pork all the things - a stir-fry odyssey

This past week, boneless pork loin was on sale at the grocery store, so I bought a huge one and we've been having pork for dinner every night this week. I did pan-fried chops one night, I did a roast another night, we had the leftovers from the roast with some braised cabbage the following night, and last night I used the last of the loin to make stir-fry:

I like stir-fry, because not only is it a good way to get in plenty of vegetables and protein, but it's also a pretty high culinary pay-out for a small amount of effort. Also, anything that I can cook with the burner cranked up to high is automatically exciting in my book.

Pork loin is nice in a stir-fry because it's got a little extra fat as compared to tenderloin, so it offers more porky flavor and stays a bit more moist. I like to give mine a bath in a combination of tamari, sesame oil, honey, grated fresh ginger and a splash of water:

The meat sits in the marinade while I chop up my veggies. This is my go-to combination of broccoli, red bell pepper, onion and mushroom:

When the veg is all chopped, it's time to fry! I crank the heat up under my favorite heavy-bottomed saute pan and after a minute or so, I add some coconut oil. Once the coconut oil is melted, I throw my veg in, starting with the ones that take the most time to cook. In this case, broccoli goes in for about a minute, then I dump everything else in because the onions, peppers and mushrooms all basically cook at the same speed. I swear by tongs for stir-frying - I have a pair with silicone tips on the ends so that they don't scrape my pan up, and they're great.

The veg comes out when it's crisp-tender:

...and in goes the meat, working in batches so as not to over-crowd it and end up with steamed chewy pork bits of sadness:

The remainder of the marinade goes into the pan with the last of the pork and I let it cook down to a glaze consistency, then add all the pork back in and toss it to coat. It gets quite dark because the sugars in the honey caramelize with the soy, but that's exactly what makes it taste awesome. Don't fear the caramelization!

When the meat is cooked through, toss it on top of your dished-up veg and voila, Paleo-friendly stir-fry, no rice needed!

spice-crusted pork tenderloin

You all know of my deep and abiding love of all things pork, but I have been keeping a dirty little secret from you: I am not a fan of pork tenderloin. I love the texture of it, but similar to beef tenderloin, it has very little flavor in and of itself, and to a card-carrying meat lover, that's kind of sad-making. That, along with the fact that tenderloin is super lean and easy to over-cook have led me to just basically avoid buying it for many years.

Until this past weekend.

Sexy meat.

I found a recipe for spice-crusted pork tenderloin in a Cooks Illustrated collection of "skillet dinners". They showed medallions of rosy moist pork heavily crusted with spice and served with a sexy golden-brown potato roesti (which, for the unintiated, is basically a giant pan-fried hash brown and is one of the best things you can make with potatoes. Which is saying a lot, in my book, because I love me some potatoes). I was sold. I needed to try it. I tried to talk myself out of it, but it just wasn't working. The hook was firmly set and I surrendered to the pull.

The recipe calls for rolling the tenderloins in a mixture of spices (caraway seeds, ground coriander, nutmeg, allspice, salt and black pepper), then searing the meat off on all sides in a hot pan with a bit of melted butter. The meat then goes in a baking dish in a 425 degree oven for 12-15 minutes until it hits 140 degrees. You take the meat out at that point, tent it with foil, and let it rest until it hits 150. I ended up having to leave mine in the oven for about 22 minutes to get it to 140 degrees, but that was entirely my own fault because I didn't pull the meat out of the fridge until like 20 minutes before I wanted to cook, which is a rookie move.

Even with the added cooking time, the meat stayed super juicy and tender, though. And when I say tender, I mean like...you could cut it with the side of your fork. No knives necessary. Redonkulous. I think next time I make this, I'm going to pre-rub the meat (hurrrr) with the spice mixture and let it sit for a while before I cook it, just to see if the flavors sink in more. I suppose you could brine the tenderloin ahead of time if you were feeling really fucking ambitious about it, but a) I'm never that ambitious and b) I'd be a little worried that brining might turn the meat mushy rather than impart more flavor. I don't know. If you try it, tell me what you think.

The roesti was a little more work - I opted to shred my potatoes by hand rather than using my small and finicky food processor, so I got a good triceps workout holding the box grater at a weird angle in the bowl. You then have to rinse the excess starch off the shredded potato, then scoop it into a clean dish towel and wring as much water as you can out of it. You season the potato with salt and pepper, add a little corn starch to help bind the potato together better (there was a reason for this given in the write-up about the recipe but I was skimming so...yeah. No science today, sorry!), then plunk it all into a hot pan with some melted butter and keep squishing it down until it's a nice compact disc. It gets all GBD (golden brown delicious) on one side, then you flip it (which is a delicate operation, I tell you what), and let it get GBD on the other side. BOOM. Giant hash brown heaven. I will say, with regard to the roesti, that I should have had my heat turned up higher when I started, so it ended up kind of greasy. EVEN SO. Giant hash brown. So crunchy, much nom.



I steamed up some green beans with almonds to complete the plate. In retrospect, I could have made them more fancy with like some orange zest and cranberries, but...eh. I'm the weirdo who likes green beans even raw, so they don't need much fancying up for me to shove them in my nom-hole.

God, nom-hole sounds dirty. I'm keeping it. I love it. Heeeeee.

