to tenderize and for a uniform thickness. Peel the onions and slice. Peel the carrots and slice them into sticks. Place the flour in a dish and mix in 1 tsp of salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic powder. Heat the butter in a sautè pan, add the onions and cook until soft. Transfer them to a large, shallow, greased ovenproof dish.

Dredge the pieces of meat in the seasoned flour and brown. Remove as they are cooked and place on top of the onions in a single layer. Arrange the carrots around them. Add a little more butter to the pan and stir in the seasoned flour to make a roux.

Cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly and scraping up all the browned bits then add the Guinness. Allow to boil for a minute or two, then add the basil, honey and the broth. Return to a boil and pour over the meat. Cover the dish and bake at 325° for 90 minutes.

I made up a pot of mashed potatoes and dinner was served.

Light-years away from those noisy bars, but somehow, even more satisfying...


Cook Books Galore

Celtic Folklore CookingWe donated several hundred cookbooks to our local library book sale last year.   The books were literally just collecting dust downstairs.  We kept about a dozen of them - Lidia, Julia Child... more classic than trendy. figuring we might actually use a few books if they were upstairs, rather than a lot of books stored downstairs.  It was a wise choice.

I've been really good.  I haven't bought a cookbook in several years.  Once upon a time I bought then constantly - hence the several hundred we donated - but I just didn't use them enough to justify buying more just to have them collect more dust before giving them away, again.

Santa, (and Leah and Ross) this year, decided I had been too good for too long and brought two new books into the house.  The first, from Santa, is a fun book titled Celtic Folklore Cooking.  Just my kind of book!  Not only is it full of fun recipes, it has great stories to go along with them!  It lists what foods to eat with which holiday and delves into the history behind them.

My first recipe of the new year is Chicken with Almond Rice - a dish that is associated with several holidays, including Yule and New Year's Eve.  (I'm less than 24 hours late...)

Chicken With Almond Rice

  • 1 cup uncooked rice
  • 1 chicken, cut in pieces (I'm using breasts - it's what I had in the freezer.)
  • 1/2 cup ground blanched almonds
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp ginger
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp cardamom
  • 3 tbsp slivered almonds lightly browned in butter

Rinse rice in water; drain.  Cover with cold water and leave to soak.  In another pan, cover the chicken pieces with salted water and let simmer over low heat for one hour.  Skim off the fat and measure 3 cups of the water into a separate saucepan.  Add the ground almonds to the liquid and let steep about 10 to 15 minutes.  drain the rice and cook it in the broth until tender.  Remove the skin and bones from the chicken and cut into bite-sized pieces.  Add chicken to the rice mixture along with the butter, sugar, ginger, salt, and cardamom. Cover and cook over low heat about 15 minutes, or until meat is thoroughly heated.  To serve, garnish with the slivered almonds.

The second book is already a favorite of mine!
The Philadelphia Italian Market Cookbook

The Philadelphia Italian Market Cookbook - a Christmas present from Leah and Ross who just bought a house within walking distance of the market - is not only a great cookbook, but it's a fantastic history of South Philadelphia!  It's loaded with fun food and stories about the Italians from the first immigrants to the neighborhood today!  It's especially fun for me since I'm not from here.  This is all new.  I see many great meals coming soon!

Oh... and I was on the Barnes and Noble website looking for post-holiday cheapies and ended up with two more cookbooks - 100 Great Risottos and 100 Great Tapas.

Winter... Risotto...  Yum...


Posole

Wild Rice In a recent issue of Smithsonian magazine, I spied an article about Native Harvest and the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota. They spoke of having real Wild Rice - actually wild and collected by canoe (not cultivated as with wild rice sold in the stores.) Intrigued, I went to the website. What fun for a foodophile! Real, natural, minimally processed food! I ordered a couple of pounds of wild rice - and a couple of bags of hominy.

