Parfait! Pork Chops & Sweet Potato Poutine

Posted on May 18, 2012 by terry

“That’s beautiful…” was the reaction of a friend when I first posted this image.

It’s delicious, too, and one of my very favorite ‘non-fancy’ fancy dinners: pan-fried pork chops smothered and braised in stock and buttermilk gravy, and French-fried sweet potatoes – topped with a bit of that gravy, some shredded cheese or – more traditional – cheese curds, and freshly chopped parsley.

Mmm, mmm, GOOD.

INGREDIENTS
•1 cup flour
•1 tbsp dried onion slices
•2 tbsp garlic powder
•1 tsp Cayenne
•1 tsp salt – I used my seasoned salt
•1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
•4 or 6 pork chops – I prefer bone-in, but these boneless chops worked pretty well
•1/4 cup olive oil
•1 tbsp minced shallots
•2 cups vegetable or chicken stock
•1 cup buttermilk
•1 bag frozen sweet potato fries, or 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and fry-cut
•Canola oil for deep frying
•Cheese curds or shredded cheese
•Chopped fresh parsley

Note 1: if you use fresh sweet potatoes, soak the cut fries in ice water with 1 tbsp white vinegar for 30 minutes, then dry them completely (a salad spinner works a treat) before frying.

Note 2: this is another case where I use my (surprisingly) handy mini deep fryer to cook the fries. If you don’t have one, use a deep, heavy pot and a frying thermometer (or your own innate skill) to gauge temperature.

Stir the flour together with the dried onion, garlic powder, Cayenne, salt, and pepper in a large, flat-bottomed dish and set aside.

Pat your chops dry with some paper towels and dredge them lightly in the seasoned flour. Shake off any excess and set aside.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat and then cover the bottom with olive oil. Add the chops in a single layer and fry for 3 minutes per side, then remove to a platter.
(I have a HUGE sauté pan for when I am making 6 chops – if you don’t, you can do this part in batches).

When all the chops are browned, add 1 tablespoon of the seasoned flour and the shallots to the pan and stir to dissolve and cook the flour a bit.

Add the stock continue cooking, scraping any of those nice browned bits from the bottom of the pan, for about 5 minutes, until the now sauce has thickened a bit.

Stir in the buttermilk and return the chops to the pan, then cover and simmer for 5 minutes more until the chops are cooked through. Reduce the heat and keep warm.

Now, for the fries. You could be doing this part while working on the chops, but I have found that chatting with dinner guests and sipping wine and pan-frying pork chops, making a roux and then a gravy and also keeping track of my fried sweet potatoes gets to be a bit much.

Heat your oven to 225º and your deep fryer to 350º.

Cook your fries in batches for 5 minutes, if you use frozen sweet potato fries, 10 minutes if you use fresh. If you ARE using fresh, some folk advocate letting the fries cool for 5 minutes after that first fry, then returning them to the fryer for another 3 minutes for extra crispity-ness. Whatever.

Do not crowd the fryer basket or pot. Cook your potatoes in batches and keep the finished bits on a rack in a pan in your warm oven until all are done.

SO. Chops are nicely braised and warm in their pan; and the sweet potatoes are fried and mostly crispy and staying warm, it’s time for dinner!

I like to serve the whole shebang to guests on one large platter – it really does look nice, and folk can choose their chop and how many sweet potato fries they want.

Arrange the fries and the chops on a platter, pour the gravy from the chops over all, and sprinkle with cheese curds and freshly chopped parsley.

Last note: the parsley is NOT just a garnish to be picked off and left at the side of the plate; it truly does add a little extra sumpin’ sumpin’ to the dish as a whole. I happen to think curly parsley has a bit more flavor than the flat-leaf Italian most cook books seem to prefer, so that’s what I use. Try a bit of both and see which type you like best, then go forth and eat your parsley.