Anyway - this dinner is gloriously gluten-free (assuming you're doing your own due diligence on your spices). If you're going the Paleo or Primal route, you'd want to omit the corn starch and white potatoes, depending on how strict you're being.

take your sweet potatoes and stuff them.

The meat-department gods saw fit to put pork butt on sale this week, my friends. You know what that means: another installment in the "what do I do with all this leftover pulled pork" files! Today the answer happens to be, "Stuff it in your sweet potatoes", which sounds like not only an awesome euphemism but also a good culinary idea.

Everything is better with cheese. FACT.

Obviously, this project starts with the assumption that you have some leftover shredded pork butt. Mine was just plain, not sauced, but I'm sure that sauced-up pork would be just as delightful in this application.

You're also going to need some sweet potatoes, obvs. I used two medium-sized ones to feed myself and the Ginger Beast, and honestly, it was a lot. Next time I'd either just serve half a potato each, or use smaller potatoes.

Anyway - you can bake the sweet potatoes ahead in the oven if you're fancy, but I'm personally really fucking lazy about shit like that, so I just cut a slit in each of mine and throw them in the microwave on the "potato" setting until they're done. These two took about 12 minutes total, and I flipped them over halfway through.

Once the potatoes are cooked, split them in half and scoop out all but a little bit of the flesh from the skin (that sounds totally sinister, sorry). You want to leave a little rim around the edges so that the skins keep their general shape. The scooped-out flesh should go into a bowl big enough to mix some other stuff into. Also, side-note between you and me? This whole flesh-scooping thing is WAY fucking easier to do if you let the potato COOL DOWN a little first, says she who now sports steam-burns on her left. hand. Yes, that type of thing is probably obvious to most people, but a) I am the queen of impatient and b) I am not most people. So I'm just throwing it out there.

Where was I? Oh, yes, potato flesh in the bowl. To that, you're going to add the pulled pork. I used like two cups or so of pork because we are hungry, hungry hippos. Use less if you're on a diet or you hate the world or something. I also added a pinch of kosher salt, a shake of black pepper, a teaspoon-ish of ground cumin and a half a teaspoon-ish of ground coriander seed. Also, and this is KEY, the juice of one fresh lime. It's really good, trust me on this.

So, mix all that stuff up in the bowl until it's well-combined. At some point you should have pre-heated your oven to like 450 degrees - I should have mentioned that earlier, sorry. You also need a baking dish. Surprise! This is how my ADHD-addled brain actually works when I cook, by the way. All these recipes I post where I have measured nothing, timed nothing, and can only remember half of what I put in the pan? Welcome to my life, pumpkins. This is how I roll.

Side-tracked again, sorry. So, yes. We're stuffing the pork-mash mixture into the hollowed-out potato skins. It's probably best to do this once you've placed the skins IN the baking dish, otherwise you might end up with one falling apart, pork and sweet potato all over your floor, and the happiest dog in the history of life (assuming you have a dog. We do. He would have been ecstatic, trust me). Once you've stuffed the skins, you can sprinkle some shredded cheddar on top for extra tastiness. Put that whole mess in the oven and let it fester for...oh...I don't know, like 15 or 20 minutes? Long enough for the cheese to reach golden-brown deliciousness status. When you've achieved said crispy cheese enlightenment, BOOM...you're done. Well, the potatoes are done, anyway.

If you want to experience the delight of the side-dish as pictured, that's super simple as well. It's just a baby mixed greens blend (I like the Olivia's Organic saute blend, personally) that has been sauteed with some onion and chopped radish (JUST TRY IT, OK?! Stop making faces. I would not lead you astray. Much...). I use a dab of bacon fat as my saute medium for this, and I add the onions and radishes first to let them caramelize a little before adding the greens in, because those cook really quickly. Oh, and a pinch of kosher salt. Unsalted greens are sad greens, yo. The better your bacon fat, the better the greens will be, as well. Mmm, smokey!

AND, for anyone playing the Paleo / Primal game at home, this meal would easily be considered Paleo if you left off the cheese, and is Primal-compliant as-is. It's also gluten-free, cha-cha-cha!

pork magic

Pork is my favorite meat. Shocker, I know. There's just something about pork, though. Something delicious. I could never be a vegetarian, because pork. Any other type of meat, I could easily do without - but take my pork away and I would be a sad panda indeed.

Last weekend I did a bone-in pork rib roast slow and low, and it turned out fantastic. I didn't take any pictures of it because I wasn't in a blogging mood (doing some work getting my brain-meats sorted out lately, hence the absence), but it was good enough that I was quite happy with the idea of a repeat performance today. When I found a blade-portion roast all ready to go AND on sale at the meat counter during my shopping trip, I did a little happy dance.

 I was thinking about doing some sort of cumin-crusted application with the pork, but one of the things I managed to forget whilst shopping was, in fact, cumin. Standing in front of my spice rack, I was starting to scheme about another rub to do when it hit me - I had a tub of ras el hanout, which is cumin-based, still sitting on the shelf from a previous spice-mixing venture. Hooray! I gave the roast a good rub of the spice mix, plus a little extra sprinkle of kosher salt, then popped it into a 250 degree oven. I checked the temperature after an hour, and down by the bone it was registering 90 degrees. Definitely not done, but that was to be expected. I bumped the oven up to 275 and left it for another 45 minutes. When I came back to check it again, it was reading at 140 by the bone. I pulled the roasted, tented it with foil, then let it rest for about 35 minutes while I roasted off the veg for my side.

