sautéed pork chops with lime pan sauce

Sautéing pork chops is easy.  Pan sauces are easy.  Put the two together and you have an easy and delicious meal.  That’s why it’s one of my favourites, time and again.  Tonight, I decided that my sauce would be lime and white wine, with garlic and shallots.

setting the scene

It’s usually a good idea to do your prep work before you start cooking things, so let’s get that out of the way.

garlic mincers and good knife work are useful for this

Great, we’re on our way!  First, heat up some olive oil in a pan.  We’re browning meat, so get it nice and hot – medium-high at least.  When you throw the meat in there, it should start sizzling quite nicely; if the oil starts to smoke before you add the meat, you may have waited too long.

this shot of raw meat goes out to my friend Steve

Let it sizzle until you get some nice browning, then flip it.  It looks like I could have turned the heat up or left the chops a little longer before flipping them, but these look pretty decent.

this is what the sizzle looks like

Once both sides are looking nice and colourful, reduce the heat and add a generous portion of stock.  We want to cook the meat through.  Some people like their pork slightly rare, but you can get sick from eating undercooked pork, so be careful!

I used chicken stock for this

Once the meat is finished, remove it from the pan.  An oven on very low (200 ºF at most) might be a good place to store it while you finish up the sauce.  No matter where you decide to keep it, letting the meat rest for five minutes or so is definitely a good idea.  At this point, I turned the heat back up a bit and added my shallot and garlic to the stock left in the pan.  Be sure to scrape the bottom and sides of the pan to get all that flavour into your sauce.

getting close!

After the stock reduced a bit, I splashed some white wine in.  I also added some capers at some point, but I don’t remember when exactly.  When the sauce was almost done – after the wine had reduced somewhat and the consistency looked good to me – I squeezed my lime halves into it, too.  (Careful; if you have any little cuts or nicks on your hands, this can be painful.  If you don’t, you might discover one or two!)  A little stirring and a minute later, I decided it was ready.  I plated up the farfalle I’d been cooking on the side, put one of my pork chops on top, and spooned half of my sauce all over everything.  The other half went in the fridge as leftovers along with the other pork chop.

yum!

I was too impatient to wait for everything, as you can see by the fact that the pork chop has already been cut into.  I gotta work on my timing . . .

Hope you enjoyed this; I sure did!  Be sure to leave a comment.

Moors & Christians

Spanish-style rice & beans, from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.  This version, not this one, which starts with dry beans and ends with baking in the oven – I’m hungry; I can’t wait for that!

It’s pretty easy.  Usually I do a rice pilaf* but I haven’t acquired any stock at my new apartment yet, so I just did plain rice – brown basmati, to be specific.  I was trying the stove – my first gas stovetop, ever** – and couldn’t get it to simmer slowly enough, so I just left the lid off and let it bubble for about 15 minutes.  You should figure out how to cook your own rice, though.  Maybe get a rice cooker.  Rice is boring, so no photos.

Moving along!

Then you throw some diced onion and bell pepper (I used orange), and some minced garlic all together into some heated olive oil, around medium heat.  Soften it up a bit, and then turn the heat up to medium-high and add some canned beans and diced tomatoes (canned tomatoes are fine, too).  Since you’re going to want some more moisture, you could add water, but I love all that beany and tomatoey flavour that I get from the cans’ juices.  Let it cook for 10 – 20+ minutes, until you’re either too hungry to keep waiting or you think it’s done.

it's still brothy at this point, early in the process

Be sure to stir it now and then.  When the liquid was more absorbed than not, I found that the bottom of the pot might burn a bit if I didn’t stir and scrape it now and then.

the broth has reduced a bit, now

Once it’s ready, or you’re starving, add salt & pepper to taste.  Chop up some fresh cilantro or parsley (either is fantastic) stir it in or garnish on top, whatever you like.

I went with cilantro, tonight

Damn it, all these words and photos have gotten me hungry again, despite the large serving I had for dinner.

I mean just look at it; that's a lot of food. a lot of delicious, delicious food.

BONUS PHOTO because I have a new macro lens and I am in love with it

UNNECESSARILY CLOSE CLOSE-UP

One of my favourite dishes.  And not only is it vegetarian, but I guess it’s vegan too?  Provided you use don’t use a meat-based stock for your pilaf.  I don’t really care one way or the other; what matters is that it’s DELICIOUS.

* soften diced onion in oil, add dry rice to pot and stir for a minute or two, then add flavourful stock and cook normally – i.e. on low, covered, and left the heck alone until it’s done!!  I have had roommates go up to a pot on the stove and go, “What’s in here?” and take off the lid as I look up, frozen in horror as I realize what’s happening and how little I can do to prevent all the slow heat from escaping.  Rice ruined, and dinner delayed by at least 20 minutes.

