"Mojo" Pork Chops and Mango Slaw

Made these wonderful "mojo" pork chops on my cast iron pan, and served it with mango cole slaw. The best part is that Hannah loves porks chops, but doesn't like to eat off the bone, so she leaves her bone for me. Double the gnawing action for me!

Burger'wich

Work has been crazy recently so unfortunately I haven't been able to post in a while and I'm sure the same is with Greg. But I had time to quick an easy lunch today which inspired this post.

I think my grill pan is one of the most useful pans I have. Recently I have been making a lot of varying panini's/grilled sandwiches on it. Today I went ahead and cooked a burger on it and then used a couple pieces of left over sourdough bread to make a burger sandwich. A little swiss cheese and a couple slices of tomatoes and I had an absolutely delicious and simple lunch.

It beats McDonald's every time.

East to West Eats: Tacos

After reading Greg's post today and mentioning tortillas it left me craving tacos. Fortunately, I had to go downtown today and I knew just the red truck to stop at on my way home.

I ordered two tacos, one chorizo and the other carintas. I love this truck because of how quick it is and how delicious the tacos are. Generous portions of meat, delicious corn tortillas, lime and salsa picante take me back to the time I was in Mexico City and had the best tacos of my life off of the street.

It only took 10 minutes out of my day and $5 out of my pocket. No wonder I love this place.
 -----------------------------------
Greg Responds:

This reminds me! A few weeks back Hannah and I were in the Mission district of San Francisco for Carnaval. For lunch, we stopped into a busy tacqueria that had been along the parade route and ordered one of each of the following tacos: al pastor, pollo asado, lengua, and cabeza. It was the first time I've tried cabeza -- head meat -- and I expect that I'll be ordering it whenever I have the chance to in the future. Just imagine incredibly tender chunks of pork!

Quesadilla with the kitchen sink

Fresh food expires. As it idles in my fridge, its biological clock ticks down with the passing of every hour. So it's always my goal try to use any leftovers or open ingredients before they grow fuzz or rot.

Meanwhile, Hannah and I attended Oaklavia on Sunday, an open-street festival in downtown Oakland. There, we popped into a busy Mexican restaurant to check it out. While Hannah went to the counter to order some horchatta, I was attracted to the grocery in the back of the restaurant, which stocked fresh corn tortillas cooked in Oakland earlier in the day. They were still warm! $1 for a dozen and we were back in the street to enjoy the rest of the festival.

We had some tasty black bean tacos with the tortillas later that afternoon, but that's not what I'm getting at here. Yesterday for lunch, I rounded up what remained of an old block of cheddar, a few slice of salami, some chickpeas (from the can I opened for the pasta dish below), and some tomatoes. Then I constructed a quesadilla using the still-incredibly fresh tortillas and fried it in the cast iron pan with grapeseed oil. I salted the finished quesadilla and ate it with some plain yogurt. What needs to be said: the freshness of the tortillas made for a super crispy and flavorful meal. Not a bad use ingredients that were just waiting to go bad.

Quick Friday night dinner?

By Friday night, I usually have to get creative when it comes to feeding myself. I venture into the pantry trying my best to use up ingredients that have been sitting in the fridge all week. This past Friday was no exception.

I ended up falling back on a recent favorite quick meal which I have yet to have the chance to write about: pasta with garlic, bacon, and fried chickpeas.

Fried, whole, chickpeas (garbanzo beans, whatever) are a recent discovery of mine that I made on a whim a few weeks ago while search for some accompaniments to pasta. I didn't much care for the texture or flavor of the bean straight out of the can, so I figured I should just fry it up along with some garlic.

Wow! The chickpeas, fried in a combination of olive oil and bacon fat that had rendered from cooking the bacon, were crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside, and had a great beanie taste to them. This dish has quickly become a go-to dish when I have nothing sitting around but pasta, garlic, bacon, canned chickpeas, and some Parmesan cheese. When I made it last Friday, I served it with some steamed broccoli.

Beer-glazed black beans

So I would have posted Tuesday night's dinner of pork chops and polenta, but I forgot to take a picture. Then I thought my lunch yesterday of the leftovers would make a cool post about reheating food without a microwave. But a second look at that photo made me realize that polenta with corn doesn't photograph well on a Blackberry. Let's say it didn't look very appetizing.

