My Brudda: Pork Champion

So My Brudda is famous. It's true. He was in a cook-off, a very special cook-off, and it made the East Coast papers. Well, it made the Central Jersey Community Newspapers, but Central Jersey is a good hour or two away from where my brother lives, so hello, that's like getting a Hollywood Star while residing in Nebraska.

I do believe I have mentioned before how talented My Brudda is with pork. Do read the article and you will see that pork let him down by becoming a bit overcooked, nevertheless, to beat this pork My Brudda's competition had to use pastry, sausage, and fois gras. I mean, just look at that picture (courtesy of the Central Jersey Community Newspapers @ CentralJersey.com). Does that pork not just cry for your plate?

Kudos to the Pork Master for his expertise not just with pork, but also for his stellar frittata and a heavenly salad. Recipe at the end of the article. Here's the link:

In the kitchen: Showdown in the sacristy

My Brudda notes, by the way, that his wife, Lady Pate Sucre, made an absolutely stunning key lime pie for the competition. I haven't yet met a key lime pie I haven't fallen deeply in love with, and I regret that I was not in attendance for what would have been the beginnings of yet another illicit affair with pastry and lime curd. Maybe next time.

When four people get sick, one person needs a Nano.

Image via Wikipedia

At least that's what I told myself when I was on my 22nd load of laundry MUSIC-FREE during the height of the puking. Concerned readers, you can stop emailing wails of concern. We are alive and well. Gastroenteritis laid us low over Christmas, heck, Christmas laid us low over Christmas, so low in fact that I had to buy a new Nano to snap out of it. And a new coffee table and console table. And Wii. And weekend in Pittsburgh. And soon we'll all be in Manhattan.

There might have been a new pair of running shoes and a new cookbook or four, two new bookshelves, a trip to Ikea, and perhaps I'm contemplating major appliance purchases.

My new Nano has made me so fulsomely food productive! My old iPod died about six months ago. Streaming Pandora is awesome, but it's not like girating in the kitchen, singing at the top of my lungs while chopping onions to old friends from my musical past. This is an excellent development because instead of lollygagging around all day on vacation trying to decide what to make for dinner then taking everybody out I'm back to running at full steam with work, kids in school, workaholic husband, vacations to plan, and new furniture to arrange.

Why just this weekend alone, thanks in no small part to a snow day on Friday with the kids, I had time to dance and whip out three pans of this:

The best lasagna. Ever. (via the Pioneer Woman)

It might not the best, because my palate demands bechamel in the best lasagna, but it's darn good, holds up well in the freezer, and my kids suck it down, which means for us, for now, it's the damn best. And we're having it for dinner the night we get back from Manhattan. Don't be too jealous. You can do it too. It's easy. BTW, I never boil noodles. I just do the no-boil variety. They are beautiful.

I also have a big pot of this braising right now, via The Barefoot Contessa:

Parker's Beef Stew

I mostly sorta kinda followed the directions. It smells heavenly, and really, can you go wrong with wine, bay leaf, salt, onions, garlic, and BEEF? I think not. We'll be having that with potatoes this week and frozen leftovers next week with fresh potatoes or noodles. Whatever I have around.

This is what we're having for dinner tonight, and the leftovers will sustain me no doubt for lunch a few days this week, along with coffee, Diet Coke, pretzels, and chocolate:

Jamie Oliver's Very Fantastic Fish Pie via Slashfood

I jitterbugged around the kitchen listening to my British favorites while I threw together Jamie's very British fish pie. I didn't use cream, but cooked down a little extra half & half. I also didn't use the juice of a whole lemon. A tablespoon was plenty, thanks. If I put spinach in a fish pie it's a slam dunk the kids won't get the food near enough to their mouths to even spit it out in disgust, so I stuck with peas. Always safe there.

We'll be rounding out a week a food with a simple pasta dish, some sausages and beans, and a stir fried rice with lovely Asian pork from Donna Hay.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this. I read this post this week from my neighbor (okay, two hours north), Michael Ruhlman:

America: Too Stupid to Took.