When I went to carve the roast, I knew I was on to a winner. It was ridiculously tender, and the little rind of fat on top of the roast had crisped up beautifully. The rich, spicy, orange-y smell of the ras el hanout combined with pork fat was fabulous. Such a good combination!

Mmm, roasty.

The veggies on the side are a combination of roasted parsnips, Brussels sprouts, shallots, and a few carrots I had hanging around that I wanted to use up. The Brussels sprouts, for the record, were ENORMOUS. The largest one was almost as big as a lightbulb, and they were all bigger than an extra large egg. I was a little worried that they'd be bitter, but they weren't at all, which was a relief. I roasted the veg very simply - I just tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil and spread them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (makes a big difference in terms of things not sticking). They went into a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes, then I stirred them a little and put them back in for another five minutes or so just to brown a little more. If you've never had parsnips, this is the way to try them, seriously. I grew up in a non-parsnip household because my mom hates them, but I've grown quite fond of them since my husband talked me into cooking some for him a few years back. Roasted parsnips have a sweetness to them - their astringency melts away and they end up mellow, almost fruity tasting. The more brown, crisp and caramelized they get, the more delicious they are.

For anyone playing along at home, this dish is not only completely gluten-free, but also Paleo- and Whole30 compliant. 

brussels sprout curry, aka: colon-blow curry

Truth time. I had a pumpkin smoothie for breakfast, rather a large amount of broccoli at lunch, and then washed this curry down with a glass and a half of porter. I predict things are going to start getting musical (and fragrant) around here in about, hmmm...let's say four hours or so. The effect will of course be doubled because the Ginger Beast had the same dinner as me (and is generally far more prone to flatulence in general). So basically what I'm saying is, you're probably not going to want to visit any time in the next 8-12 hours. You have been warned.

ANYWAYYYY.

This curry was very much an on-the-fly thing. We had company coming for dinner and all I had for protein was a package of defrosted meatloaf mix (ground beef, pork and veal combination). Trying to come up with what to do with that, a box of shredded Brussels sprouts and a can of fire-roasted tomatoes (I love you, Muir Glen!)  made for an entertaining ride home, but then it occurred to me that curry could in fact be the answer to my problems. Well, some of them...possibly the root of others, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Mmm. Fiber.

Basically, this is just a standard mince curry with a few cups of shredded Brussels sprouts added when I added the tomatoes. I also used a can of coconut milk, but I only used the solidified cream from the top of the can, not the watery part. And yes, that's a little bit of rice at the bottom of the bowl there. This is the first rice I've had in...I can't even remember how long. Many months. It was just there for filler because I was feeding a non-Paleo-eating person who is accustomed to a starch with dinner. My portion size was about 1/4 cup of the rice with about a cup and a half of the curry over top.

Minus the rice, this is Paleo compliant. The glass and a half of porter I drank with it , of course, are not. Is not? NOT. Beer am good. I wonder if there's any left...

weekend cooking - chicken wings, all the cabbage and pork!

This weekend we had some pretty horrible weather here in Vermont. It was warm, for one thing. It's not supposed to be warm in January. Then it started raining. Then it didn't STOP raining for like an entire day. Needless to say, our driveway and lawn are now skating rinks with a nice layer of water on top, just for extra added terror when trying to walk around. Hurrah!

Combine epic bad weather with NFL play-offs, and it basically made for an entire weekend of cooking, eating, and sitting on our duffs. Hubs was jonesing for some football munchies but of course the standard junk food was out because of our Whole30. Instead, I decided to see if I could knock out some W30-compliant chicken wings. One batch ended up legit compliant - they were just rubbed with garam masala, salt and garlic powder. The other batch was...iffy. I made traditional Buffalo wings - the sauce is a combination of butter and Frank's Red Hot. Frank's, surprisingly, has nothing weird / crazy in it - just cayenne, vinegar, salt, garlic and water. The butter is dairy and therefore not technically compliant...but in the grand scheme of things, I decided that it was probably about the least detrimental cheat I could do. Plus it was yummy and worth it.

Buffalo wings

Garam Masala wings

Chicken wing feast with two dips - garlic aioli and curry mayo

The dips for the wings were a garlic aioli and a curry mayo, both made from a base of home-made olive oil mayo with a little bacon fat added in. If you've never tried making your own mayo (or never had it with bacon fat added in), you're TOTALLY missing out. So delicious.

Friday night I had made this pork with braised red cabbage and mustard sauce for dinner:

Braised red cabbage, pork with mustard sauce

Those are actually boneless pork ribs - I seared them in a hot pan with a little bacon fat, then cooked them through in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes. They stayed very moist and tender, which was awesome. For the sauce, I just deglazed the pan I seared the meat in, using a little chicken stock. I whisked in some brown mustard, and a little sherry vinegar. The mustard played well with the sweet / sour flavors in the cabbage.

Anyway - I had a bunch of braised cabbage left over from Friday night's dinner, and I'd been slow-roasting a pork butt all day Saturday (seriously, all day - 250 degrees for eight hours), so for Sunday lunch we had MORE pork and MORE cabbage:

MORE pork and cabbage, you say?!

