Honey Mustard Pork

For the record, here is Alex's honey mustard pork recipe. I believe this recipe is still evolving, but we wont know unless we have a record of it now, to compare to it later. Perhaps one day we will mine the data in this blog to construct a phylogenetic tree that explains the evolution of our recipes and eating habits. But in the mean time - pork!

We had a lonely pork chop in the freezer that Alex used for this, though he would have preferred a Boston Butt, or a similar cut of pork better used for slow cooking.

Brine the pork for 1 hour prior to cooking, though Alex is curious to explore alternatives/longer brining procedures.

Brine

2 Tbsp Salt

2 Tbsp Sugar

1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

Water

Mix together the ingredients for the brine, plus enough water to cover the pork in a baking dish. Let sit in the fridge for an hour.

Take the pork out of the brine and sear it in hot bacon grease in a cast iron skillet. It should be thoroughly seared, a little charred even.

Dump the brine out of the baking dish, place the seared pork back in the dish.
Deglaze the cast iron skillet and caramelize some sliced onions and garlic in the skillet.
Top the pork with the onion/garlic/pan-juices.

In a small bowl or 2-cup measuring cup, prepare the sauce:

Sauce

2 Tbsp Honey

1/4-1/2 cup Coffee, fresh brewed

1/4-1/2 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

1 Tbsp Molasses

at least 1Tbsp+ of Mustard Powder... probably more

a healthy dash of Saigon Cinnamon

sizable pinch of Applewood Smoked Sea Salt

some Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

a healthy amount of Cumin, maybe 1-2 tsp

~1/2 cup Boiling Water

Vigorously stir together all the ingredients for the sauce, then pour it over the onions, garlic, and pork in the baking dish. Cover the dish with foil and bake at 250F for 2 hours.

Remove the pork from the sauce, blend the sauce, then reduce it on the stove until it has a good BBQ sauce like consistency. Alex also made cornbread and I whipped up a coleslaw to make a meal out of it.

The Joy of Cooking has a great cornbread recipe. I make coleslaw a little different every time. My goal is to make it as colorful as possible, here's the gist of it:

Coleslaw

Red Cabbage - very thinly sliced

Carrots - grated

Peppers of every possible color! - grated or thinly sliced

Cilantro - coarsely chopped

Green Onion - sliced

Red Onion - minced (maybe a Tbsp-ish)

Dolup of Mayonnaise

Big splash of Apple Cider Vinegar

Dash Cinnamon

Big dash Paprika

Huge pinch of Salt

...

Additional suggestions for coleslaw:

Kale - thinly sliced/chopped

Beets of any/all colors - grated

Lemon and/or Orange Zest

Apple - diced
Mustard

Herbs! - play with herbs!

Play with Spices too! (Fennel an Cumin come to mind first..)

How to Save Eggplant

Full Belly Farms makes the most delicious eggplants I've ever eaten. And so, I want to save as much as I can for eating year round! It's super easy to preserve eggplant in the freezer. Simply cut it into big slices.

I like to cut my slices in half, they could also be left whole or cut into quarters. If you cut it up too small you'll just end up with eggplant mush when you take it out of the freezer later...which is not necessarily a bad thing, just be aware of what you want to use eggplant for in the future. Big slices will be more versatile.

Spread out the slices in a single layer on a baking sheet and put them in the freezer. A Silpat is useful, but certainly not at all necessary.

When the slices are completely frozen they can be transferred to a plastic bag and kept in the freezer for roughly one year.

Black Bean Cactus Thing

Several years ago we bought some dried black beans because it makes a lot of sense buy beans dried rather than canned (less processing and all around cheaper). However, dried beans take planning to cook and canned beans are just so darn easy. Anyway, we FINALLY soaked and cooked those black beans we bought years ago. I suppose an added bonus of dried beans is they're incredibly shelf stable.

The beans soaked for 24 hours and then we used them to make a hearty vegetarian dinner of brown rice, black beans, nopales, onions, carrots, garlic, sweet peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro.

First things first, the spines must be cleaned off the nopales.

While I meticulously de-armed the nopales, the pre-soaked black beans and brown rice cooked on the stove. When they were done, I decided to save the cooking water, to used it to flavor something else.

I diced the nopales and sauteed it with onions and garlic. 

Alex added spices (cumin, California paprika, cinnamon, red flake pepper, black pepper)...

..and sweet peppers...

We finished it with tomatoes and cilantro before adding the cooked beans and rice. Some Avocado and green onion would have also been awesome additions.

An Ode to Corn

Growing up in California, there were few ways to mark the seasons. Winter brought holidays and morning fog, spring and fall were too hot for sitting in classrooms without air conditioning, and summer was when we would grill, and eat, as much fresh corn as we possibly could.

I remember it like a ritual. Analogous to Summer Solstice - it wasn't really summer until I sank my teeth into the first grilled corn cob of the year. My dad always prepared the grill while I prepared the corn - pruning off excess husks/silk/stem. Then I would parade my pile of pruned corn out to the grill where we would grill it till the husks were good and black. As soon as it was barely cool enough to touch, we would peel off the burnt husks and silk to expose the steaming succulent kernels within. But before we ate the corn, we had to count the rows of kernels. Supposedly, as my dad would say, an odd number of rows was rare, and therefore lucky. Over the years I began to get suspicious about the frequency of odd-numbered ears of corn. Perhaps I'm just lucky.

