Culinary Solidarity

A few years ago my parish sent home a Lenten calendar of recipes for the various countries that received aid from Catholic Relief Services. They were our Lenten charity that year. Most of the recipes were vegetarian (or very nearly so) and great to try on a Friday night. I like preparing different ethnic and regional cuisine, so this was right up my alley. Thinking of Haiti this week I decided to look up and prepare some traditional Haitian meals. I used my brand new handy-dandy pressure cooker to make some Red Beans and Rice or Riz et Pois. It didn't come out as well as I would have wanted, the lovely melding of flavors of good red bean and rice came to taste overwhelmingly of pepper.

Here instead is the traditional method of preparation.

Sort, rinse and soak beans. Drain beans and cook them by bringing to a boil and then reducing heat, keeping beans at a bare simmer for 1-2 hours (depending on amount you are cooking.) I like to add some chopped onion, bay leaf, chopped carrot and garlic to my beans. I add salt at the end of cooking to avoid tough beans. If your beans haven't achieved the state of soft mushy fall apart goodness, feel free to mash a few with a potato masher or fork. Do NOT blend or puree! Drain beans and reserve the cooking water (don't pour down the drain.) Melt some butter or oil in a cast iron skillet, add rice to pan and allow to cook to a golden brown. Add the amount of reserved cooking water you need to your rice (for instance making 1 C. of rice use 2 C. of water.) If you have it on hand add a bit of chopped green bell pepper to the rice. When rice is done, mix with beans and serve. For spicier beans and rice add cayenne pepper or tabasco to taste.

A few nice side dishes would be fried plaintains and maybe cornbread and salad.

What Would Ma Ingalls Do?

Besides have an irrational hatred of Native Americans and wear a hoop skirt anyway?

I have undertaken a lot of things in the last year, started teaching Sunday School, baking my own bread, cooking nearly everything from scratch (including sour mix, more on that later) and recently homeschooling. Needless to say my own lax standards of house keeping are compromised by my schedule and the daunting destructive capabilities of my toddler daughter. My seven year old doesn't help much either, but at least she stays out of my way more often than not.

So I started thinking about all the various chemicals, appliances, and modern conveniences I have and I wonder how come I can never seem to get on top of my housework? What would Ma Ingalls do? She had no running water, had to grow her own food, sew her own clothes, linens and even toys for the children and her house was always clean. Of course how much dusting could there be when she only had the one what-not and the single china shepherdess? However, my point remains the same; why does house work always take all day? Did cave women grunt, "Me need to clean cave, but exhausted from big mammoth hunt?"

Needless to say the last thing Ma Ingalls would have done was write a long blog post about it. So if you'll excuse me I am off to polish my what-not and bake some cornbread.

Winter Meals

I know, I know I live in South Florida and I don't know about cold. Yeah, can we take the Yankee smearing of my fortitude and lack of grit as read? But the truth is there are only a few weeks all year where it is cold enough here to make truly hearty winter foods and last night was one of them!

Menu: Pulled Pork, collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread, coleslaw.

The pulled pork recipe was adapted from Paula Deen's pulled pork recipe, basically you take a a pork shoulder and rub it all over with spices and brown sugar. I use my husband's TOP SECRET no TELLIN, *ever* dry rub and some brown sugar to coat the meat. Alton Brown and Paula Deen both have excellent dry rubs that you can use, there are also commercially available dry rubs. The real "secret" is to let the rub sit on the meat for at least 2 hours if not all night. Then you add a mixture of 2 tsp. garlic powder, salt, 2 TB worcestershire, 1/2 TB of liquid smoke, 1 C of cider vinegar and 2 C of apple juice to the dutch oven or roasting pan. Add the meat to the pan. Cover the pan with heavy foil and then put the lid on that. Slow roast this in the oven for 4 hours at 325 until you are able to shred the pork with a fork. You can eat the pulled pork as is or top with barbecue sauce.

