Kitchen Happenings: Changing Speeds

Wow, it's been a while. I promise that we'll get a few updates in. We've had some reviews sitting on the back burner: Baccaro, Jim Gould's, The Jolly Roger, The Great Impasta, Hickory River, and some others. We've had some nice food experiences over the last few months. We've just been way to busy with this whole PhD thing to get it down in print!

One thing of interest that's been happening in my kitchen is the back and forth between fast and slow cooking. I love the grill. There's nice smoky flavor and tenderness that comes from that whole quick cook, high temperature thing over charcoal. But there's also a place in my heart that yearns for slow cooked, braised, and stewed dishes.

So today, I want to talk about pork loin. Done two styles. One, this southwest, more Tex-Mex, spicy grill. The other, more of a Mexican style braised dish with a pseudo-mole type cooking liquid. The first comes from a little bruschetta party that I had. One of the three types that I made was this awesome Southwestern Pork Bruschetta, which had thinly sliced pork loin, topped with this spicy/sweet white bean, corn, and jalapeno salad. Just FYI, the other two types of bruschetta were the Mediterranean chicken bruschetta that I talked about in a July posting, as well as a fancy Salisbury Steak bruschetta.

THE HARE

For the Southwestern pork, start off with nice, thick pork chops. Maybe 3/4" or so. It's just easier to keep it juicy, and to get it to a nice medium on the grill if it's thicker. Too thin, and you're automatically looking at medium well or better. But, go with a dry rub of onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, paprika, black pepper, Cayenne pepper, cumin, and salt. I didn't really measure, but just seasoned pretty aggressively on both sides of the meat after I had cut my pork chops. I have a garlic and chili infused olive oil that I make, so I used that to dress the pork chops before grilling, as well. The whole idea with oil is that it gets hotter than water, so that you can get the surface hotter when you apply that nice, direct heat. Grill until the chops are medium, and then let them rest for at least 5 minutes (which is probably the hardest part for me... I just want to eat!).

The salad topping for the pork is ultra simple. A large can of diced tomatoes, 2 cans of white beans, a bag of frozen corn (I'm sure that canned corn would be fine, too), a chopped onion, some chopped bell pepper, some cilantro, some green onion (which is very underrated, I believe), some jalapenos. Add a similar spice blend that you used for the pork, and some fresh squeezed lemon and lime, and you're in business. Just let everything sit for a couple of hours.

To serve, just have the grilled bread ready, slice the pork chops really thin, on the bias, and top with a little bit of the corn and bean salad. Instant hit. Nice, warm, tender pork, a nice cold salad with some of that contrasting texture that you get from the beans and corn and the crunchy veggies. Some sweet, some heat, and a lot of good times, really fast. I think that pork loin is a perfect cut for this dish. Tenderloin would make for too small of a slice. The other cuts that come to mind wouldn't be quite as good for this fast grill that I want.

THE TORTOISE

The other route is the slow route. Slow cooking. I was flipping through my cabinets and found some dried poblanos and other chilies sitting around. It was sauce time. So, into the pot goes some of that infused olive oil, and these dried peppers. As things were heating up, I got to thinking. And I ended up thinking mole. Obviously, not real mole, but my take on it. I've discovered that a little knowledge can be dangerous, but in some cases, it can also loosen up boundaries. I think that cooking is one of those places where you can loosen up boundaries, and bring in your own flair to some traditional methods and ingredients.

So after the peppers started to smoke up, in went some water and vinegar. Then ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, black pepper, chili powder, paprika, black pepper, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder, a bunch of garlic cloves, and a lemon, cut in half. I didn't have any stock laying around, otherwise that would've been better for the sauce - stock is always more flavorful than water. So, I just went with some beef bullion. At this point, I let everything simmer, and when I tasted, it was this awesome, smoky, tangy hot sauce. I almost just wanted to bottle it then and there. But the image eating a slow, braised dish later on changed my mind. And hot sauce is it's own column, as well.

I didn't have much in the way of dried fruits and nuts, but I did have some canned fruit laying around. So in went some canned peaches and canned pineapple. I dug around, and found some fresh tomatoes. A large onion, cut into eighths helped out the cause, too. So, all of this just starts to cook down into that nice liquid. As things begin to soften up, I decided to just be lazy. Immersion blender. I did let it cook to the point where everything was fork tender. And then, in went the immersion blender. Strain with a not-too-fine mesh strainer, and you're in business. Let things keep simmering. I added some chocolate (dark, if you have it), as well as some vanilla extract. A little sweet, a little smoky, a little tangy, a little spicy, a little creamy. All sots of tasty.

Now, with the pork loin, I think that you want to leave it relatively whole, but a couple of cuts will help the cooking process move along. Brown off the fatty parts, and then just pour enough of the mole sauce to cover. Cook it down on low heat for a few hours, and then try to break apart the meat with tongs. After it's broken up, let it cook in the sauce for a little longer so that the inner parts of the pork loin get some more flavor. You can just serve it with tortillas, or what we did was on a plate with steamed rice, topped with a warm black bean and corn salad. Again, just really good eats.