The funny (scary?) thing is, I could happily eat another plate of this pork and cabbage for dinner tonight, and probably some more for lunch tomorrow. It's that tasty. I used NomNomPaleo's recipe for Chez Panisse's braised red cabbage, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Also, for anyone looking specifically for Whole30-compliant recipes, this cabbage fits the bill, as do my pork recipes and the garam masala chicken wing recipe.

the squash chronicles: Acorn

I've been on kind of a squash kick lately, partially because it's in season right now and partially because every time I come up with a better way of cooking / flavoring it than just the old stand-by "bake and then mash with sweet spices and butter", it makes me happy. To that end, today I decided to try something I HATED as a kid - acorn squash. There was just something about the texture of mashed acorn squash and the strange shade of tan it always ended up. Blech.

What I wanted was a way to make acorn squash likable again. I decided to try roasting it and see how it turned out. The results were quite tasty, and I think the texture would have been better had I roasted it on a larger pan so I had less overlap (less overlap means more squash touching the pan and getting all roasty-toasty. That's a legit technical term, BTW. Look it up). Acorn squash is super bland on its own - it doesn't even really have much inherent sweetness, at least not compared to something like butternut or kabocha. I jazzed it up with a little fresh rosemary and some shallots and the caramelizing there-of brought out some really nice nutty flavors.

I can safely say that I did NOT hate this acorn squash, and I'm looking forward to eating the leftovers tomorrow.

Squash! Not mashed!

The kale was quick-braised by rendering some chopped bacon in a pan, then pouring off all but about half a tablespoon of the fat, adding the chopped kale and about a quarter cup of chicken stock. I turned the heat to low, covered the pan tightly and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring a couple times in the middle. Crispy bacon was sprinkled over top at the very end so it wouldn't get soggy.

The pork was on sale last week at the grocery store and I got sucked in because it was a deal. I should have known better. It's a loin. See that ridge of fat across the top of the slices? That's all the fat there is on the entire roast. Some people may be into super-lean meat, but I am not one of those people. I'm pretty sure the only reason this didn't turn into a 5lb log of shoe leather is because a) it was one of the vacuum-packed ones from Smithfield and I think they inject salt solution into the meat as well as packing it in a kind of weak brine solution, and b) I cooked the meat at quite a low temperature (325 degrees). It wasn't terrible in the end - like I said, it stayed quite moist, and the dusting of thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper I gave it before roasting gave it decent flavor. I wish I had thought to marinate it for a while, though. Loin is just so bland. Oh, well. A cheap chunk of protein for lunches for the week isn't a bad thing!

gluten-free thanksgiving feast

Look, I don't like turkey. I know, it's un-'Murrican, it's the whole point of Thanksgiving dinner, blah blah. Judge me how you want, I don't care. I don't like turkey, and I don't eat it unless I have to. Since I was hosting Thanksgiving this year, I didn't HAVE to make turkey...so I didn't. I made a pork rib roast instead, rubbed with sage and garlic. It was epic, visually stunning, and REALLY damn tasty:

sage and garlic rubbed pork rib roast

My only (trivial) complaint was that it was somewhat hard to carve even with the rib bones pre-cut by the butcher, but it was so juicy and flavorful that it kind of cancelled out all the flailing around with the knife that I had to do to get it onto the plates.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of my pictures of the feast came out really blurry (apparently a combination of low light and quaking with anticipation is not conducive to good photography), but I can still regale you with descriptions of what I made!

With the pork roast, I served my much-asked-for-in-my-family roasted veggie mix, which consists of carrot, potato, radish, and Brussels sprouts. I tossed the prepped veggies with sea salt and black pepper and some fresh thyme and rosemary, then spread them evenly over two parchment-lined baking sheets. I cooked them for about 20 minutes at 475 degrees (because that's what my roast was cooking at, at the time) and then another 20 minutes or so at 350 degrees. Cooking them at high heat first gives the surface a nice crisp crust, then cooking them at a lower heat for longer allows them to cook through without losing the crust or getting burnt.

For other sides, I made a wild and brown rice dressing with lots of fresh thyme, dried cranberries and chopped pecans, some whole-berry cranberry sauce made with maple syrup and orange zest, kale sauteed with shallots and bacon, and I also did a twice-baked winter squash. For the squash, I used buttercup squash which I hadn't used before. I cut it in half and cleaned the seeds out, then cooked it on a foil-lined baking sheet at 375 for about an hour. I then scooped the flesh out into a bowl and added several (I, uhhh...lost count...hehe) tablespoons of butter, a splash of maple syrup, a pinch each of ground clove and ground nutmeg, and a couple pinches of sea salt. I used a stick blender to combine the ingredients and smooth the consistency of the squash out. The squash puree went into a baking dish and was topped with chopped walnuts, a sprinkle of brown sugar and dots of butter. It was then baked again at 350 for about an hour. All the sides except for the kale were actually made ahead last night and just reheated / baked in the oven while the roast finished cooking, and it worked out really well and saved me a lot of stress today!

We had two desserts today - crustless pumpkin pie and a flourless chocolate cake. The pumpkin pie is super easy - I just mix up normal pumpkin pie filling and dump it straight into a glass pie plate - no greasing, no crust, nada. I bake it at 350 for about 45 minutes, and it always comes out great. I've never had a problem with it sticking in the pan, and I honestly don't miss the pie crust one bit.