Collard greens are so simple it is embarrassing. Fry bacon in a stock pot, add some finely chopped onion if you like. Toss rinsed, chopped, de-ribbed (only the really large tough ribs) collards in the pot, stir until wilted. Top with water or stock and heat through. They sell pre-chopped collards in a bag these days which makes it even easier.

Black-eyed peas were the big experiment of the night. I had forgotten to start them earlier in the day and I was stumped till I remembered I had received a pressure cooker for Christmas. I have never used a pressure cooker before so I was a little leery. I followed the directions and assembled the cooker, added the sorted, rinsed beans, a half an onion, a chopped carrot and 4 C of water. You lock on the lid, hit high pressure, and time and let it go. The beans came out delicious, soft and flavored well in only 24 minutes!!!. I did not add salt as the beans were cooking as this can inhibit the beans from going soft, but adding salt at the end seasoned them well. A piece of ham hock or bacon would have been good, but I had used my bacon for the collards.

I took the easy way out with the coleslaw and bought a pre-shredded bag of cabbage and carrots. Let the mix stand in a colander over the sink sprinkled liberally with salt for 20 minutes. After it has released its moisture toss the mix with 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp of sugar, and a sprinkle of your dry rub. Then mix together 1/4 C of mayo with 1/4 C of Ranch dressing, pour over the mix and toss till coated. I can't stand soggy coleslaw so this may be too dry for you, adjust amounts as needed.

And now the final piece of the meal, fresh hot cornbread. I realized I was out of Jiffy corn muffin mix which is my go-to for cornbread, but I did have some cornmeal on hand. I used the recipe (more or less) on the back of the bag.

Golden Yellow Corn Bread
1 C corn meal
1 C sifted flour (I used bread flour and did not sift)
1/4 C sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 C soft shortening (I used some smart balance and some cold solidified bacon grease I had in the fridge. Yes, I did.)
1 C milk
1 egg beaten
3 tsp baking powder

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in shortening (or whatever you use.) Mix egg and milk together and add to dry ingredients with a few quick strokes. (Seriously, do not over beat corn bread batter!) Bake in a greased 9x9x2 inch pan at 425 for 20-25 minutes. (I only had an 8x8 pan and I baked it in a 350 degree oven due to the meat cooking and it came out fine.) When cornbread is brown around the edges and pulling away and a a toothpick inserted comes out clean it is done. I don't see why you couldn't have the dry ingredients for this pre-mixed and ready to go in your pantry at all times. It was lightly, lightly sweet and delicious.

The Miracle of the Pork Roast or One Roast, Three Ways

I know I started to talk about this in my previous post, but let me go into a bit of detail about my miraculous pork roast. I bought in sale at Publix for $1.59 per pound (which in my neck of the woods is very cheap). I was determined to make the most out of the meat, but since I am not a huge pork fan I was not relishing the thought of eating it several nights in a row. My best bet, I realized, was to make true "planned-overs" and transform the meat as entirely as I could from night to night.

Night one: Pork loin roast, simply seasoned and roasted. Next time I will cook it to a slightly lower temperature, because even though it had a generous layer of fat over it, I still felt it was *thisclose* to being too dry. I made asparagus and cabbage with the roast. (See previous post)

Night two: Pork Stew with multiple veggies served over mashed potatoes. My nearly dry roast was rehydrated in a flavorful veggie and chicken broth. I pan roasted the vegetables in a dutch oven, and salted them with kosher salt to help them break down. I tossed the cooked cubes of pork in flour with salt and pepper in it. As I cooked my Yukon Gold potatoes I also cooked a peeled and chopped parsnip in with them and mashed them all together. My husband is not terribly fond of parsnips, so I was looking for a way to use up my last one without having to confront hubby with the dreaded root vegetable. In the future I may add more parsnips to the potato party as no-one seemed to notice them. I am not really into all that "sneaky chef" stuff because if you are always "tricking" people into eating vegetables, they never learn to like them on their own. However, *I* like parsnips, so this way I can have them and not make a big deal. Huzzah. I brought the soup to stew consistency with a little slurry of cornstarch and water. I have also used arrowroot flour and water to make stew and I am fond of both as a thickener, they seem to thicken at lower temperatures than flour and you don't have to "cook" the flour flavor out of the food as much.