** I really enjoy how quickly it responds to changes in heat.  It’s a system with a first-order dynamic, instead of a second-order one, and as an interface designer will tell you, that makes it a lot easier and nicer to work with.

Slow-cooked ribs

Slow-cooking is fantastic.  It usually doesn’t take much prep  – mostly it requires forethought – and it’s great to load some food up in the morning, and come back after a day at work or school to a delicious-smelling house and a hot meal waiting for you.

These ribs are very easy and they just fall off the bone.

1. Brown the ribs under your broiler.  Browning them results in the creation of a ton of flavourful compounds, thanks to the Maillard reaction.  After you’ve done one side, don’t forget to flip them and brown the other!  The goal here is just to get those tasty brown bits on the surface, not to cook through, which is why you should use very high heat and keep a close eye on them.
2. Meanwhile, prepare a standard mirepoix by sautéing some carrots, onions, and celery with a few spices, like chili powder, sage, and garlic.  I like using woks because they make it easy to toss the vegetables.  The more airtime they get, the better they taste!  (Not really, but it is a lot of fun.)
   

   Sautéing mirepoix

    

   

   This was difficult to photograph...

3. Put your browned ribs in the slow-cooker and cover with the vegetables.  It might be easier to put a few veggies in first, then a rack of ribs, then some more veggies, more ribs, etc., until your crockpot is full.
4. Coat in your favourite barbecue sauce.  I wasn’t awesome enough to make my own, but Bulls-Eye Chicken & Rib sauce was pretty good. You can add beer to your sauce in whatever proportion doesn’t result in too runny a sauce; I like using beer that’s dark, but not too dark – like Rickard’s Red.  If your sauce is thick, you might want to try and spread it around a little while adding it, but unless it’s more of a spread than a sauce, it’ll probably migrate downwards as your meal cooks.
   

   Step 3 plus this...

   

   ...equals this.

5. Put the lid on, set your slow-cooker to Low, and come back in about seven hours, or whenever the meat’s tender.  Use a meat thermometer if you’re not sure.  As always, try not to open the slow-cooker before it’s done, because all the hot air will escape.
6. Eat!  I microwaved some potatoes when the ribs were about done and they went very well together.  Potatoes are great with the extra sauce.  Yum!

I'd like to dedicate this meal to my friend Steve and his appetite for meat.

On habits and impulses in food

In general, I like to eat healthy food. When prepared well with high-quality ingredients, healthy food tastes excellent, makes me happy, energizes me, and improves both my physical and psychological senses of well-being. For example, a sandwich on crusty whole-grain bread piled high with crisp and juicy veggies makes me happy just thinking about eating it and the feeling I get afterwards.

Obligatory image of healthy food

I also love cooking – combining great ingredients using a collection of culinary techniques, experienced know-how, and creativity to synthesize a cohesive whole out of parts appeals to a great number of my passions: adventure, creativity, eating, and even analysis – if something turns out poorly, then it’s a learning experience; on the other hand, sometimes I end up surprising myself, which is both wonderful and another opportunity to learn and apply that knowledge in the future!

The problem with both of these loves is that, in the moment, I’m prone to do neither of them. When hunger strikes, I’ll go for very fatty, salty, sugary, and (in general) unhealthy processed foods. Instant gratification is a powerful tempter and these kinds of foods appeal to my base physical cravings very directly.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the evolutionary arguments of why these foods are so sought after by our metabolisms, so I won’t bore you or excuse my impulses – what’s important is that they do exist, not why that is.

So, in order to protect my overall self from my self-in-the-moment, I employ a few tricks.  Fresh fruit or a bagel with cream cheese make great snacks, and so does a quick fruit smoothie (one banana, some vanilla yoghurt, and some frozen fruit, for example, blended as much as you like).  By keeping plenty of these things on hand, I have a healthy option when hunger strikes – the “trick” here is that they’re tasty and easy.  I also rarely buy traditional snack foods, such as potato chips, cookies, or sugary carbonated beverages (even if they’re really, really good served at about 2 °C in a chilled glass).  If they’re not in my kitchen, then I don’t eat them!  Another way I try to keep my eating healthy is to pick great ingredients when I’m at the grocery store.  As a rule of thumb, I stick to the perimeter – most of the unhealthy, processed food is in the aisles, while great things like whole-grain bread, dairy products, meat and fish, the deli, and produce are all located at or near the edges of the store.  There are exceptions (I buy canned tomatoes all the time because homemade tomato sauce is so easy and delicious), but that’s why it’s a rule of thumb.  If I buy a lot of baby spinach, tomatoes, onions, and peppers, it’s easy to throw together a quick salad whenever I’m already making a meal.