I still get giddy at the thought of grilled summer corn. And now that we have a functioning grill, we can have corn all the time! 

I've heard several different methods for grilling corn: soak it in water and grill it with the husks on to make "steamed" corn, or remove the husks and grill it so some of the kernels themselves get charred. I'm still a fan of my dad's method: just put it on the grill (husks and all) and it's done when it's black. By allowing the husks to burn, a subtle smokey/roasty flavor gets imparted to the corn while keeping the kernels moist and delicious.

I feel slightly ashamed to admit that I don't count the rows on my corn cobs anymore. I'd much more rather sink my teeth in and get straight to savoring each and every kernel.

While summer is all about corn fresh from the grill, that doesn't mean the rest of the year is devoid of corn. Corn freezes fabulously, and for every corn cob I eat, I make a couple extra to freeze for the winter.

How to freeze corn (or almost any other vegetable)

1) Cook it.

2) Cut it off the cob, or otherwise cut it into usable sized pieces.

3) Spread it in on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. 

4) Once frozen, scrape everything into a bag and put it back in the freezer.

Heck yeah grilled corn year round!

Inaugural Grill

When Alex and I moved into our duplex apartment last August, the modest back yard was a disaster of ancient things from previous tenants and construction equipment from our landlord. We generally ignored the fact that we even had a backyard. Until we realized months later that the growing jungle of weeds might be a problem, as it was quickly engulfing all the junk in our back yard. We donned our grungiest work clothes, heavy gloves, bandana masks, and lab goggles to eradicate the weeds and transform our backyard into a space we actually want to spend time in.

Among the weeds and junk was an impressively rusty old charcoal grill. Alex took it on as a mission to get the grill back into working condition while I tore up and removed the concrete from what is now our veggie garden space (still pending veggies). After a lot of scrubbing and a grate purchase - we have a grill! Here is the first meal we cooked on it:

It began with coals, prepped in a chimney...

The coals heating up, while sugar snap peas grow slowly in the background...

Getting things ready to be grilled!

Salted Eggplant

Summer Squash

Cremini Mushrooms with Balsamic Vinegar wrapped in foil

Prather Ranch Hot Italian Sausages

(and the plastic patio table that we rescued from the backyard disaster!)

Alex gettin' his grill on!

Grilling things! And toasting some sourdough bread.

 

Candlelight grilled dinner in the backyard!

We paired grilled foods with Mississippi Mud, a Black & Tan beer, and we used Annie's Goddess Dressing to use as a dip for everything.

Meatballs & Yogurt Sauce

My camera has sadly passed on to silicon heaven. Luckily, my iPhone has a surprisingly decent camera, so here's a post made entirely of iPhone photos!

It's been heating up here in the Bay Area, and the other evening Alex and I crafted a quick and (mostly) cool dinner. Alex made a yogurt sauce...

Strauss Plain Yogurt with hella chopped garlic!

The spice line-up for the yogurt:

Coriander, Red Pepper, Tumeric, Cinnamon, Cumin...

Garlic, Yogurt, Spices, Olive Oil...

Chopped tomatoes and cucumber to finish the yogurt sauce

...In the end, perhaps the yogurt sauce was more like a saucy tomato-cucumber salad. Anyway, moving on to the meatballs:

Ground beef, chopped garlic, corn meal, cilantro, cumin, paprika, salt.

My favorite part is mushing all the meatball ingredients together with my hands! Also, we were all out of both flour and eggs, so I improvised with cornmeal and completely left out the egg. Turns out eggs are totally unnecessary for meatballs.

Searing the meatballs in olive oil

Meatballs with Cucumber-Tomato-Yogurt Sauce, garnished with Green Onion.

Baked Polenta

Polenta is a classic, simple, cornmeal porridge of Italian origin. The traditional method involves a good 30-40 minutes of love and elbow-grease to stand at the stove constantly stirring this thick porridge. Though a few days ago I found myself craving polenta and I stumbled on a recipe for baked polenta in the Joy of Cooking. It almost feels like cheating, but this method makes a darn good polenta!

Preparation

- Dice half an onion

- Grate some cheese

The original recipe says to use a mixture of 4oz. Gruyere, 4oz. Mozzarella, and 1/2 cup Parmasan. I used maybe 8oz. White Cheddar, though I'm suspicious cheese is not neccessary for this recipe -- make it as cheesey, or not-cheesey, as you like!

- Preheat the oven to 350F

- Butter a 2qt. (9" x 9" -ish) baking dish

     

Making the Polenta

- Saute the diced onion in some butter in a deep pan.

- Pour 5 cups of liquid over the onions and bring to a boil.

"liquid" could be water, stock, cream/milk, or any combination or 2 or more. I used 4 cups water + 1/2 cup chicken demi-glace + 1/2 cup cream

- Once the liquid is at a rolling boil, slowly pour 1-1/2 cups Yellow Cornmeal into the boiling liquid while stirring with a whisk or wooden spoon.