So after the Gucci pork chop dinner, I went for a more economical meal centered on beans and rice. I thought I would make just a normal rice and beans sort of dish, but leafing through How To Cook Everything, I came across an interesting variation on that: beer-glazed black beans with bacon and tomatoes served over rice. I used canned beans, so it was a pretty quick meal, done in under an hour. Satisfying and hearty, too.

Mexican Eats

For the past week I haven't blogged as I was in Palenque, Mexico. The best meals I ate were those that were out of the hotel and at little spots in the town. This is one of those meals. We ordered a lot of food including chicken enchiladas with mole and a torta with steak milanesa. Also ordered were delicious tostadas, guacamole, and a friend plantain dish which made an amazing dessert.

The simplest, home-made style foods are often

the most delicious. There was nothing fancy about this meal and the food was great.

New York Italian, Via Chicago

Greetings from the Midwest! At Greg's request I am doing a bit of a guest post since I've had some free time recently. In this free time I've been getting into working out, and as any athlete knows, the best way to get your energy back is stocking up on carbs... delicious carbs! If I learned to make anything growing up in Staten "Italy," New York City's most Italian borough, it is tasty pasta. So, behold, the most decadent and delicious classic, Penne Vodka.

Hardcore chefs will take the time to carefully choose and chop each tomato, but since I'm more about the eating and less about the preparing, I simply use a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. This is surprisingly easy to make, actually. Simply melt some unsalted butter in the pan (2-3 tbs), then toss 2-3 cloves of chopped garlic on there and brown. Next, throw in the tomatoes and some crushed red pepper if you like things on the spicy side, and simmer for about 5 mins. Add about 1/2 cup of heavy cream, simmer for a minute or so, then about 1/4 cup of vodka, and simmer for a few more minutes. You can add some salt to taste here too if you like. After that, toss with your pasta (I used whole grain to rationalize that this was "healthy") and some parm cheese and you're done. Delicioso!

Another baking success: Sourdough...ciabatta?

A while back, I mentioned that I had started a sourdough starter along with my attempts to brew ginger ale and bake a more straight-forward yeast bread. Fast forward one failed starter attempt over about 10 days later, and this morning, my first sourdough loaf was ready to go into the oven.

After my first starter attempt, from How to Cook Everything, failed to impress me, I did a little Google research and found a much more detailed explanation of sourdough with more thorough instructions. Unlike the HtCE method, this method didn't use yeast in the starter, only water and whole wheat flour. I let these two starters go side-by-side for a few days until the HtCE starter looked mostly dead and the new starter was starting to come to life.

After about a week, the starter finally began to thrive and would, as advertised, double itself shortly after a feeding. After a couple days of feeding it twice a day in this state, it appeared to be ready to bake with. Also, my new digital scale had just arrived in the mail, and I was excited to try it out.

Staying with the same website for a recipe (hey, his starter worked, so his bread recipes probably work, too! Also, there's value in consistency, since his recipes are based on using his starter), I went for a classic San Francisco-style sourdough. However, something may have gone awry during the mixing. The dough was pretty wet, and I had to work with it a good twenty minutes before seemed ready to use. And it was very messy.

I wasn't too worried, though, since some reading on bread-making suggested that some of the better types of bread are made with a wet, difficult-to-handle dough. In fact, I was originally tempted to make the ciabatta recipe on the website, but decided against it as too complicated for my first sourdough.

Why do I mention that? Well, after giving the dough some time to rest, I shaped it into a boule, and let it rise overnight. And this morning, it had risen...err, more horizontally than vertically. Was the wet dough too heavy to gain any height? I was a little worried, but was already realizing that I might have accidentally made a somewhat ciabatta-ish loaf, and decided to roll with it.

Well, it came out of the oven about an hour ago, and my verdict is: amazing. It's a little flat, but its horizontal rise did give it a light density, and as you can see to the right, there are some good air pockets throughout the loaf. And the sourdough flavor -- though I'm no connoisseur -- is delicious. The crust is a little crispy, but I expect it to get even better after a few hours exposed to the air. Best bread yet! And as long as I keep my starter alive and happy, there will be more to come.

Fatty - Definitely, Awesome - Not So Much

Friday night I went out to dinner with a friend who was in town and always picks a new trendy restaurant (the only exception to this is Peter Luger's which is awesome). The place we went to this time was Fatty 'Cue in Brooklyn.