What this all boils down to is that if you want to eat healthy food, you need to do two things: make it harder on yourself to eat unhealthy stuff, and make it easier to eat the good stuff!  If you have any techniques for eating better, I’d love to hear them.  Leave a comment!

Tarte Flambée

Tarte flambée is an Alsatian dish similar to pizza.  I followed this recipe, except I slow-cooked the onions the way Mark Bittman told me to.  (It’s faster.)

0: preheat oven to 220 °C (425 °F).

1: slice an onion thinly; put in frying pan on medium-low and cover.  Stir every five minutes until it starts to turn brown and stick to the bottom of the pan (~20 minutes).

Sliced onions

2: since you have some time, grate some Gruyère cheese.

Like this!

3: check those onions. Don’t forget to keep stirring them.  Mine look like they’re starting to soften up.

Looks like a sauna...

...they're certainly sweating enough! *rimshot*

4: get your pizza dough (I buy it in a bag, refrigerated but not frozen) and spread it out on a baking sheet.  FIGHT: who will win – sticky pizza dough, or non-stick baking sheet?!

A sticky victor emerges!

5: spread some crème fraiche all up ons.

All up ons, indeed.

6: onions,

onions,

onions,

onions,

onions,

onions!

7: green onions.

Slice at a jaunty angle to give it some visual pizzazz!

8: throw everything on the dough & cream! (Or place it, if you have bad aim.)  Then crack a bunch of black pepper on there.

Looks like a big gooey mess...

...a delicious, gooey mess.

9: cook for 10-20 minutes, until the crust is browned a bit on the bottom.  Hopefully you have a bit of a feel for how long your dough takes to bake.

Yum!

10: homf, homf, homf!

(11: eat dessert.

Like some good old peaches and vanilla ice cream.)

GREAT SUCCESS!  I think my good friend the Heavy sums this up best.

PS: to unlock OMNIVORE MODE, defeat level seven in less than five minutes without dying.

Or, um.. add a bunch of bacon.

k, bye!

The Green Blur

I was in the middle of a project this evening when dinner rolled around, and I’m afraid it blew right past me.  At 9:30 p.m., I realized I hadn’t eaten, and food was in order, but my fridge was despairingly bare!  So, I biked to the nearest grocery store, picked up a few things, and at 10:00 p.m., dinner was under way.  I made it so fast that I thought it deserved an equally-fast blog post!  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you: The Green Blur.

Ingredients:

• your favourite kind of pasta (tonight, it was small shell pasta)
• Brussels sprouts (as much as you like – I went heavy on them with about 1 dozen per serving)
• pesto (such as “Basic Pesto”, from Mark Bittman’s superb How to Cook Everything)

Method:

1. Prepare the pesto, if necessary.  For me, this consisted of blending about 2 cups loosely-packed basil with a couple tablespoons of pine nuts, as much garlic as you like, and about half a cup of really nice olive oil until it was all green and creamy.

2. Hopefully you’ve read ahead and now your pasta water is boiling.  If not, you’ll just have to try harder next time!  Boil as much water as you need for both the pasta and the sprouts.  Once it’s boiling, salt it and toss the pasta & sprouts in.  Some pastas take longer to cook than others; if you have a sense of how long both the sprouts will take (about 7 – 10 minutes) and the pasta (just about the same for me, tonight; YMMV) then feel free to add one before the other so that they finish at the same time.

3. Drain the pasta/sprouts mixture, reserving some of the pasta water.  Dish it up, throw on some pesto, thinning it a little with the reserved water if you need to, grate some fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese on top, do a couple grinds of sea salt to taste, and

4. Enjoy!

I somehow managed to snap a photo of this before it vanished from my plate.  Quick to make, and quick to eat, with heaping portions of deliciousness and nutrition – this one’s a keeper!

Experimental Pizza

I was bored this morning while my parents were out golfing, so I made a quick trip to the grocery store and threw together a pizza for lunch!  (Though it would work just as well for dinner.)

The Crust

I used a store-bought pizza crust, because (a) I’m lazy, and (b) I couldn’t find any frozen pizza dough at the grocery store.  I prefer raw pizza dough to a pre-cooked pizza crust – they come frozen near the bakery at my usual grocery store in Waterloo, so I’ll thaw it out on the counter 3-4 hours before cooking, or overnight in the fridge.  Fresh-baked pizza dough is way tastier than a pre-cooked crust!  Once it’s thawed, I flatten it out and stretch into shape, and cook it in the oven at about 475° F.  I start out on a cookie sheet, but since it cooks unevenly, I flip it once one side is done.  It’s better to slightly undercook than overcook, because it’ll be going back in with the toppings.