The flourless chocolate cake, on the other hand...that was a bit of a project. I actually used this recipe from Epicurious - the name of the cake is "La Bete Noire", which means "The Black Beast". I mean, how could I find a a recipe called The Black Beast and NOT make it, right?! So. The recipe is pretty straight-forward: melt chocolate and butter, beat in some eggs, make a sugar syrup, beat that in, dump into a springform pan and bake in a water bath. Can you see where things might go wrong? Yeah. Springform pan + water bath. I know, I know, people do it all the time and it works just fine....good for them. I followed the directions to a T - wrapped the bottom of the pan in layers and layers of foil, carefully poured the hot water into the roasting pan around the springform pan, etc. I thought it was slightly weird when the springform pan started to float in the water bath, but I saw no leakage / seepage, so I threw the whole thing in the oven for an hour. When I took it out, it was entirely apparent that shit had gone awry. There was a layer of water all over the top of the cake! I let it cool enough that I could pull it out and open the latch on the pan, and all the chocolatey goodness came sliding out in a giant placental sploooosh. Thankfully I had had the presence of mind to open the pan over the sink, or I would likely still be scraping chocolate sludge out from between my floorboards. Anyway - so the first try was a miserable fail. The store was already closed at that point and I didn't have enough chocolate to re-do the cake last night, so I had to wait until this morning to re-stock and try. For the re-try, rather than use a traditional bain marie, I instead took the roasting pan half-full of water and put it on the bottom rack of the oven, then put the springform pan full of cake batter on the TOP rack. An hour later, it was done and beautiful. It did develop a rather large crack across the top as it cooled, but the ganache that I poured over the top filled the crack quite nicely!After the ganache set, the finished product looked like this:

La Bete Noire. La Bete, indeed! 

I got a little over-zealous while mixing the ganache, which is why it ended up with a lot of bubbles, but you know what? Bubbles made of chocolate still taste like chocolate!

This cake is truly ridiculous. It's so incredibly dense and rich. It's like a truffle in cake form. Look at this.

Redonku-chocolate.

 I just followed the recipe and made it plain chocolate (I did add a pinch of salt to both the cake and the ganache because they needed them), but my mom and I spent the whole of dessert talking about different ways you could flavor this thing, and they ALL sounded good. I can't wait to make this again and play with flavorings. I want to get some smaller pans and make mini-cakes though. It's just so dense and rich that there's no way anybody would want to eat more than about a 1/16th wedge of it. My family are hearty eaters and we can put away some serious cake...and we only slayed a quarter of this beast. Whew!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I know we did, and with not a trace of wheat gluten in sight.

spinach, sausage and caramelized onion quiche

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I had a pound of sweet Italian pork sausage that needed to be used up ASAP and a package of frozen chopped spinach. I've always got eggs in stock, and usually have an onion hanging around, so this was no sweat to make.

I didn't really measure much - I know I used 6 eggs, probably a cup of cream, just a pinch of nutmeg, a pound of sausage, a medium onion, salt and pepper, some Parmesan cheese and a package of frozen chopped spinach. The sausage was removed from the casings and browned in a pan, then I removed it to my pie plate while I cooked a sliced onion in the accumulated fat in the pan, letting it get nicely browned. The residual sugar from the sausage caramelized the onion well. Onion went into the pie plate with the sausage, then I added the spinach, (which I had cooked in the microwave according to directions on the package and then squeeeeeeezed all the moisture I could out of it). I beat 6 eggs with a little salt and pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and the cream. I grated about half a cup of Parmesan cheese into the eggs, beat well, then dumped it into the pie plate over the sausage, onions and spinach. It went into a 350 degree oven for...I'm not really sure how long, honestly. I just kept checking it to see if the middle was set, and when it was, I took it out and let it cool. It was very yummy!

project: pork rib roast

I stopped by the local mom-and-pop grocery store this morning for the same reason I always go there: to see if they had any thick-cut pork chops suitable for stuffing. I could probably just ask the meat counter guy to leave some chops cut really thick for me, but he's never around when I'm there. Anyway - I went in this morning looking for thick chops, and what I found instead was this beauty:

center-cut pork rib roast

That's a center-cut pork rib roast. That's where my favorite thick-cut chops come from. It was close to five pounds, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I thought very briefly about cutting it into chops and stuffing them, but then I decided that since I'd never done a standing rib roast before, I'd make a Sunday afternoon project out of it.

If you Google "standing rib roast", you'll get a lot of pictures that don't look like the piece of meat in the picture above - instead, they have bare bones sticking out the top. This is something that is usually done by the butcher, and it's called "frenching". I'm sure there's some other, more proper name for the procedure, but I don't know what it is, so I'm going to keep calling it "frenching". Also, it's kind of funny to keep saying stuff like "I was frenching my roast", because a) I've been drinking, and b) I'm a 12 year old boy at heart.

Anyway - moving on. Frenching (hee hee) a roast is very simple, but kind of tedious, especially if you haven't sharpened your knives in a really long time like someone writing this blog who shall remain nameless. Ahem. You make a cut along the top of the roast, like so:

About to french the roast. Hee hee. French the roast. 

You cut straight across, right down to the bone. Then, you cut straight down between the end of each rib, like so:

Cut down between each rib bone, then get ready to scrape.