We ordered a good portion of their menu as there were 4 of us and we probably ordered about 6 dishes. Unfortunately they were not spectacular which left me with the feeling it was overpriced - they have Manhattan prices in Brooklyn. If the food were exceptional I wouldn't have minded so much. Some of the dishes were ordered was the bacon appetizer (no comparison to Peter Luger's bacon

around the corner) the ribs, rabbit shoulder, and duck. Of those dishes my favorite was probably the duck, it had a great crispiness to it and had just the right amount of salt. The buns were a delicious accompaniment to the brisket, but the brisket was unfortunately underwhelming. The restaurant tried something interesting with asian influenced bar-b-que, but ultimately was uninspiring.

Images courtesy of Brian Oh

Pizza doesn't have to be perfect

After gaining some dough confidence, and running low on food, I decided it was time to try making my own pizza dough. Also, since I didn't have enough flour left for more bread, pizza dough was the next best thing.

I stretched out the pie super-thin, topped it with some fresh tomatoes, weeks old mozzarella which I had to cut off many a mold spots from, basil, and olive oil.

The end result wasn't glamorous. It wasn't perfect. The tomatoes were only okay, the cheese was old, and the basil was on the sadder side of fresh. But the crust was thin and crispy, and the sum of its parts were entirely satisfying. And I think that's the point of homemade pizza. You don't have to be good at it for it to be worth your while. I've made 5 or 6 pies since I've been out here, and all of them have been delicious. You can't go wrong.

Tuna sandwich on fresh-baked whole wheat

After the success of my first loaf -- half of which we gave away -- I baked another whole wheat loaf (the sourdough starter is still a work in progress) which was even better in most regards. (A little impatience got the best of me during the final rise, resulting in a funny shape in the oven)

Anyway, I made some tuna salad with leftover yogurt-onion dip in lieu of mayo, cut up some pepper jack cheese, tomatoes, and cucumber, and served it on some of the fresh bread. And yes, that's my ginger ale in the background.

What Makes a Sandwich?

I recently had this sandwich - a pulled pork panini with fontina cheese and roasted garlic aioli. It got me thinking, what makes a great sandwich? The aforementioned sandwich was so simple, yet so delicious.

Clearly great bread and great meat / main ingredient for all you vegetarians is critical... but after that it's not so easy. Most of the time I think it's important not to over complicate things with too many ingredients, but I often do that. Maybe bland deli meats call for over complication to add flavor to an under flavor inspiring dish. But when you have something as simple and delicious as the pulled pork in the sandwich shown, it really doesn't call for much else. Some of the best sandwiches out there are the simplest, a philly cheese steak, a B.L.T. Is 3 the magic number for sandwiches? Keep the number of ingredients under three and you'll be golden?

A warm day in Oakland calls for some cool gazpacho

East Bay weather is notoriously warmer than across the Bay in San Francisco, and the afternoon sun tends to warm up our apartment. It was probably in the high-70s this weekend (eat that, east-coasters!) and Hannah was craving some gazpacho. It wasn't long before I was informed her mom would be joining us -- I was even more excited to make some gazpacho for a crowd.

Armed with an enticing recipe from the internet, I spent my Saturday afternoon by making a trip to Berkeley Bowl, chopping up all the vegetables, and constructing a cool, refreshing gazpacho. Garnish consisted of the remaining chopped vegetables that didn't go into the food processor, croutons from what remained from my first loaf of bread, and some shrimp sauteed in olive oil and Spanish paprika. We drank my ginger ale and some fresh mojitos, and after we cleaned up, Hannah baked some fantastic oatmeal raisin walnut cookies.

It worked!

After two days of brewing and a few hours in the fridge to chill, the ginger ale was a success! Not wanting it to be too sweet, I went easy on the sugar (I think 2/3 cups for 1.5L of water). So it tasted more like a gingery spritzer. Next time I might use a little more sugar, and try to up the spicy ginger flavor, which I love. But more importantly, the fermentation was perfect. It's like magic -- two days ago, it was water, and now there is carbonation!

As for my other projects, I grew more positive about the whole wheat bread, which is now all gone after giving some away. The sourdough starter might be dead. I've started another using a different technique, and giving the original one some time to come back. We'll see what happens. In the meantime I might have to make more of the other bread!