The Toppings

Once you have a crust (even if it’s pre-cooked, like mine was today), you have to top it.  I find a good way to choose pizza toppings is to decide on one or two main ingredients, and select a few others to complement them.  Too many different toppings is bad!  Instead of featuring a couple good flavours, they all blend together and it tastes like nothing much at all.  I was feeling adventurous today: I had a salad while eating out recently that featured navel oranges and goat cheese (among other things), so these were the key ingredients for my pizza today.  I rounded it out with homemade tomato sauce, prosciutto (to add a bit of salty meatiness), artichoke hearts, and spinach.

The Tomato Sauce

I use the fabulous Basic Tomato Sauce recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (highly-recommended cookbook – check it out if you don’t already have it).  It’s pretty simple – throw a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan, add some onion, and sauté on medium-low.

While they’re sautéing, drain a can of whole tomatoes (reserve the liquid); seeding them will help make the end result less bitter, but it’s definitely optional.  Crush and squeeze them by hand; if there are any tough, unripe bits, feel free to cut them out and remove them.  Once the onions are mostly translucent, add the tomatoes, turn the heat up to high, and cook it all until the tomatoes break down and get nice and soft (usually takes me about 10-15 minutes).  I like to spice it up with some oregano.

The sauce, immediately after adding the tomatoes & oregano.

If it’s too thick, add some of that reserved juice; discard the rest.

The finished sauce, spread out on my crust.

By the way, this tomato sauce is great on pasta.  I usually roast a little garlic instead of sautéing onions, but then, I’m a garlic nut.  Moving on!

The Toppings

You may have noticed earlier when I listed my toppings that I left something out – I didn’t put any mozzarella cheese on this pizza!  I certainly could have, but I thought that it would turn out just fine without – and I was right.  Leaving the mozzarella off also cuts down on the calories and the fat, if you’re concerned about things like that.

You can often just throw all the toppings on the pizza and then toss it in the oven, but I used some delicate toppings, so I didn’t do that.  Each pizza is unique, but if you use your common sense (and learn from your mistakes) you should be fine.  I added the artichoke hearts and prosciutto first, in order to crisp up the meat a little bit.

The pizza base, artichoke hearts, and prosciutto.

Once the prosciutto had just started to crisp up, I took the pizza out, crumbled a bunch of goat cheese on it, and threw it back in the oven.  While that cooked a bit longer, I cut up the orange, then took the pizza out again, added the orange and the spinach and put it back in.

Fully topped and ready to finish up in the oven!

I checked it frequently to make sure the spinach didn’t wilt too much, and was paid off with a lovely end product – but it looked so good that I couldn’t wait to eat a slice!

All done!

As in the salad that inspired the whole thing, the goat cheese complemented the orange really well, and the prosciutto balanced the sweetness very nicely.  Delicious!

Beef Stroganoff

Hey, long time no see!  I have an important exam on Monday morning, so of course this evening I made beef stroganoff to blog about.  Beef stroganoff is a Russian dish which, at its simplest, is beef, sautéed and served in a sour cream sauce.  Some versions use shaved beef; others use cubed beef.  Some serve it plain, others with fried potatoes, and others still with rice.  I was taught to make it with egg noodles, which, with their light flavour and texture, complement the rich, creamy sauce very well.

First off, we cut up some garlic and onions to use in the sauce.  I chopped up a whole onion and minced three cloves of garlic with my trusty garlic press.  (An easy way to peel a clove of garlic, by the way, is to cut off one or both ends, at which point the skin normally comes off quite easily.  If it’s still stuck, crush the garlic lightly with the flat of your knife.)

Garlic presses are wonderful

Then I warmed up some olive oil over medium heat,  and tossed in the garlic and onions along with some sliced mushrooms.  Since we’ll be simmering these for a while later on, we don’t want to overcook them now – just sauté them enough that they’re a little tender.  While the vegetables were sautéing, I cut my beef into bite-size cubes and tossed it in some flour.  Once the veggies were nice and tender, I put them on a plate, threw some fresh oil in the pan, and added the floured beef for browning.

Tender, but not overcooked

Floured beef, sautéing...

...and the end product.