 At this point, you've got a cube of meat on the end of each rib bone. Now comes the tedious part. You take your knife and, cutting and scraping, remove all the meat off the ends of the bones. The roast ends up eventually looking like this - note the little pile of trimmings off to the side there. Don't ditch those - they'll come into play shortly:

Roast: frenched. Hee.

At this point, I preheated my oven to 350, and preheated my cast iron pan at the same time. I scored the layer of fat across the top of the roast, rubbed it with salt and pepper, then began the task of searing the roast. I did each side for about 5 minutes, trying to hold the roast to make sure that all of the fat cap got nicely crisped:

Browning, browning...

Seared off and ready to roast.

The roast then went into my heavy-weight roasting pan. To the pan around the roast, I added some chopped leeks, carrot, celery, all the fat and meat trimmings from the frenching process, and I also dumped in the juices that had built up in the cast-iron pan when I was searing the roast:

Mmm, drippings!

The meat roasted uncovered in a 350 degree oven for about an hour. I took it out when the internal temperature read about 130 degrees. I removed the roast to a plate and tented it with foil, then took the roasting pan with the vegetables in it and set it on a burner over medium heat. I deglazed the pan with some white wine and a little apple cider vinegar:

The sauce cooked down for a few minutes, then I strained the liquid and veggies through a fine-mesh strainer, using a spoon to press the veggies down and really squeeze the flavors out of them.

To carve the roast, I just cut down between the ribs and then gave it kind of a twist at the end to break the bottom bone. I served them with a mix of roasted veggies (I did carrots, red potatoes, parsnips, radishes and Brussels sprouts tossed with some chopped bacon, olive oil, and salt), and spooned some of the pan sauce over the top:

pork dino-chop? Yes please!

The end-result was incredibly moist and tasty, and I was very happy with it. However, I did learn a few things: 1) frenching doesn't really add anything except a fancy-schmancy look, and I don't think I'd bother again unless I was serving to someone I wanted to impress, 2) I need a better way of straining the sauce in order to get more fat out of it. The sauce was tasty, but greasy. I'm sure there's some simple step there that I'm likely missing, and 3) roasted veggies aren't the best side-dish to have with this type of roast, because they need a totally different temperature oven to cook properly. Next time I think I might do greens - something like kale or broccoli raab, maybe. I also think the astringency of the greens would cut the fattiness of the pork nicely.

stuffed pork roast

My original aim last night was to stuff some pork chops, but I couldn't find any pork chops thick enough. I considered trying to take two thinner chops, putting some stuffing between them and then tying them together with cooking twine, but that sounded like a lot of work. Instead, I spotted a boneless pork roast that looked big enough for me to split down the middle and stuff. I was pretty sure that was going to be less work, so I was sold.

The stuffing was simple - chopped mushrooms, onion, parsley, garlic and a splash of sherry, cooked down until soft. While the stuffing cooked, I split the pork roast and pounded it out (gently, I swear!) between two pieces of plastic wrap until it was a relatively even thickness. I laid a few pieces of prosciutto across the inside of the roast, then spread the stuffing over it. I sprinkled some feta cheese over the whole thing and then carefully rolled the roast up as tightly as I could. I tied it closed with three pieces of string and liberally salted and peppered the whole thing. I then seared each side for a few minutes apiece in my cast-iron pan while I preheated the oven to 450 degrees. When the roast was nicely browned on the outside, I covered the whole pan with foil and popped it into the oven for about 20 minutes. Once the roast hit 140 degrees, I pulled it out and set it on a plate and let it rest for about 10 minutes, then sliced it and served it over some Parmesan-sprinkled steamed spinach. Don't worry, it looks quite a bit more pink in the picture than it actually was in real life.

Stuffed Pork Roast

This was very tasty, and relatively easy. The main issue was getting the roast pounded to a consistent thickness and making sure I didn't OVER-stuff it. Over-stuffing leads to the good stuff falling out in the pan, and that's no fun at all. Also, this is pretty cost-effective if you happen to hit a good sale on boneless pork roast like I did.

prosciutto mushroom stuffed pork chops

As many of my cooking stories begin, so does this one - trawling through the meat department at the grocery store. I encountered a pair of nearly-two-inch-thick boneless pork chops that just begged to be stuffed, so home with me they came! Here's what I did with them:

The stuffing is a quick and simple combination of minced onion, white mushrooms, garlic and thyme, sauteed in a little butter. I cut a deep pocket into each chop, laid a piece of prosciutto into each one along with a piece of fontina cheese, then stuffed the mushroom mixture in. I pan-seared the chops for 2 minutes per side, then put them on a pre-heated pan in a 450 degree oven. The chops baked for 10 minutes while I steamed some asparagus, then it was time to eat.

As you can see, my stuffing started to fall out as I was taking pictures. I usually tie meat up with kitchen twine when I've stuffed it, but I didn't bother this time...and I re-learned my lesson! Other than the stuffing falling out, these came out quite well. I really like fontina cheese - it melts so smoothly, and it has a really nice nutty flavor that, in this dish, mixed nicely with the sweetness of the onions and the saltiness of the prosciutto.

slow-cooker pulled pork carnitas

Carnitas are usually made of pork that has been cut into chunks and slow-cooked in fat, then crisped up before serving. Since I usually have to spend eight hours a day at a place called "work" and I don't have three hours AFTER work to wait for dinner, I decided I wanted to try doing a slow-cooker version of carnitas instead.