Into The Oven! (Updated!)

Documenting my first-ever loaf of bread here. It's ready to go into the oven now, which I'm waiting for to preheat. My anticipation is high, but my expectations are tempered.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE

And here is the finished product. My contained expectations were heightened as I watched the bread bake beautifully in the oven. However, my original tempered attitude was probably justified. But it's not a bad first loaf, either! As you can see from the close up, the density is about that of a sandwich loaf, and the crust has a nice chew to it, but is lacking in crunch. The flavor is nice- I used some whole grain flour with the all purpose flour, and the long resting time I gave it (from about 7pm last night to noon today) seems to have imparted a nice flavor.

Meanwhile, my sourdough starter is looking like a horror movie prop in the most fascinating way. It bubbles! It's alive! I looked forward to baking sourdough bread in a few days with it.

And the ginger ale is also looking tempting. There's gradually more and more sediment collecting at the bottom of the bottle, so I'm assuming that means the yeast is working its magic. I might try to get some root beer going in a second bottle.

Crabs!

They other day I went to this great little restaurant that I frequent quite a bit, Fish. I went for lunch and AYCE Maryland crabs. They were delicious and as you can see, plentiful.

Greg was kind enough to send me The Food Labs technique to making gyros. I'm obsessed, and am going to have to attempt these soon.

When Life Hands You Yeast...Ferment!

I've had a lot of time to follow through on various food projects that I have been long itching to get around to. Today, I put three of them into motion. The first is home-brewed ginger ale. I bought some yeast specifically for the purpose of making this. As I was sitting around this afternoon, I thought to mysefl, "Greg, I have an open packet of yeast, plenty of flour, and a food processor. I should make bread!" So I made a batch of french bread dough which I'm letting sit overnight, and also a batch of sourdough starter, which should allow me to bake some sourdough bread in a few days. The ginger ale should be done Saturday afternoon. I will make sure to update when each of this projects come to fruition.

I'm also thinking about curing some meat, but I need to do some more research into that first.

Reformatted Leftovers for Lunch

Just as Scott had an excuse for not posting in several days, so did I. On Friday, my cell phone (Blackberry Tour) decided to stop working, and because of the holiday weekend, a new one didn't arrive until yesterday. And since I use my phone to upload pictures directly to the blog, that meant no more pictures of meals (with one exception which I'll get to later). Add to that, I was moving into a new apartment with Hannah on Monday, and we were rather busy. For most of that time, my meals were rather unspectacular- simple, quick, and filling to keep things going.

Finally, I cooked our first real dinner last night. And I guess in the excitement and fun of eating on our dining room table for the first time, I forgot to take a picture. We had stir fried cabbage over rice, and boiled pork and cabbage wontons with a soy-ginger dipping sauce. I had never made dumplings before -- it turned out to be rather tricky and time consuming. The entire batch gave me 55 (!) wontons, and we cooked up 20 of them for dinner in a pot of boiling water. When we finally sat down, the work appeared to be worth it -- the wontons were as tasty wontons from a good Chinese restaurant.


On that note, for today's lunch, I fried up the leftover cabbage stir fry and rice, along with some leftover broccoli, with an egg to make a simple fried rice dish. To go along with it, I fried up a small batch of the leftover, uncooked wontons. Fantastic! They were superbly crispy on the outside and didn't taste very greasy. Even better than our first batched of boiled ones.

After dinner, Hannah baked up some lemon bars using Meyer lemons we picked from the tree in her mother's backyard in SF on Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, Hannah and I had lunch at a Mission tacqueria, which I snapped a picture of. Maybe I'll get around to posting it at some point.

Refreshing Summer Meal

Work has been crazy the past week hence the lack of posts on my part, but I finally get to post about a meal I made a week ago. I have been complaining about the difficulty of excessive heat from the kitchen combined with no ac making my apartment incredibly hot. This meal is a perfect cool, summer meal.

In the middle of the afternoon I cooked a steak on my grill pan - perfectly rare. I then let it rest and put it in my fridge and left my apartment (I had errands to do, and the place needed to cool off). When I was ready for dinner, I simply had to put together a little salad, a balsamic vinaigrette and slice the steak and was good to go.

