First First Thursday Attempt (Failed)

This is prerecorded. As you read this, I am floating on a canal somewhere in England, exhausted from tackling the 34 locks of the Tardebigge flight

I am terribly addicted to thursday night smackdown. I love the way she writes, honest, funny and painful. Months ago, I had this great plan to play along with her First Thursday event. The challenge that month was to actually follow a recipe, no cheating, no tweaking. A REAL challenge for me!
I chose my Les Halles Cookbook. I have never cooked from it, although I do enjoy reading the recipes, and its about time I gave it a chance.
Today's recipe is palette de porc a la biere. I will be honest, I couldn't get a bone in pork shoulder. The recipe as written below is totally simplified from the book; I would recommend picking it up if you are interested in traditional recipes with an irreverent prose style.

Of course, I never got my @#$% together and here it is almost 3 months later and I am finally getting around to posting the results...

Palette de Porc a la biere

Ingredients
4 to 6 lb pork shoulder, bone in
salt and pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 small onions
2 carrots
4 garlic cloves
2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup cider vinegar
12 oz beer
1 cup chicken stock
4 tbsp dijon
2 tbsp breadcrumbs

Season the pork and sear in 2 tbsp of oil and 2 tbsp butter. Discard the fat and add the remaining oil. Saute the vegetables until soft and slightly caramelised. Add flour, cook 2 minutes. Stir in Vinegar and beer and reduce by half, then add teh chicken stock and bring to a boil. Return pork to the pot and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for two hours or so.
Preheat the oven to 450F. Remove the pork from the pot and place on baking sheet. Brush with half the mustard, then press the breadcrumbs on. Brown for 15 minutes, then allow to rest for 5
Strain the cooking liquid into a sauce pan. Simmer about 15 minutes, check seaoning. Remove from heat, whisk in mustard and serve with the sliced pork.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the results were delicious...

Meatballs

I have to admit, every time I make meatballs, I think of Sher. Weird, I know, but we all have our ways of remembering...
Anyway, Mission Use Food From The Freezer Because we Are To Poor To Buy New Stuff (heretofore known as Operation FreezerRaid) is underway. This easy dinner came from a pound of ground pork lurking in the freezer.

Pork Meatballs in Gravy
Serves Four

1lb ground pork
1 onion, finely diced, split
1 egg
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
herbs, to taste ( I used sage and oregano.)
salt and pepper
1/4 cup breadcrumbs

Combine ingredients, using only half of the onion. Cook a small piece to test for seasoning. Form meatballs and sear in a sauce pan over medium high heat. Set aside meatballs. In the same pan, using the fat from searing the meatballs, cook the remaining onion till soft and sweet. Add 2 tbsp flour and cook, stirring, for a minute or two. Add 1 cup of red wine, cook for 3 or 4 minutes. Add two cups of chicken stock and return the meatballs to the pan. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. (Longer is better.) Season sauce and sdjust for thickness.

Cheap and Easy

Money seems to be on everyone's minds these days and things are no different in our house. Less hours for me as catering enters the slow season means that I am trying to be a little more budget aware. Yesterday's dinner fit the bill. All I had to do was raid the freezer for my homemade yam gnocchi, some pork chops and sweet peas. I pounded the pork chops out, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, dredged in egg and then breadcrumbs, and fried in olive oil.
The yam gnocchi were blanched in a pot of boiling salted water. Once the pork was cooked, I tossed the gnocchi into the skillet, sauteed til crispy, then added half a bag of peas, a splash of Zinfandel and a grating of nutmeg. Easy. Cheap. And you know what? It also tasted good.

 

Guanciale

What is it? One of the best pork products yet! I picked it up from Oyama on Granville Island ~ I just cannot resist fatty hunks of pork and since my recent cholesterol test was mindblowingly good (the doctor laughed in surprise at the results), I figure I can give in to the occasional pork whim.
I googled guanciale before I went to write this post. I stumbled across a website called FXcuisine which discussed the magic of the pig jowl along with how difficult it is to find outside of Italy Now I feel really lucky!
Basically, Guanciale is a cure pigs cheek. It isn't smoked and the flavour is pretty incredible and porky. I have already explored several different uses. One was slicing it like bacon and serving with eggs sunnyside up for a lazy Sunday breakfast.

 

Pork Fried Rice

Pork Fried Rice
Originally uploaded by kayaksoup.

Remember yesterdays pork roast? It has been reincarnated as Pork Fried Rice, another budget friendly meal. I used leftover rice, leftover pork and whatever vegetables and herbs were in the crisper. Add eggs and tamari and voila. Easy AND cheap. I served baby bok choy along side which topped out at a whopping 18 cents per serving.

Preserved Lemon and Garlic Rubbed Roast Pork

 

Preserved Lemon and Garlic Rubbed Roast Pork
1 1/2lb pork rib roast (I bought a larger one and cut it in half ~ budget cutbacks)
1/2 preserved lemon, flesh removed and peel minced fine
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
2 tbsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tbsp smoked fleur de sel(this is optional, I just happened to pick some up on sale recently. Any salt will do)

Preheat oven to 400F
Rub roast with seasoning ingredients. Place in oven and roast 15mins, then reduce heat and roast a further 1 1/2 hours or until internal temperature reaches 145F. Rest 5 -10 minutes. Slice and serve!

I have been feeling a budget crunch lately, so this meal was inspired by my need to buy inexpensive meat AND use leftovers (the yam cakes were made with leftover mashed yams). And from the roast, I have leftover meat which will go into tonights dinner.

Sweet and Sour Pork

Sweet and Sour Pork
Originally uploaded by kayaksoup.

Another one of my bookmarked recipes; you really need to check out the posting about it though. The description was enough to temp me into trying this. I almost followed the recipe, except for the addition of broccoli and forgetting to put the green onions in (it was post Arts Club).
Another winner from Aria of passionatenonchalance ( I know, again, but I can't help it, the stuff she posts looks so tasty!)


1 20oz can pineapple chunks, in water no sugar added
1 1/2 lb top pork loin, trimmed and cut into 1/2″ pieces, lightly salt
3 green onions, trimmed and chopped into rings
1 red pepper, chopped into 1/2″ pieces
3, 1″ cubes peeled ginger root
2 cloves garlic
3 tb plum sauce, heaping
1/2 ts honey
1/2 ts chili oil
2 tb tomato paste
2 tb cornstarch
1/3 c cold water
1/4 c white vinegar
1/4 c brown sugar
1 tb vegetable oil
1/2 ts sesame oil
1 tb soy or tamari

Heat the vegetable, sesame, and chili oils in a pan and brown the pork. Remove and drain leaving a small amount of oil. Add red pepper and saute for 10 minutes, remove and add the the pork you have set aside. Strain the pineapple and set aside reserving the liquid. In the same pan, add the vinegar to deglaze the pan and reduce to half. Add plumb sauce, honey, tomato paste, brown sugar, and pineapple juice. Using a garlic press, crush the garlic and ginger into the pan.

After a few minutes, mix the cold water and corn starch together to create a slurry. Stir into the sauce and bring to a boil. Add pork, red peppers, and pineapple. Stir to coat, cover and cook until the pork is tender and the flavors have developed.