Hominy is not something I grew up with in San Francisco. Other than hominy grits when I was in the Navy, it just wasn't part of my dietary routine. But my grocery store treks and natural curiosity about food found me buying dried hominy every once in a while - and then wondering what to do with it!

Posole has been the usual dish - it's a stew of sorts, usually made with pork and peppers, simmered for hours and just plain ol' good. The native harvest hominy looked interesting - and am I glad I bought some!

It is probably the closest thing our ancestors had when they arrived here many moons ago! Just flat-out great!

So... I made Posole.

I didn't follow a recipe, I just threw things into the pot. I simmered some pork for a couple of hours until it was fall-off-the-bone tender. I added onions, peppers, garlic, tomatoes... LOTS of chipotle powder and other chili powders from the cabinet, salt and pepper, and a bit of cloves. I then added the cooked hominy, and let it simmer even longer.

What a treat.


Chinese Take-Out at Home

I picked up a piece of skirt steak at the store the other day. Besides being ridiculously inexpensive - comparatively speaking - it's one of my favorite cuts of meat to marinate and grill. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to do with it - so what else is new - but it was only a couple of bucks. I knew I could figure out something...

Skirt steak is not the most popular of meat cuts. It's the diaphragm muscle, and has a reputation for being fatty and tough - and improperly cooked, it definitely is. But it's one of the best pieces of meat to marinate, and it's the only meat to use for fajitas! It picks up flavors extremely well, and as long as it is cut against the grain - as with flank steak - it can be as tender as tender can be.

So this afternoon I pulled it out of the 'fridge and did a marinade of soy sauce, rice wine, chili paste, garlic, sesame oil, and a bit of pepper. I held off on the salt because of the soy sauce... Asian BBQ, here we come!

My first thought was just to do some rice and veggies, but as I thought about it, I thought Chow Mein would be perfect. Naturally, I didn't have any Asian noodles, hoisin sauce, or any of what one would term traditional ingredients, but not having a few ingredients has never stopped me before!

I had spaghetti, I had broth, I had rice wine, I had plenty of vegetables. Tim's Chow Mein, it is!

I cooked up about 1/3 pound of noodles, rinsed, drained, and drizzled a bit of peanut oil on top. I then fried it up in the wok, getting it barely crispy. Off to a plate to keep warm.

I chopped up an onion, bell pepper, carrots, broccoli, brocolli rabe, mushrooms, and garlic and tossed it all into the wok. In the meantime, i made a sauce of about 1/2 cup of beef broth, 1/4 cup rice wine, 1 tbsp chili paste, 1 tsp sesame oil, and about 3 tbsp cornstarch mixed with water.

When the veggies were almost done, I added the sauce, and as it started to thicken, I added the noodles, and mixed everything together.

I put the steaks on the grill, and just as the noodles were ready, the steaks came off. The chow mein went onto the platter, the steak was sliced and set on top, and voila! It was dinner.

Naturally, I made enough for the neighborhood, but leftover Chinese food is mmm-mmm-good - even if there's no carry-out carton to eat from, standing by the 'fridge!


Chorizo and Rice

It's just like the old Grateful Dead song, Cold Rain and Snow... After a couple of days of toying with us, Mother Nature is back with a chilling vengeance. I decided dinner tonight had to suit the season, so into the freezer for more of that sausage I've been stockpiling.

I had about 3/4 pound of Spanish chorizo, so I quartered and chopped the links and into the pot they went. I chopped a medium onion and 2 Italian peppers and then added a couple of cloves of garlic. I let it all brown nicely, then added some smoked paprika and some Spanish paprika, a bit of salt and black pepper and cooked the spices a bit.

I then added a can of diced tomatoes with their juice and a can of tomato sauce. I let it all simmer while I made a pot of brown rice, and voila! Dinner was served!

It definitely took the chill out of the evening.

Now to see if we really do get the 4" of snow they're forecasting....

I am sooooo ready for Spring!