So refreshing, so tasty.

Backyard Farm

Thought it would be worth posting this before I move. Here are some pictures of the chickens (and bunny) at the house in which I'm currently living in, here in Oakland. I've previously posted about fresh eggs from said chickens. Not only do they produce good food for humans; they also provide hours of entertainment! I will miss them for sure!

Speed and Soda, We're All Glutons (UPDATED)

According to a new study:

In the Seattle area, a region with an average obesity rate of about 20 percent, only about 4 percent of shoppers who filled their carts at Whole Foods Market stores were obese, compared with nearly 40 percent of shoppers at lower-priced Albertsons stores.

That’s likely because people willing to pay $6 for a pound of radicchio are more able to afford healthy diets than people stocking up on $1.88 packs of pizza rolls to feed their kids, the study’s lead author suggested. 

“If people wanted a diet to be cheap, they went to one supermarket,” said Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class. “If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more."

This doesn't surprise me. It's an achievement, in a sense, that food scientists have been able to make calories as cheap as they are, meaning fewer people starve. But those cheap calories make people fat and sick.

But this graf caught me as bizarre:

Instead, he contends it’s because healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. In a separate study two years ago, Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet. 

$36/day for a "low-calorie" diet? I don't question that cheap calories are as cheap as they claim, but I'd be curious to know what they consider a low calorie diet, and why it costs so much. I contend that it's entirely feasible to eat healthy for $10-20/day, possibly less. That's still prohibitively expensive compared to a calorie-dense diet, but you don't actually have to shop at Whole Foods to not be fat.

UPDATE

I could only track down the report's summary, which doesn't mention how they arrived at their figures for diet costs. However, I did come across this interesting infographic:

But the averages for the higher-end stores is because they carrier more high-end products. How do costs of their low-end products compare to the costs of low-end products at Safeway or Albertson's? In my experience, Safeway tends to be hideously overpriced. But purchasing from the bulk food sections of nicer supermarkets can be very economical for some products.

I'm getting off topic. But glancing at the chart again, notice how, not including Fred Meyer, fruit and vegetables prices don't vary to highly at many of those stores.

On another interesting note, the study also finds evidence that "food desserts" are not necessarily to blame for lack of nutrition. The study reports that people chose a supermarket based on price, not on proximity to where they lived. 

Salmon & Fried Rice

This is actually my dinner from a couple nights ago and I have just been late in posting. It is actually pretty simple - I did a pan seared salmon along with a "modern american" fried rice - brown rice, basil, peas, corn and green peppers. Simple and delicious!

The problem I'm having with cooking inside now is the heat. It was 91 in NY yesterday and my apartment does not have AC. I've gotten to the point where the most cooking I can really do is toast bread, otherwise the kitchen feels like it is close to 100 degrees, and it probably is!

I am embarking on a search for easy dinners to make, that don't involve the stove. I do have a grill so I'm going to start to grill more often. Any suggestions?

Tuesday Night Dinner Scrounge: Braised Potatoes with Wine and Bacon

Pork Glut: FIN. Pork ribs: gone. Sausage: gone. Risotto: gone. Bacon: All but 1 slice, gone.

The past several days have been a success in skillfully eroding away at my leftover cache. For lunch, I finished the risotto by warming it in a small cast iron fry pan over a single layer of thinly sliced Yukon gold potatoes. Covering the pan with a lid, the potatoes became browned and crispy on the bottom, while the risotto was gently heated up to a creamy doneness. I was pleasantly surprised by my clever use of leftovers and pantry ingredients.

For dinner, I was mostly out of leftovers, and instead had to put a meal together out of pantry ingredients. I had plenty of small red and gold potatoes I purchased a week ago, but hadn't used until lunch. I also had an opened bottle of cheap white wine that I had left uncorked on the counter since cooking Friday's dinner. A taste of the wine revealed that it hadn't yet turned, so I looked through Bittman for some ideas to put it to use.

Through some luck, I came across Bittman's recipe for braised potatoes with white wine and bacon, a recipe that couldn't have been more perfect for the situation. I started by crisping the bacon, some garlic (which ended up burning), and the potatoes in the above cast iron pan. After a few minutes, I added in a few ounces of chicken stock I had left in the fridge, and a few glugs of the pleasantly-not-gnarly white wine, along with some salt, pepper, fresh thyme, and mustard. As the liquid cooked down, I added more wine to keep the potatoes submerged. I took the picture above about halfway through the cooking process.