We had our poutine and pork with an artichoke and chickpea salad with Persian cucumber, onion, crumbled balsamic Sartori cheese, and a Dijon vinaigrette.

And cookies for dessert.

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More Better Pretzel Rolls

Posted on May 17, 2012 by terry

So, yeh; I have made pretzel rolls before, and they were pretty good, but it seemed as though every time I made them, half wouldn’t be cooked all the way through when they came out of the oven, and then there was that MESS when I added the baking soda to the boiling water.

Too much trouble.

Then, I saw Jeff Mauro make these little beauties and resolved to try again. And I solved that baking soda mess, too. Bonus!

INGREDIENTS
•1 cup milk
•1/4 cup light brown sugar
•2 tablespoons honey
•1 packet (2-1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
•2 tablespoons unsalted butter
•2 small cloves garlic, grated
•3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
•1 cup bread flour – I used whole wheat flour
•1/2 cup baking soda
•Coarse ground sea salt

Stir together the the milk, 1/2 cup water, brown sugar and honey and heat to 105º to 110º. You can do this in a small pan on top of the stove, or in the ‘wave – 1 minute should do it – just add a wooden skewer to the milk to keep it from super-heating. And yes, my liquid read 114º, but I let it sit for a bit, and then poured it into a large, stainless steel mixing bowl, so the temperature worked out just about right.

Add to the bowl of a stand mixer, sprinkle the yeast over, and wait for at least 10 to 15 minutes until the yeast blooms – everything will get all thick and bubbly.

While you’re waiting for the yeast to bloom, melt the butter in a pan over medium heat, then add the garlic and sauté for 3 minutes or so – just until the garlic is nicely fragrant. Set aside to cool a bit.

OK! Yeast has bloomed, garlic is fragrant, let us continue.

Whisk together the all-purpose and the bread (or whole wheat flour) and add to the yeast in the mixing bowl.

Line 2 baking pans with parchment paper and set aside.

Drizzle the cooled garlic and butter mixture over all and mix, using the dough hook, on medium speed until the dough comes together – pulling away from the sides of the mixing bowl – and is smooth and elastic; about 7 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board. Cut into 8 equal pieces, then roll each piece into a ball and place on one of the parchment lined baking pans.

Cover with a clean dish towel and set aside in a warm space to rest for 15 minutes. Since I was using whole wheat in place of  the bread flour, I let mine rest for 25 minutes.

Lightly dust your board again, roll the dough balls into 7-inch logs, and place on the other parchment lined baking pan.

Cover, place back in that warm spot, and let rest for an additional 30 minutes. – again, since I hadn’t used bread flour, I let mine rest for 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425º, with one oven rack set high and one low.Line 2 more baking sheets with silicone mats or parchment paper.

In a large pot, bring 8 cups water to a boil, and then add the baking soda by tablespoonfulls, letting the foam die down a bit before adding more.

Place two of the dough rolls in the prepared water at a time and cook for 30 seconds on each side.

Remove the boiled rolls with a slotted spatula or (more better) a spider, and place onto the fresh baking sheets, sprinkling the rolls with coarse salt as they come out of the water, to ensure the salt sticks.

Cut 3 shallow diagonal slits on top of each roll, and repeat with the remaining pieces.

Place the two pans in the oven, one on the high rack and one on the low, and bake for 10 to 13 minutes, rotating the pans after 6 minutes.

Remove from the oven and enjoy with your filling of choice. We had ours, lightly toasted, with some very nice hot dogs and were well pleased. Next time, I plan on leaving the rolls shaped as rolls, cutting a shallow “x” in the top, and using them for burgers.

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Baby Corn Manchurian

Posted on May 16, 2012 by terry

SO.

You’ve made your Indian Sweet and Sour Sauce and the Garlic-Ginger Paste (and how to juice ginger). You’ve found those cunning, little baby corn thingys (I went with canned, since the corn needed to be cooked anyway), AND, the surprisingly hard-to-find corn flour (Masa), which, as it happens, any market with a decent Hispanic Foods section will have.

