What's cooking? part 4

Putting my kitchen together this morning! Nevermind that I have no idea where my clothes are, the people must eat!
So far I'm happiest about my little coffee station but that's because it's not even 7am and I've been up for 90 min already.

I have a tea- and toast-making corner in my new house!

just dropping in to say sunchokes rule

quincie, I love skirt steak a great deal but it's gotten really expensive in the last few years?? It used to be cheap, I don't understand. It's fifteen dollars a pound now!

people want to make "cool" dishes with skirt steak

it started with fajitas, and it's been downhill since

wtf $15 for skirt steak??

need to price check next time i go to the store.

That's from the uh grocery delivery service, which doesn't have the best prices. But even at other places it's gone way up.

Hmm I don't remember what I paid for the last batch, probably because the kg to pounds and pesos to USD made my brain hurt. Next time I will check.

This morning I made cat food, which is kind of a chore. Today's human menu will be ropa vieja leftovers for lunch and good ole spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.

I also need to figure out how to make a mint julep-type drink with tequila.

you're eating something called "old clothes"?

Yes, and it is tasty indeed.

pork shoulder in the crock pot, carnitas tacos for dinner tonight

didn't get to go shopping last week so this was a big trip. was able to score some ramps, but no fiddleheads yet.

chicken meatballs with pomegranate sauce, orange/almond/carrot/sultana rice, and two kinds of green beans (one with egg, one with walnuts) last night. Someone else brought a chocolate cake that somehow involved milk in the preparation, with raspberries.

New stove is awwwwwesome
Made scallops, steak, couscous blend thing, bacon/kale/lemon salad (that same old one) and now there are choco chip-pecan-salted caramel chip cookies a-bakin.

No pics yet because AT&T is holding me hostage. Tonight I'm making pizza. Good times!

so awesome

i just made a recipe that called itself "assertive green salad" which is cracking me up.

lol

Making mustard greens for the first time? No idea what I'm doing yet.

wilt them in lard, let a cup of chicken stock boil off them, and finish with a squeeze of lemon. one of my favorite greens!

yeah mustard greens are yum when braised

Okay, thanks! I bought chx broth and just juiced a lemon and kept half back, so I'm going in the right direction here.

Menu:

Pork chops coated in lemon zest/juice/garlic/salt/OO broiled for about 5 min a side (give or take)

Roasted potatoes with rosemary/OO/cloves of garlic still in the skins

Mustard greens with shallots/chicken broth/lemon juice

Overcooked the chops, unfortunately (because some were not totally thawed when I started so I upped the times, but too much).

i have still not found a pork chop preparation that satifies me

I actually think if I'd done 5 mins a side like it said, they'd be fine. I also should have thawed them out better.

Oh, the chops were also coated in powdered mustard. Recp also called for parsley and rosemary but I didn't have the former and the potatoes already had the latter. Overall the lemon was too forward without the herbs but it's workable.

After being traumatized as a child by my mother's pork chops, I swore them (and all pork) off forever.

Brining them and cooking them to 155 (final temp; pull from heat and rest at 145) as opposed to whatever charcoal my trichinosis-fearing mother dried them to cured me of my pork phobia.

brining seems to help, but i can't get the right balance of searing, broiling, baking, etc. etc

CI prefers a cold pan technique, where you don't get a nice sear but you get maximum juiciness with minimum prep. Have you tried that?

hmmm no, that i have not tried

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/article.asp?docid=156

I have the full print version somewhere, basically you start in a cold pan and never get above medium heat, I think. They might have added a little sugar on the down side to enhance the browning.

interesting! i just subscribed to the magazine (well my gf subscribed me) but maybe i'll get the site access too. i love how counterintuitive some of their stuff is.

Do you guys eat apple sauce with pork or is that not a thing in the U.S? (if not I have no idea what the multiple shelves of apple sauce in supermarkets are for...)

I always associate "pork chops and apple sauce" with an old Brady Bunch episode I cant even remember the context of now.

Never eaten one in my life tbh.

you can eat apple sauce as its own thing, it's a staple in schoolkid sack lunches imo

but yeah, people have pork chops with apple sauce on occasion

what, just a glop of sauce in a lunch tray? ew.

Mind you I say that and we didnt even have sit down lunches at our schools, it was all "buy a hot meat pie/sausage roll/salad roll and eat it in the playground" thing.

ime it's seen less as a "sauce" and more like pudding (american meaning, not pudding-as-generic-dessert term)

there are little single-serving applesauce cups and everything

as google reminds me, the other great use for applesauce is on latkes. mmmm.

Yes, apple sauce is traditional with pork here and the pork + apple combo is obviously timeless, but the whole "grocery store jar of applesauce" on a dried-out chop has a mid-century kind of feel to it? You can achieve a way tastier version by throwing some cubed apple with salt and thyme under a pork roast in the last 30 mins.

I have a 7lb pork shoulder coming tomorrow btw. Getting kind of hungry just thinking about it.

Still, its just a mouthful of glop. Its like the lovely japanese bento trays I sometimes get for lunch: they always include a little blob of mashed potato salad in one little cube. I love it.

xxpostsomething

lots of great foods are just mouthfuls of glop, like yogurt

wonder if I can summon LL by saying chobani

Haha! I was just going to check in to say that there are kitchen pics on flickr if anyone wanted to see my new dominion. I've still gotta make a substantial produce and meats grocery run but I predict great things to come.

my crockpot pork carnitas turned out really good! am going to experiment with adding more/different things to the pot for more flavor. this time was just the juice of an orange, onion, garlic, a little chopped jalapeno and rubbed down with cumin, oregano and salt.

That reminds me of my NC bbq crockpot recipe, which I plan to revive as soon as I go grocery shopping! I've had a hankering for weirdo tacos ever since you guys have been talking about meat all the time :)

Coincidentally, I have a 7lb pork shoulder coming today. Going to slow-cook it, obviously, but votes on whether to brown the outside first?? A shocking (to me) number of recipes for carnitas/pulled pork/etc do NOT call for browning, which downright confuses me.

when i've made carnitas i've browned it at the end (once its been pulled apart)

Last few days: Cream of swede and chestnut soup. Variations on crockpot stews. Leftover roast chicken and mushroom risotto. Tomorrow: Lime zest and coconut encrusted blue warehou with crispy spuds and garden salad.