In retrospect, I regretted using the pork loin in the braised dish, though it was good. I think that it would've been better with a pork shoulder, or another more fatty, less "premium" cut. The meat would've been a little richer in flavor and a little juicier, I believe. And was it a real, traditional mole? No. But it was pretty good. Especially for a college apartment of two dudes in grad school. And with all of the extra sauce left over, there will be more braised dishes (chicken comes to mind... Coq au Mole?) as well as some enchiladas in the works.

Oh well. Hopefully this will make you guys experiment a little in the kitchen.

Some restaurant reviews will be up soon!

-foodgeek

Kitchen Happenings: Yogurt Cheese

Homemade Dairy Products - What Could Go Wrong?

So, right off of Good Eats on the Food Network, I tried to make my own yogurt and cheese. And you know what? It's really good. Basically, a fat free version of creme fraiche that is a clean board for you to flavor as you see fit. Basically, just work some warm milk into some yogurt, and let it ferment for a few hours. After it thickens up, let the curd and whey separate with a cheese cloth. This will take a few hours, but what you're left with is this nice, creamy, tangy soft cheese, which is excellent. If you use fat free yogurt and skim milk, you end up with fat free cheese. Very healthy.

The best part? Excessively versatile. You can adjust it to whatever you want. Some cucumber and spices make it go with gyros. You can add some dill and lemon zest and top it on salmon. Mix in garlic and herbs and spread it on bagel chips. Top it with honey to make a great strawberry dip. Just put it directly on tacos. Or flavor it however you like in place of flavored cream cheese or sour cream.

I don't know how useful this is for everyone else, but I like it

-foodgeek

Kitchen Happenings: A Green Thumb?

Not a restaurant post, but just a general food posting by a college kid about having good food in a college environment on a college budget. Today's note? Fresh herbs.

One thing that I love is my little herb "garden." It's not so much a garden as it is a big, sturdy 15" plastic bowl with topsoil that sits on the railing of my apartment balcony. It's nice. Right now, I've got some basil, oregano, sage, thyme, chives, green onion, parsley, dill, and rosemary going strong. They each have their own little area in the bowl, which is just enough for what I need for my everyday cooking. I even had little 2 basil plants sprout out so I took them up and re-planted in little pots and I'll give them to my friends when they grow a little more.

So what am I doing with all of this? Well the first thing that I did was make a compound butter spread with the sage. Decided to get more flavor out of the sage, so I actually cooked the sage (chopped) along with some chopped garlic in olive oil under low heat for a while, and then let it cool before I mixed it with a small tub of butter. It's really tasty and spreads easily. I can actually just brush it on with a silicon scraper. Tonight's late dinner? Roasted vidalia onions (brushed a roasting pan with the sage butter, then salt and pepper) and cod fillets (salt and pepper on one side, then brushed with just a little bit of butter on both sides). Simple, tasty, and pretty healthy.

While the fresh herbs (particularly the basil) are great for the obvious, up-front uses (like with simple pizzas with fresh tomatoes or just finishing off dishes). They also add a great underlying taste. I had some extra mushrooms laying around, so I wanted to take a shot at some sort of mushroom pate or similar sort of thing. I decided on using softened cream cheese with some seasoning, but it wasn't quite right. So, a little trip out to the balcony gave me some chives, green onion, and parsley to chop up and work into my spread. Just a nice fresh, bright taste that balanced the earthy flavors from the mushrooms. A great topping for bruschetta.

Speaking of which, another great use for fresh herbs is in vinagrettes. Last week, I found half a jar of olives and some canned tomatoes that needed to be used up. So, into the blender they went. Fresh basil and green onion followed along with some red wine vinegar and olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Halfway through making the vinagrette, I had this thick puree. I made a thinner version for my salad that night, but I wanted to hang on to the thick sauce. It had a lot of potential for grilling as a marinade, so I tried it with chicken. And it worked. But where it was so much nicer was as a topping. I had left it in the fridge overnight, which let it get thicker (the olive oil sort of solidified, I think). I grilled up some bread, and put on a little bit of the mix (once it hit the bread, you could see the oil just melt and spread out a little), and then topping it all with some slices of grilled chicken breast and more of the topping. Excellent grilled chicken bruschetta. Nice bright flavor from the tomatoes, a good herb flavor with some richness from the olives and tang from the vinegar. Good stuff.

Anyway, I think that I'll be reporting a little more out of my kitchen and less from the restaurants (I need to shed about 20 pounds in the near future and about 40 pounds down the road). We'll see. I've got at least 2 writeups that need to get done for restaurants from a while ago. And there are a couple of places that deserve visits and writeups. We'll see how much I can stay away from the eateries

-foodgeek