Let us make this sucker!

INGREDIENTS
FRIED BABY CORN:
•2 cans baby corn, drained, rinsed and sliced in half
•4 tsp garlic-ginger paste
•1/8 tsp salt (I used my seasoned salt)
•1/2 tsp Cayenne
•1/2 cup corn flour
•1/4 cup all-purpose flour
•Water to make the batter – I used 1-1/2 cup and the batter was a touch on the thin side, next time I will try 1 cup
•Canola oil, for frying

SAUCE
•1 tbsp garlic-ginger paste
•1 tbsp ginger juice
•1 tbsp soy sauce – I use low salt
•2 tsp white vinegar
•1/2 cup sweet & sour sauce
•1/2 tsp cumin
•1/2 tsp sugar
•1/2 tsp black pepper
•1 onion, diced
•3 green chiles, slit and seeded – if you’d like a spicier dish, leave in some of the seeds
•1/2 green Bell pepper, diced
•4 or 5 scallions, sliced – white and light green parts separated from the darker stalks
•Salt, to taste
•2 tsp corn flour dissolved in 1/4 cup water
•Freshly chopped parsley

Combine the garlic-ginger paste with the salt, Cayenne, corn flour, and all-purpose flour together in a bowl and add water, stirring, to make a batter. Note that mine was a touch too thin, I think, so add the water gradually and stir and judge until you get a nice consistency.

Heat oil in a deep fryer to 375º – I got this wicked nizzah mini-fryer for Christmas and LOVE it. It is not a good tool for frying chicken for 20 (or, mebbe even 6), but is perfectly suited for the amount, and types of food, that I am likely to consider deep frying. For this recipe, as with the Squid-Bit Tempura, I did not use the fryer basket, because the batter would cause the corn to stick to the grid, but frying the corn in batches and pulling them out with a spider worked a treat. If you don’t have a deep fryer, heat oil in a large, deep pan.

Drop your drained, rinsed, and halved baby corn into the batter and stir around to coat.

Remove the coated corn with a slotted spoon (remember, my batter was on the thin side – if it were as thick as I think it should have been, I would have pulled the corn out with tongs, and shaken it a bit to remove any excess.

Drop the corn into the oil in batches – don’t crowd the pan and try to do it all at once – and cook for 5 or 6 minutes, until the batter is golden brown.

Remove to a rack and fry the remaining corn pieces.

Set aside. Don’t worry about keeping it warm at this point, it’ll be going into a stir fry at the end.

Hey, I said this recipe was g-o-o-o-d, I never said it was simple.

Combine the ginger juice with the soy sauce, vinegar, sweet and sour sauce, cumin, sugar, and pepper and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil (I used 1 tbsp unsalted butter and 1 tbsp olive oil) in a large sauté pan over medium heat – stirring until the butter (if you use it) is melted and blended with the oil.

Add the garlic-ginger paste, the onion, and the green chiles.

Cook, stirring, for 5 or 6 minutes, until the onion is transparent.

Add the green Bell pepper and cook, stirring for 1 minute more.

Turn the heat to high, add the ginger juice mixture, and cook for 1 minute.

Add the fried baby corn, chopped parsley, and the white and light-green bits of scallion, then sprinkle with the corn flour dissolved in water and cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens nicely.

Serve sprinkled with the dark green scallion.

Nice – even if my batter was a bit thin – and now that I’ve done all the research and shopping to make THIS recipe, I’ve found an alternate, mixed veggie, version that looks even better!

Coming soon, I think…

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Garlic-Ginger Paste and More!

Posted on May 15, 2012 by terry

Yup – it’s Ginger Day!

We’ll be featuring it two ways; smashed into a paste with garlic and stuff, and also juiced – both of which I needed if I was to achieve my goal of home made Baby Corn Manchurian.