After about 40 minutes, the potatoes were soft and ready to eat, and the liquid had cooked down to a very flavorful (possibly could have used some water instead of all that wine) and thick sauce. Just like lunch, a surprisingly efficient use of my leftover and pantry ingredients that resulted in a satisfying and flavorful meal.

Perfection

I think I can prepare a pretty mean steak. I've scoured the internet for a variety of methods to create the best steak indoors, as well as on the grill. I have heated my cast iron pan to scorching temperatures to get the perfect sear resulting in my smoke detectors beeping loudly.

One of the things that I have always had trouble with is getting that perfect medium rare doneness in the middle. Sometimes I reach near perfection, other times I cook it a minute too long. I think the natural progression of my cooking leads to sous vide - cooking in vacuum sealed bag in a perfectly controlled water bath. This would allow my steaks to rich that perfect medium rareness I so desire. The drawback, the cheapest sous vide machine is $450, putting out of my budgetary reach. As a result, one day soon, I am going to have to test the poor man's method of using a beer cooler and heated water. I look forward to posting about it.

In the meantime:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/03/sous-vide-steaks-recipe.html

http://internetfoodassociation.com/2010/05/16/sous-vide/

Does this change everything?

There always seem to be various holy rules in cooking that you cannot break because tradition says so. And it's so much the way to do things that you cannot even question it. But this sort of conventional wisdom often doesn't hold up to modern, Good Eats-like analysis.

I remember when I was in high school, just starting to learn to cook, when I saw a Good Eats episode in which Alton Brown demonstrated that the quickest way to defrost frozen food was by placing it in a tub of cold water, under running cold water from the faucet. I had up to that point thought that my only options were the microwave's defrost cycle (horrible, horrible method in retrospect), or letting it sit in the fridge (although that would require so much time, that I would always have to resort to the microwave anyway when the frozen food in question was still far from thawed after an overnight stay in the fridge).

Learning to quickly and evenly defrost frozen food changed everything for me during those novice years.

So a few days ago, I was very interested to read Serious Eats' analysis of what is the traditional method to cook pasta. Everyone knows that you have to boil up a ton of water so that the water quickly returns to a boil and the pasta doesn't stick together! That's just how you're supposed to do it.

And of course, at a minimum, the water has to be boiling, right?

Right?

Well, maybe not! Follow me below the fold.

Pork glut Days 1 and 2 recaps: Ignoring the issue

Day 1 finished with me chowing on leftovers at various points during the day. Nothing too enthralling, but I began to whittle down my reserves of pork ribs and other various ingredients. Day 2 began with bacon and egg on toast, but then Hannah and I went cherry picking and strawberry picking out in Brentwood. We concluded the venture with my first visit to In N Out Burger and a marathon baking session that left us with a strawberry-cherry-peach crisp and too many cherry muffin varieties to count. So now I still have a pork glut, and now a fresh fruit and baked good glut. We'll see how this plays out.

As for my thoughts on In N Out Burger -- It was good, for sure, but the style and quality of the burger necessitates a comparison to Five Guys, which this Mid-Atlantic East-Coaster thinks is actually better. The fries and In N Out were nice, and surprisingly not-greasy tasting, and the burger was presented with as much class as I've seen in fast food presentation and could be eaten without turning into a giant mess, as is so often the case with Five Guys. But somehow, a messy Five Guys burger and their greasy fries seem more satisfying than my experience at In N Out. Although they still served a fine burger.

Pork glut: Day 1: Breakfast

Now I have a problem. A good problem, but a problem nonetheless. I have too many pork products in my refrigerator that I need to use up.

First there are the bacon and sausage I purchased earlier in the week -- only a half pound of each, but that apparently goes a long way. Then there are about four (BIG) pork ribs left over from last night. Holy god, that's like 5 lbs of pork (including bones) in my fridge, in various stages of decay. What am I going to do???

I started off this morning using a modest amount of sausage for a patty to go on a fried egg sandwich, using some leftover sourdough from last night.