Part of what makes carnitas so good is the crispy rendered bits of meat. When you're cooking a pork butt in a crockpot, you don't get those bits. I came up with two ways to deal with this, each of which was only moderately successful on its own, but done in conjunction seemed to really make a difference. The first thing I did was brown the entire roast, one side at a time, in a very hot pan. This ensured that I'd at the very least not end up with flabby chunks of fat in the crock-pot at the end of 10 hours of cooking. It also, I think anyway, made the flavor of the meat deeper than just plopping it in the slow-cooker would have. The second thing I did was, after shredding the cooked meat, I spread it out in a wide, shallow pan and chucked it into a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes. The top surface of the meat got nicely crisp and did a good job of emulating the crispy bits of traditional carnitas.

I used Bibb lettuce leaves to pile the meat and toppings on rather than tortillas. As you can see, I went for avocado, cilantro, radish, white onions, and there's actually some salsa, lime juice and full-fat Greek yogurt in there, too. Some people look askance at me for putting radish on my tacos like this, but I really like the crunch of them, especially with all the softness of the meat and the avocado.

I'm fairly happy with how these came out, but I'll definitely try them again with the addition of some citrus juice and spices to the cooking liquid. This time around, I just used a little chicken stock, a bunch of minced garlic, salt, pepper and oregano. I did mix some onion powder and and cumin into the meat as I was shredding it as well, but next time I'll definitely add these at the beginning of cooking so to better infuse the meat with flavor.

pork chops with dijon pan sauce

Nothing too ambitious tonight, really...especially after the fancy-pants dinner we went out for last night! I had some boneless pork chops defrosted that I needed to use up, but I really wasn't in the mood for a stir-fry, so I decided I'd pan-sear the chops and make a little sauce to go with them. This is what I came up with!

It may not be much to look at, but this was actually very tasty. I started by heating up some olive oil and searing off my chops, then removed the chops from the pan and deglazed with about a cup of chardonnay. I added two large chopped shallots, a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of dijon mustard, then gave it a good whisk to make sure all the good bits got scraped up off the bottom of the pan and everything got combined well. I turned the heat down to low and added the chops back to the pan along with their accumulated juices. I let them cook on low for about 6 more minutes while I quickly steamed some broccoli. The chops then came out of the pan and the sauce was spooned over, and voila! Quick, easy, healthy dinner.

stuffed pork loin

My local grocery store had enormous pork loins on sale for $2 a pound last weekend. I couldn't NOT buy one, at that price. The one I got was around 7.5 pounds. I cut into thirds - one third, I then cut into thick boneless chops, the second third I left whole for future roasting, and the last third got made into this:

I made two cuts in the roast to open it up to a long, flat piece. The filling is a mixture of cob-smoked bacon, green onion, mushrooms, chevre, feta, and baby spinach. I cooked the stuffing all together and then spread it over the meat. I rolled the meat up, tied it with kitchen twine in a few places, then rubbed the outside of the roast with some Irish stout mustard (which is grainy and pretty sweet but also has a nice heat to it) and some grated garlic. It was over a week ago now, so I don't remember what temperature I cooked it at or for how long...helpful, I KNOW! But suffice it to say that it came out pretty tasty. The only complaint I had was that for some reason the bottom-most layer of the roast really dried out. None of the rest of it did...just the very bottom layer that was in contact with the pan while it baked.

quick and dirty chili

I know, I know. It's sacrilege to make "quick" chili. It needs a long time to cook over low heat so the flavors can meld, blah blah blah. I KNOW. But sometimes...sometimes I get home from work and need to used a bunch of leftovers and I'm in the mood for chili right then and there. Sometimes I don't have three hours (or far longer) to let it simmer. That's where quick and dirty chili comes in!

I started with some bacon drippings in a big pot, and added a medium-sized onion, chopped up. While the onion softened over medium heat, I chopped up 6 cloves of garlic (I really like garlic, and some of the cloves were small, honest). That went into the pot when the onions were about halfway soft. After that, I had about two cups each of shredded beef and pork left over from the past few days' kitchen exploits which got added in. Next came spices - I used a mixture of 1 Tbsp chili powder, 2 Tbsp ground cumin, 1 tsp oregano, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and about 3/4 of a tsp of sea salt. I mixed that in and let it cook for another couple minutes, then added a 28oz can of organic diced tomatoes with their juice, and half a cup of water. This all got a thorough stir and then I let it cook on medium-high for about 8 minutes, then spooned it into bowls and topped it with a dollop of sour cream and some chopped avocado. Ta-dah!

Now, I won't lie to you. It wasn't as good as honest-to-goodness, simmered-for-hours chili...but for a healthy, 20 minute start-to-finish meal that used up a bunch of leftovers and got us fed with a minimum of dirty dishes and labor? Pretty damn good. Also, for my Primal- and Paleo-adherent readers, I realize the sour cream is a no-no, but you could easily leave it off and it would be just fine. :)

porktopia, and some lettuce wraps

There was a 3lb boneless pork butt on sale at the grocery store yesterday, and I just couldn't pass it up. ;) This morning, I dosed it up with salt and pepper and a little ground sage and stuck it in the crock pot with a cup of water. By the time I got home tonight, the whole place smelled like pork-topia! The meat literally fell apart in chunks when I started to take it out of the crock pot. It was glorious, and I had to tell myself to stop eating it straight from the plate several times while I was prepping the other components for dinner.