Night three: Pork BBQ, took the last third of the roast and put it on a dutch oven with oil, chopped onion, garlic and green pepper. Topped with with a generous amount of BBQ sauce and lots of Mr. David's pork rub, some ketchup and some mustard. (The mustard and ketchup were added to account for the fact I did not think I had enough BBQ Sauce.) The sauce application was to keep the meat from drying out during the re-heating and veggie cooking stage. Side dishes were steamed broccoli and leftover reheated mashed potatoes.

In keeping with my philosophy of offering a fruit and vegetable at every meal we also had apple sauce every night with dinner. Apple sauce and pork are a classic combination and this week made me remember why. The sweetness of the applesauce contrasted perfectly!

This roast provided 3 dinners and 6 lunches for a family of 2 adults and 2 children. (There is still pork stew in the fridge.) I estimate it was a 4-5 pound roast. I wish now I had noted the exact weight. Anyhow this proves my oft stated maxim that if you treat meat as a flavoring component and not the center of the meal you can get a lot more for your money. You just need sufficient veggies and starches. Other meals I could have prepared were pork fried rice and stir fry vegetables, or perhaps pork fajitas. This type of roast is also exceedingly easy to cut into your own pork chops, especially if you have an electric knife and a steady hand.

What we had for dinner, 12/9/09

Last night, pork loin roast, seasoned with David's special pork rub, thyme and onion powder. Asparagus spears (steamed), red cabbage and a bit of onion sauteed in pork cooking juices and a splash of apple cider vinegar (to keep the color red). The kids also had a side of apple sauce, since I didn't think the cabbage would be found very appealing. Both of them gave good faith efforts to the cabbage and B ate all of her asparagus. For dessert the kids had pound cake (Thanks Deana) and peaches with a tiny dab of whipped cream. DH had some too, but I didn't want any dessert.

Tonight, we have leftover pork turned into a pork stew with zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, parsnips, and onions. I may or may not serve this over mashed potatoes.

Things to Do

I think we all have day to day "to-do" lists, but I also have great big LIFETIME to do lists. Here is a sample...

*Learn to ride a motorcycle
*Learn how to knit
*Make some real clothing,(e.g. sewing, advanced)
*Travel to Italy, stay in a villa, gain 10 pounds
*Learn to snow ski
*Go surfing (learn to surf)

Those are some of the "fun" things on the list, there is also harder stuff.

*Be honest. Be really honest with people.
*Go to college
*Be financially responsible
*Face things I find challenging
*Stop bluffing.

Then there is some random stuff that I may or may never accomplish.

*Win an award that requires a ball gown to accept it
*Create a vegetable garden and cook and eat out of it
*Own a house with a wrap around porch
*Drive a semi-truck

My brain is feeling crunchy-fried right now, so I am not going to flesh this out more. What's on your life time list? Do you have one? Do you have a list of things you never want to do (again?)

Cook Once, Eat Twice

"Cook once, eat twice" is my mantra; living by this simple principle allows me to make food for my family every night. Even on super-busy "book night and dance recital" sort of nights. Friday night I made a pot roast with oven-roasted veggies and green beans. I served the food and saved all the beef drippings and put them in a small glass bowl. Today I took the leftover roast and cubed it and dusted the cubes with flour. I took a stock pot and sweated some onions and celery, then I added a the beef cubes. After they browned I deglazed the pan with some red wine and added the reserved beef drippings, 1 c. of beef stock and some water (enough to cover the beef). After they came to a boil I added the leftover carrots from last night, then the leftover potatoes and then the green beans in the last 5 minutes. If the flour from the beef does not sufficiently thicken the broth you can add a tsp or so of cornstarch mixed with water to the stew. Salt and pepper to taste.