And the leftovers don't end with the pork -- I still have 3 small zucchini from last week's farmers market to use, some leftover cesar dressing, a ton of risotto, and some of those rice and beans from earlier in the week (but I may have used enough of those to justify trashing at this point).

On the plus side, there probably won't be anymore "VEGETARIAN?" tags used for the next few days.

An evening of pork ribs and risotto

Last night I cooked up quite a meal for Hannah and her friend Ian. The dinner consisted of pork spareribs, risotto, and cesar salad, none of which I had cooked before. 

The cesar salad was real cesar salad, i.e., the dressing was made up from anchovies and a raw egg yolk. Here's the recipe. I should mention that the raw egg that I used was laid just earlier that afternoon in my backyard. The homeowners where I rent a room, John and Dorothy, raise two hens and a rabbit in the backyard, and the hens, Meatball and Charou, just started laying a few weeks ago. I believe Charou (the hen pictured in the banner above) was responsible for our dinner. It is pretty cool knowing that the egg in our dinner had traveled not 20 feet and was handled by only a single person. And the salad turned out to be delicious.

The risotto was a simple Bittman recipe. Since I had never made it before, I wanted to get the technique down.

And the pork ribs...the pork ribs!! Oh my. They turned out pretty rich and intense, in a wonderful way. I've been wanting to learn to cook pork ribs ever since I went to that Oaxacan restaurant in DC with Scott and Fre and had their pork ribs in green mole. I think I've decided that pork ribs are my favorite cut of pig. The combination of really flavorful, fatty and moist meat and eating off of/gnawing on the bones is my idea of food heaven.

To de-plate or not to de-plate

At most casual restaurants now-a-days when one person finishes eating their meal, their plate is immediately cleared leaving those who have not finished meals with their plates. At fine dining restaurants this is a strict no-no as it can be insulting to the other diner implying they need to be rushed.

I think that the fine dining etiquette should be applied to all levels of restaurants. This difference is especially pronounced when there are only two diners. At a table of 4, clearing one plate at a time isn't nearly as noticeable, but with only two people dining, if one person has a plate and the other does not it just appears off to me. I don't even construe removing the plates at the same time as a formal thing, but more of as an etiquette thing. Just as you should not try to remove a plate that a person is still eating from, or that cocktail that still has a few sips left. What's your take? Remove the plates as the person finishes, or after everyone is done?

Another salad

Pretty much the same as my salad for lunch yesterday, but this time with some arugula and mozzarella cheese tossed in as well. Nothing special, but I was in a rush to eat something before a job interview.

Not Exactly a Gyro

Ever since studying abroad in London and discovering the ubiquitous "Doner Kebab" I have been obsessed. The problem of course being, you can't really find them here. I was fortunate go back to Europe last fall, to Spain, where I was able to indulge in my obsession. They weren't the same as the ones in my memory of London, but they were close enough.

Back in the States, the closest acceptable substitute is the Gyro. Scrounging up what I had in my kitchen, I made a substitute for that. Taking the leftover sausage from dinner the other night, I split it reheated that, took a slice of bread, some lettuce, cucumber, sprouts and whipped up a quick batch of tzatiki sauce using leaves from my mint plant.

Not a kebab, but today, it will do.

Thank You Bobby Flay

I'm glad to see Greg is finally getting some meat in his diet. Personally, I'm a fan of the breakfast pizza. No sauce, delicious cheese, usually some bacon and a nice egg or two cracked on top.

Tonight's dinner was actually real simple. I took a couple chicken thighs, rubbed them in a left over dry rub I had from smoking pork ribs and pan fried them in some olive oil. I finally put to use a $2 mandolin I had found to julienne some red potatoes into hash browns and put together a simple side salad of lettuce and a balsamic vinaigrette.

The dry rub gave the chicken an incredible flavor, so much so I have to share the recipe:

Bobby Flay Dry Rub

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon granulated garlic
• 1 tablespoon granulated onion
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon white pepper

Source: The Food Network

I like a little extra spice, so I added about twice as much chili powder and cayenne pepper than the recipe called for. I recommend you try this next time you grill some chicken or pork.