With the beef browned and the vegetables sautéed, it’s time to prepare the sauce – I use beef consommé, some Worcestershire sauce, a dash of tabasco (which is surprisingly subtle in the end product), and salt and pepper to taste.  While this simmers on low for about a half hour, and all that great flavour permeates and tenderizes the beef, it’s time to get the egg noodles going!

All of a sudden, I'm in the mood for stew...

Unlike normal pasta noodles, egg noodles don’t expand very much, so while you may think you’re about to prepare enough pasta to feed an army, just follow the directions on the packaging to prepare as much as you need for your guests.  You’ll need a lot of water, so start it on the burner not too long after the sauce starts simmering away.

Water, before boiling...

...and with the noodles in.

Hopefully, by the time the noodles have finished, the sauces is about ready, so we can uncover it and throw in the most important part of our stroganoff – the sour cream!  Mix up well and you’ll get a nice, creamy, light brown sauce that looks a little like this.

Getting hungry yet?

That’s just about it!  Drain the noodles, dish onto plates, and throw some sauce on top.  You might want to add a little salt or pepper if you didn’t get them quite right earlier, or a little more hot sauce for some stroganoff with a kick, but I like it just as it is.  One of my roommates was surprised to find I hadn’t grated any cheese, as he’s used to putting it on his pasta, but he found that the sour cream gives this dish quite enough flavour on its own.

Dinner is served!

Enjoy!

Slow-Cooked Ribs

A friend of mine gave me his favourite recipe for slow-cooked ribs the other day, and I just had to try it out with company over for dinner tonight.  The sauce is a great mix of tangy barbecue sauce and dark beer, and the vegetables soak it up for a nice, complete meal.

Ribs with barbecue sauce

I increased his recipe a bit, but the important part is to start with some ribs (brown them in a frying pan first), pour on some barbecue sauce and a nice, dark beer, toss some potatoes, carrots, and whatever else you like in there, and let it cook for at least six hours.  Jeff says to use half a bottle of barbecue sauce and one beer, but I was preparing more, so I used three beers and an entire bottle of sauce.  It ended up a bit runny and could have used a little more of the tang from the sauce – too bad I only bought one bottle!  For the beer, I used Kilkenny, which is a lovely stout that isn’t quite as heavy as Guinness.

Adding the beer

I also added potatoes, carrots, and onion.  Next time I’ll try some garlic, too, and definitely more potatoes and carrots – I prepared two whole racks of ribs to feed four people, and while there were enough ribs, the accoutrements were a little lacking.  Although I initially used a whole bottle of sauce and two beers, as you can see below, it wasn’t quite enough to soak everything just nicely.

Everything in the slow cooker

Another can of Kilkenny and six hours later, and the house smelled delicious.  It’s a good thing we left, because I would have gone crazy sitting around and smelling that.

All done!

Mark’s knee makes a cameo in the next photo, but he didn’t notice because he was much too busy enjoying his ribs.  A little salt & pepper to season the veggies, and a can of Kilkenny to wash everything down, and we were all in rib heaven.

Dinner is served!

We’ll definitely be making this one again.

Chicken Fettuccine with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

We had some friends over for dinner tonight, and didn’t have a lot of time to prepare anything, so I pulled out an old favourite of mine – chicken served over fettuccine with sun-dried tomato pesto.  I did up some asparagus to serve on the side. It’s a nice, simple meal that’s visually impressive and tastes great.

For the chicken, I just buy a whole cooked chicken from the grocery store.  They typically cost about $10.  Once we got home, I turned the oven on low and put it on a pan to keep it warm while I prepared the rest of the food.  I cooked the fettuccine as per the instructions on the package (I generally use between about a nickel- and quarter-sized cross-section of pasta per person), and while it was boiling, I put the asparagus in a microwave-safe dish with some water, and nuked it for about 6-10 minutes.  Depending on the microwave you have (and how you like your asparagus), your mileage may vary.

While the pasta and asparagus were cooking, I got the chicken out of the oven and pulled it from the carcass.  If it’s done really nice, you can just pull the meat off the bone with your fingers.  If you like the skin, leave it on, but for a healthier meal, pull off all the grease-laden stuff and throw it away with the bones.  (Or save them to make soup!)  When the pasta was done, I drained it and put it back in the pot, and then spooned in a bunch of pesto – about one-and-a-half to two tablespoons per serving.  Unlike tomato sauce, pesto packs a punch, and you don’t need nearly as much of it.  I use store-bought stuff. After that’s done, everything’s ready to dish up and serve!  We had ours with a very nice Jackson-Triggs 2005 Grand Reserve Chardonnay – from the Okanagan Estate, of course.

Chicken fettucine with sun-dried tomato pesto