- Continue to stir for a minute or so until it thickens.

- Throw in a dash of salt (herbs and spices could also be added at this point!)

- Pour the polenta into the pre-buttered pan.

     It can either be poured in all at once, or in two parts, adding cheese after the first part to create a layer of cheese in the middle of the polenta.

- Cover the polenta with cheese, and pour 1/2 cup Milk or Cream on top.

- Put it in the oven for 30-60 minutes until the top is brown and bubbly.

- Let stand for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Leftover polenta can also be sliced and fried the next day to make savory polenta cakes!

Soft Polenta with Pesto and Sauteed Mushrooms & Broccoli

Avocado Adventure!

Haas, Fuerte, and Bacon Avocados

Since moving to California, Alex and I have become aware that there are different varieties of avocado. And today, we decided to have a little avocado tasting. We bought three different varieties at the farmers market; the usual black-skinned Haas, green-skinned Fuerte, and green-skinned Bacon. Both Fuerte and Bacon are green when ripe, unlike Haas which is green at the start and turns dark-brown/black as it ripens. Here are our conclusions:

• Haas: Arguably the most flavorful, with more of a "green vegetable" flavor and firm butteriness. Rich green-yellow flesh and thick skin.
• Fuerte: Arguably has just as much flavor as Haas, though it's sweeter and creamier. Thin skin with green flesh.
• Bacon: Despite its name, this was the most disappointing - it was like silky smooth avocado water. Lightest in color and flavor. Also incredibly thin-skinned. 

Granted, this study has a sample size of 1, so we really can't say anything quantitative. Though I'll take a Haas or Fuerte avocado any day!

Pierogies!

There's a funny thing that happens late at night hanging out with friends at Candice & Joe's house: I get incredible inspired to whip up ravioli-like things, by hand, because it's fun. This time, I made pierogies, which are a lot like ravioli's, except they're Polish in origin, often filled with potatoes, usually fried after being boiled, and frequently served with sour cream.

The dough:

1 3/4 cup Flour

2 Eggs

1/4 cup water

big pinch salt

Combine these together (I like the well method) and knead the dough for a few minutes until it's good and smooth, then wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest on the counter for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your filling. I boiled some potatoes and combined them with grated cheddar cheese, salt, and pepper. I appreciate the comfort of traditional pierogies, but you could certainly run wild and get creative with fillings.

Roll out the dough on a well floured surface and keep it moving so you're sure it's not sticking to the counter! Then use a circular cookie-cutter to cut out circles roughly 3 inches in diameter. Place some filling in the center of each circle, brush the edges with a whipped egg, fold each circle in half over the filling and thoroughly press the edges closed with a fork. (The egg acts like glue, so you can be sure your pierogies wont open up on you!)

Cook the pierogies in salted boiling water for 12 minutes.

  Then fry them in butter and serve with sour cream!

...I may have fried these in an extremely liberal amount of butter.

Poblano-Strawberry-Fennel-Cilantro Salsa

THIS is why I married Alex!

It all began at the farmers market when Alex overheard a vendor telling a customer that poblano peppers are spicy, and the following scenario ensued:

Alex: Poblanos aren't spicy!
Vendor: Yes they are.
Alex: I eat your poblanos all the time and they're not spicy!
Vendor: I eat them all the time too and I can tell you - they're spicy!
*vendor cracks open a poblano and hands the upper half to Alex*
Vendor: Eat that and tell me it's not spicy
Alex: *takes a bite out of the side* It's not spicy.
Vendor: Take a bite right next to the stem, and get some of the webbing/seeds too...
Alex *takes a bite where he's told* WOA. that's spicy. Oh wow... uuhh... *he starts to sweat*
Vendor: Here, have some strawberries, it'll help kill the heat.

And so the idea for Strawberry-Poblano salsa was born!

For dinner a few nights ago, Alex made some rice, fried up some ground beef seasoned with cumin, and made a poblano-strawberry-fennel-cilantro salsa to put on top of the beef and rice. And the finishing touch was a dollop of sour cream. This was insanely delicious, and I highly recommend that everyone try this!

California Sun

California produces some damn fine fruits and veggies. I thought we got good tomatoes in Seattle, I thought I grew delicious tomatoes in Seattle, but California has raised the bar. The good tomatoes in the East Bay are REALLY GOOD. Also, avocados have become a staple in my diet:

Halved and sprinkled with salt

Our very first meal made from a California farmers market was a cast iron pan full of ground beef, peppers, onions,  and eggplant:

Beef-Pepper-Eggplant saute with a side of avocado

 Alex and I spent several weeks crashing with my dad before we found our own place in the bay. One night we cooked my dad and his lady-friend dinner. I dug up potatoes from my dad's front yard and we whipped up a feast with our loot from the farmers market!

Dad's potatoes!

Pork & veggies in an Avocado-Pesto sauce

topped with tomatoes and served with roasted potatoes

For the record, avocado and basil are super delicious companions!