Peaches, Pork, Pancakes

After a week+ of celebrating birthdays, the end of the school year, second-years advancing to Ph.D. candidacy, and friends from out of town - Alex and I have been eating out a lot which results in a sparse kitchen and a serious yearning to cook something awesome. Here's what we came up with out of some left over pancakes, the only fruit we had in the fridge (1 small peach and 1 small aprium), and the pork chops that have been calling out to us from the freezer.

The Cornmeal Pancakes 
(modified from the Joy of Cooking)
3/4 cup AP Flour
3/4 cup Cornmeal
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 cups Whole Milk
3 Tbsp Butter
2 Eggs
pinch salt

Combine the dry things in one bowl and the wet things in another bowl. Then add the wet things to the dry things and mix together until smooth. Then make pancakes! These last for quite a while (especially in the fridge) and are great re-warmed in the toaster.

The Pork

2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

2 Tbsp Liquid Aminos

~1 Tbsp Molasses

~ 1/2 Tbsp Fennel (dried and ground)

couple dashes Cinnamon

pinch Applewood Smoked Salt

Alex seared the pork, sauteed a chopped onion and some garlic in the pan after the pork was removed, and then mixed this all together with the above ingredients in a baking dish covered with foil. This all cooked in the oven for over an hour at 375F.

While the pork was cooking, I sliced our lonely peach and aprium and then went spelunking in our spice "shrine" (as a friend recently called it).

The Stone Fruit

1 Peach

1 Aprium

Harissa

Fennel

Red Pepper Flakes

Cardamom

Cinnamon

White Pepper

Nutmeg

I just sprinkled spices on the fruit until it looked right. I used harissa and fennel the most with slightly less of all the other spices. Then I melted some salted butter on the stove...

...When the butter was good and hot (just about to start turning brown), I threw in the spiced peaches and fried them until they were brown.

I finished by deglazing the pan with a bit of water and letting it evaporate off to make it kinda saucy. 

Lastly, we sauteed up a few carrots, potatoes and a medley of braising greens. Here's the finished product with cornmeal pancakes topped with sliced pork chop, topped with spiced stone fruit, with a side of sauteed veggies. Super delicious! I'm stoked that stone fruits are coming into season so I can continue to play with them in a savory way!

Savory French Toast

This was a complete and total experiment. We had some bread that was on its way out, and a craving for Mexican food. So Alex whipped up some french toast batter made with eggs, milk, cinnamon, paprika, and cumin. When all the bread was used up we scrambled the left over batter and constructed the picture above - Mexican Toast topped with scrambled batter, sauteed onions and asparagus, sour cream, cilantro, and cheddar cheese. And to our surprise, this was totally delicious! ...I definitely want to play with savor french toasts more!

Curry and Spice

I am no where near mastering the art of curry. But I keep working at it, and here is my latest and best attempt yet. I think my biggest problem is a totally irrational fear of using too many spices, possibly because I hate over-spiced foods more than I hate under-spiced foods... So I'm trying to find my spice-balance. Here's how last night's curry began:

Spices in a saute pan: Cinnamon, Coriander, Tumeric, Paprika, Clove, Cardamom, Cumin, and Star Anise. (Note to self: buy some Fenugreek!)

I put this pan of spices over high heat and kept the spices constantly moving to toast them and to release their oils without burning them. This happens fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, I was cooking Blue Bird Grain Farms rice pilaf with lots of saffron and an "Iranian rice herb" mixture. In another pan I seared chicken legs in bacon grease until they were good and brown (dreaming of a tandoori oven). I used onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, and peppers to deglaze the pan as they cooked and released their moisture. When the veggies began to caramelize I added chicken stock and the toasted spices and let the whole thing simmer until the sauce was thick. It turned out to be pretty delicious and my under-spicing aloud the flavor of Stokesberry's incredible chicken to come through.

Curry and Chai

Last night I made a chicken curry for dinner. I didn't follow a recipe, so I have no idea what type of curry it is but here is what went into it:

Stokesberry chicken breasts, yellow and red onion, a bulb and a half of garlic and an equal amount of fresh-frozen ginger, peppers, carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, chicken stock, coriander, cinnamon, alspice, clove, tumeric, black pepper, paprika, cumin, ras al hanout, and salt.

Alex made some chai to go with it (it's a mix from Teahouse Kuan Yin).

I ended up mopping up the juice on my plate with cornbread, which gave me an idea: curry tamales!