Let’s start with the paste – a staple of many Indian kitchens, and, apparently, made in many different ways, no doubt to suit personal and regional preferences and tradition. Here’s the one I chose.

INGREDIENTS
•1/4 cup garlic (1 bulb), sliced
•1/4 cup ginger, peeled and sliced
•Pinch turmeric – about 1/16 tsp
•1/8 tsp salt
•2 tsp water (approximately)

I should note that the original recipe called for using 1 cup each of the garlic and ginger, and so 4 times as much turmeric and salt, but I don’t do THAT much cooking that would call for THAT much of this (very) nice paste, so I cut things way back.

I tumbled the ginger, garlic, turmeric, and salt together in the container of my hand blender and gave it all a good whirl; then transferred it all to my mortar and pestle for a couple of minutes smashing and grinding.

Very nice, but not really what I would call a ‘paste’.

I pulled the whole mixture back into the hand blender container and added some water – 2 teaspoons seemed to work a treat.

One more nice whirl, and then just a bit more light smashing and grinding, and we were good to go.

I ended up with about 1/4 pint, which will be fine in the fridge for a month. I only needed about 1/2 teaspoon for the Baby Corn recipe, so I plan on adding some of the leftover paste to Thai Pork Stew next time I make it, and, hmmm, Rich’s mom is coming to visit, I wonder how she would feel about Red Curry Pumpkin Soup?

Allrighty-then! Ginger Juice.

Easy-peasy to make; simply peel a bit of fresh ginger, then grate it and pop the bits into cheesecloth – I also used a fine-mesh sieve. Gather up the cheesecloth in a bundle and squeeze.

Voila, ginger juice.

If you don’t use it all (I didn’t), you can stash it in the freezer.

SO!

Garlic and ginger well and truly pasted, and a touch more ginger juiced, I can finally set about making my Indo-Chinese corn dish.

How was it? It was good.

Full details, tomorrow.

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(Indian) Sweet and Sour Sauce

Posted on May 14, 2012 by terry

Blessings from Lord Ganesha – the Hindu Elephant God – are KEY to begin a new undertaking; moving into a new home – as were our friends Isha and Krishna – removing obstacles and insuring success, so perhaps it is only fitting that I begin this series of posts with his image.

Isha and Krishna had a catered lunch after the ceremony, and I fell in love with Baby Corn Manchurian – a kind of Indo-Chinese fusion dish – that, as it happens, requires all sorts of stuff before you can actually make it.

Like this (very) nice little sweet and sour sauce, which adds as tasty a touch to the baby corn dish I’ll be posting on Wednesday as it does drizzled over a chicken club quesadilla.

Fusion indeed.

INGREDIENTS
•1 tbsp cornstarch
•2 tbsp water
•1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
•1 cup sugar
•1 cup white vinegar
•1 cup water
•Salt -I used seasoned – and pepper to taste
•1 tsp Tabasco – I used Earl’s
•2 tbsp ketchup – I used mine

Dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tbsp water with 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce and set aside.

Stir the sugar together with the vinegar, 1 cup of water, salt, pepper and Tabasco in a sauce pan over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the cornstarch mixture and continue cooking until bubbly and thick. I let mine simmer for about 10 minutes, and it never really did get too thick, but I judged it cooked and thickened enough for my needs.

Remove from heat, stir in the 2 tablespoons of ketchup, and set aside to cool.

I ended up with a touch over a pint of what looks and tastes to me like a fine (if mebbe a tad thin) bit of sweet and sour saucery.

So, sweet and sour sauce done, my next task on the road to Baby Corn Manchurian was twofold:

Ginger Juice, and Garlic-Ginger Paste.

Tomorrow, peeps.

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Parfait! Green Stuff

Posted on May 11, 2012 by terry

How fitting, after yesterday’s post, that this week’s Parfait! recipe is based on Jell-O pistachio pudding. Don’t get your hopes up, though, this is not the kickoff of Jell-O Fest Week; I still have some books to go through, and, hopefully, some recipe submissions to come from y’all before I can pull that off. I also need to con, ermm invite, some friends over to taste the results.