One of the best things to do with shredded pork, in my opinion, is make Asian lettuce wraps. I take a portion of meat, shredded carrot, thinly sliced red pepper, sliced scallion, and pile it all on a lettuce leaf (I like Boston lettuce, if I can get it). I top it with a sauce made of hoisin, a little tamari, a bit of rice vinegar, some toasted sesame oil and some sesame seeds. My lettuce wraps also get a healthy squirt of Sriracha, though my husband skips that part on his. ;)

stuffed pork chops

Oh hey, you're still here? Me too. Sorry about the hiatus. I'll try to do better. :)

Last night I stuffed some pork chops. With more pork. It was one of my better ideas, even if I do say so myself. I didn't get a chance to take a picture because we basically stuffed said pork into our faces as soon as it came out of the oven, but here's what happened.

I took:

4 boneless center-cut pork chops (these were NOT the double-thick ones, just regular thickness)

...and cut pockets into them, carefully, so as not to stab myself and/or cut through the chops.

Then I took:

some sliced baby portabella mushrooms
a slice of prosciutto, and
about an ounce of fresh mozzarella cheese

...and crammed it into each porkchop pocket. Hehehe...pork-pocket. I tied the chops up with some twine so that the cheesy goodness wouldn't all ooze out, then I salted and peppered them liberally. I took a heavy skillet and got it ripping hot (don't use non-stick for this, or if you do, don't get it super ripping hot with nothing in it because it will give off fumes that are Bad For You), added a little olive oil, and then seared the chops, two at a time, for two minutes per side. This two by two by two thing not only had a nice symmetry to it, but more to the point, it created a good sear on the outside of the chops.

Chops then went into a 425 degree oven for about 12 minutes. I took them out and let them rest while I steamed some asparagus, et voila - pork-stuffed pork chops of epic nomminess.

Try it. You'll thank me!

asian lettuce wraps

I got this enormous pork shoulder on super duper sale. It was like $1.29 a lb, and it was $2.00 off because it was getting close to its use-by date (which, incidentally, was still three days away when I bought it! I love catching meat on sale like that. It feels like such a score). I packed brown sugar all over the roast, then set it in a beer-bath, like this:

I wrapped the pan with foil and sealed up the edges so that the steam would stay in and kind of braise the meat as it cooked. This baby went into a 275 F oven for 5 hours (I took the foil off after about 3 hours, because I wanted the fat to crisp up). When it came out, it looked like this:

It pretty much fell apart when I lifted it from the pan onto that plate. I just kind of shoved it back together for photographing purposes and then shredded it with two forks when the photo shoot was over. I also ate some. In fact, I couldn't stop eating it at midnight last night when I was shredding it. It was so good.

Today, I was sitting here trying to decide what to make with my new-found wealth of pork, when I remembered some lettuce wraps with Asian flavors that I'd done with a previous batch of pork and really liked. I decided to reprise that dish, and this is the final product:

The iceberg lettuce wasn't my first choice, but I forgot to get butter lettuce at the farmstand so I was stuck with what the grocery store could give me, which was either the decent looking iceberg or some fairly manky looking romaine. Not a terribly hard choice. Other fixings on the wrap include: the pork of course, shredded carrot, thinly sliced red bell pepper, cilantro, green onions, cucumber, (drowning in the) hoisin (of your lies) sauce, and sriracha. All of the crunchy, cool veggies balance out the soft, warm, fatty pork and the sweet sauce. Highly enjoyable...and aside from the hoisin, perfectly Primal!

pernil al horno

Pernil al horno is a traditional Puerto Rican preparation of pork shoulder. I've used this method of preparation before with a loin roast, which was decent - but a shoulder roast has more fat running through it as well as on top of it which keeps the meat succulent.

Mmmm, porky goodness!

The method of preparation is dead simple, really. For a 5lb roast, I threw 4 big cloves of garlic, half an onion, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 2 teaspoons of black pepper, 1 tablespoon of dried oregano, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into a food processor and let it whiz until it was a paste / liquid. The fat cap on top of the roast got scored and then the paste was evenly schmeared over the meat, into every crack and crevice! The roast was put in a pan, covered with foil and stuck in the fridge for about 5 hours, then the oven was preheated to 350 and the roast was added to it. It baked for about 3.5 hours, with the pan being rotated a half-turn every hour or so. I let it sit for about 20 minutes while I prepared my side-dishes, then it was go-time:

The side dishes are spinach sauteed with shallots in a little bit of coconut oil, and a sort of black beak succotash I made up on the fly and really enjoyed. To make the beans, I chopped up a little bit of bacon and let it render in a pot until crispy then scooped it out to drain and reserved about a teaspoon of the fat in the pot. To the hot fat I added half of a chopped yellow onion. I let the onion cook until it was softened a little, then added a can of black beans which I had previously rinsed thoroughly. The beans and onion cooked on medium high for a few minutes, then I added a can of diced tomatoes and a tiny pinch of sugar to balance out the acid. When everything was warmed through, I scooped it into a serving bowl and topped it with the crisp bits of bacon I'd rendered the fat from earlier. It was quite good for just sort of thinking it up on the fly, and while legumes aren't considered part of a "primal" or "paleo" diet, I think enjoying them every once in a while probably isn't that bad. :)