Meat-crazy Pizza

So I made a Berkeley Bowl run this afternoon on the way back from the Ashby BART station, so it was time for some meat! What you see to the left is a pizza (I bought the pizza dough, I didn't make it) with BBQ sauce, moz cheese, bacon, BBowl-made pork sausage, and zucchini. I was clearly overcompensating for a meat-deficiency over the previous 24 hours. To be extra indulgent, I spooned some bacon/sausage fat over the crust before I cooked the pizza, but that didn't appear to have any influence over the final product. It was indulgent enough as it was, though, and was completely delicious.

To drink, I had the last of my Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPAs (I can't believe I found DFH on the west coast!!!). A very satisfying meal.

Salad!

Threw together a quick salad for lunch today consisting of various leftovers and farmer's market impulse buys. From the leftovers category, it contained last night's beets, some plain pasta, and a scoop of those rice and beans. I had gotten some romaine lettuce and snap peas from the FM, and included some parm and a simple vinaigrette that I whipped up fresh.

I know Scott will continue to give me shit over the vegetarian aspect of the meal. I'm hoping to get some meat in for dinner.

What is "processed food"??

Inspired by Scott's post about dinner last night:

Although I should be eating processed foods less (WSJ article) I still can't resist a delicious italian sausage or brat every now and then. 

Sometimes I think that the "processed food" argument is as vague as a food label claiming its product has "no preservatives." Does it have salt? Yes? Then it has at least one preservative. I get that there are a lot of artificial preservatives out there that can generally be bad, but food preservation is practical for reasons which should be all too obvious. (Well, they should be obvious, but in a world populated by meaningless (but probably effective) marketing slogans like "all natural" and "no artificial flavorings," I'm cynical about people's awareness of the food they eat.)

Anyway, back to processed food. Most food has been processed in some way. Whether it's the "fresh" tomatoes in the produce section (that have been ripened with chemicals) or apples coated in wax, or flour that was milled from grains, most of the "whole" ingredients we think of are not free from our industrial food supply. Sausages are processed by combining various cuts of meats and seasoning in a grinder.

So it really comes down to: what level of processing are you willing to accept in the food that you eat? I'm at ease with most old-world processing techniques, like sausage-making. Contrast that with a bag of M&Ms, which start with corn that is macerated in some esoteric manufacturing process, some of whose by-products are then transformed into a syrupy concoction, which is then used by Mars to sweeten their cocoa, which is then coated with more corn syrup and God-knows-what kind of coloring. And along the way, there are various preservatives, stabilizers, and flavorings added as well.

The lines we draw for ourselves are iffy at best, and our rules are regularly broken. I try my best to avoid "processed foods" as well, but I mean it in the sense that I'm going to avoid those M&Ms, and have myself some fresh sausage.

Breakfast: fried egg on english muffin

This is my normal breakfast, so I'm sure it'll get old fast on here. Simply a fried egg on half an english muffin, and jam and butter on the other half of the english muffin. Served with a cup of Blue Bottle Coffee Co. chiapas coffee (east bay's finest coffee!).

For the record, I'm disappointed with Scott's praise for Panera bread. O-v-e-r-r-a-t-e-d. You live in NYC!

Scott's Sammies

I really enjoy making sandwiches - the secret is in the bread. I made this sandwich with tomato-basil bread from Panera (it's the most convenient good bread near my apartment). I figure I should try to cut back on some carbs, so I take the ingredients of a full sandwich and overload it onto half the bread.

Today's sandwich consisted of turkey, cucumbers, lettuce, sprouts, hot peppers, light-mayo, spicy brown mustard, and muenster cheese.

The sandwich was accompanied with a nice glass of home made iced tea - black tea and lemon only. Delicious.

Dinner: black beans and rice with golden beets

My food shop routine here has found itself onto Wednesdays, so tonight's dinner was a bit of a scrounge as far as protein. I had some nice golden beets from the farmer's market on Sunday (ate the greens last night) so I steamed them up. 

I had opened up a can of black beans for today's lunch salad, so I decided to make some rice and beans, made a little special by the last two shallot scapes I had left from the FM.

Nothing special or fancy, but tasted good, was filling for a meatless meal, and probably healthy. Time for seconds.

The First Supper

Tonight's dinner - Spaghetti & Italian Sausage as well as a seafood sausage which I have been seeing increasingly in stores and decided to give a try. The old school italian sausasge and pasta was great, the seafood sausage left something to be desired.

Although I should be eating processed foods less (WSJ article) I still can't resist a delicious italian sausage or brat every now and then.