Besides, I am not certain this counts as a “Jell-O” recipe, because of the pudding. It does make for one fine dessert, though.

INGREDIENTS
•2 boxes pistachio instant pudding
•2 (9 oz) containers Cool Whip
•1 qt. good vanilla ice cream, softened
•1-1/2 cup milk
•1 stick butter – melted
•50 Ritz or Hi Ho crackers

Crush the crackers and reserve 1/2 cup. Combine the remaining crumbs with the melted butter and press down firmly in the bottom of an 11 x 13 glass baking pan.

Combine the pudding, one container of Cool Whip, the ice cream, and milk in a large mixer bowl. Mix together well – the whisk attachment, if you have one, works a treat – and pour the mixture over the crushed cracker crumb base.

Spread the remaining container of Cool Whip over all and sprinkle with the saved 1/2 cup of cracker crumbs. Cover and refrigerate for several hours or, more better, overnight.

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There’s always room for…

Posted on May 10, 2012 by terry

yup, gotta be Jell-O.

If you follow our facebook page (please, like us, really like us!) you’ll no doubt be aware of the fact that Orange Pineapple Jello Salad is pretty much the NUMBER ONE recipe searched for on this here blog – popping up in my status reports at least once or twice a week (!) – so I figure that it is time to plan a WEEK OF JELL-O, a Jell-O Fest, if you will.

I have this handy-dandy book for ideas, a few blasts from my past and da Google,

BUT, a little help wouldn’t hurt – so – if you have some favored Jell-O concoction you would like to see honored, send it along and mebbe we’ll take it for a test run sometime soon.

Just, please, keep stuff like this to yourself.

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mmm, Taco Seasoning

Posted on May 9, 2012 by terry

We do like a nice taco every now and again; be it beef or chicken, with refried black beans or without (tho’ usually with), and with lots of crisp romaine, pickled jalapeño, onion, fresh tomato, shredded cheese, and a nice glob of sour cream. I wouldn’t say “no” to some gordita sauce, either.

Thing is, I’m not really comfortable with the taco seasoning packets and all the extra stuff; I mean – do my tacos really need dextrose, potato starch, and citric acid? I think not, so I came up with this.

INGREDIENTS
•1 tbsp chili powder
•1/4 tsp garlic powder
•1/4 tsp onion powder
•1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
•1/4 tsp dried oregano
•1/2 tsp paprika
•1-1/2 tsp ground cumin
•1 tsp sea salt
•1 tsp black pepper

Stir together to combine and stash in a jar.

Simple, no? I usually whisk mine together, then pop it into a lidded jar so I can give it a couple of good shakes.

When ready to use for tacos, sauté onion and peppers in a bit of oil for 5 or 10 minutes, until tender, then add 1 lb of ground beef (or you could use chicken pieces) and cook, stirring, until the meat is no longer pink.

Add the seasoning, along with 1/2 cup of water (or you could use tomato juice) and continue cooking until the liquid has been reduced.

Tasty. Simple. And none of that there potato starch stuff.

I like that in a taco.

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New Stuff, Installed!

Posted on May 9, 2012 by terry

Ahhh.

I am ONE. HAPPY. CAMPER.

The new sink, faucet, and disposal are in and even better than I had thought.

We will be doing more business, I believe, with the nice folk at Lowes.

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New Stuff!

Posted on May 9, 2012 by terry

The nice plumber guy is due this morning to install our wicked-nizzah new single-bowl granite composite sink, along with a whisper quiet, but more powerful, disposal, and a very nice faucet with a pull-down sprayer.

YAY!

But… I am going to be busy trying to stay out of the plumber’s way, and then basking in the glow of all the wondrous new plumbery; so today’s post (a fine bit of taco seasoning) will more than likely be late.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

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