I've been thinking hard about what he wrote while I was killing drones on Star Wars: The Complete Saga, or pounding mushrooms in Super Mario Brothers. I feel a little guilty, 'cause certainly I should have been roasting a chicken whilst I Wii-ed my heart out. I'm not sure America is told it's too stupid to cook; I certainly feel like I'm told that I'm busy to cook as I wander around my grocery store aisles with coupons for boxed au gratin potatoes and cake mixes shooting out at me and my cart as I try desperately to find unbleached white flour before I weaken and reach for the canned butterscotch pudding. And Oreos. Anyway, interesting mildly pithy post (my favorite combination) worth a read whilst you wait for your chicken to finish roasting.

Gotta go check my fish pie and stir my stew.

Coming up, one of my best menus for entertaining, pulled together for Christmas Eve this year.

Feel free, dear readers, as you always do, to email me ideas for family friendly places to chow in Manhattan, keeping a four year old squarely in the forefront of one's recommending mind.

Love--Iced

Turkey says: I will survive.

From a reader:

Alton Brown Does Bacon in a Waffle Iron!

Behold by clicking. Genius.

Jacques Pepin

When I was young I had a teddie bear named "Jacques" after Jacques Pepin. Love him. Love his cookbooks. Love his autobiography. Love his scrappy attitude. Try to emulate the cheery workman-like execution of his craft. Came upon this in the Washington Post with delight today:

For Pepin, Impromtu Comes Easy

I vow to try every single recipe, only I might use butternut squash rather than acorn because those ridges on the acorn squash scare me.

Flanken-Style Shortribs with Mushrooms
Baked apples
Sweet and Sour Glazed Squash
Slaw with Mustard Garlic Dressing
Sauteed Cabbage and Kielbasa
Crisp Pear Tart
Crispy Chicken Thighs with Mushroom Sauce

Question from reader. What do brining and enchiladas have in common?

I had a question today from a reader. A good question.

"If you brine a turkey, won't the drippings be too salty for your gravy?"

Yes, they will be, sadly, especially if you wet brine the bird, which, by the way, is to die for with Williams Sonoma turkey brine spice blend. Failing that, don't go to the trouble. Dry salt it in your fridge for a few days ahead of time.

But back to the gravy. Here's the solution. This weekend, pick up a big roaster or two small fryers at the grocery story. Roast them with a little sage, garlic, onion, and lemon. Save the drippings, deglaze the pan, and if you are so inclined, make your gravy now and freeze it. Otherwise throw the drippings, including deglazed loveliness, into the freezer.

Use the leftover chicken for anything, but consider using it for this from Pioneer Woman:

White chicken enchiladas (you just don't have to go to the trouble of poaching the chicken)

THEN, when you're all done with the chicken meat and have only those carcasses (which takes me back to the end of anatomy class) left, throw them into a slow cooker, cover with water, salt generously, add onion, celery, carrot, parsley stems or whatever else you have around, and let it cook for a few hours. Strain that and you have homemade stock, drippings for gravy, chicken enchiladas for at least two meals, chicken salad, and anything else you want to do with chicken, and you don't need to steamed your hairdo away over a hot pan of gravy on Thanksgiving.

Pork Meatballs with Yogurt Sauce

Really, any meatballs with any sauce, and these have not one but two sauces.

I'm a sucker for a meatball. Somebody took the time to lovingly mix and form tiny little balls with their hands for little old me? Yes, please, with seconds.

Akhtar Nawab's Pork Meatballs with Yogurt Dressing via The Wednesday Chef

My Brudda, Pork Master

My Brudda just bought a crockpot. He made a good soup. I might have mentioned that before. His wife suggested I post a list of my crockpot favorites. I'm not sure I have a list of crockpot favorites yet, aside from my coconut vegetable stew and PassUBy's Mac & Cheese, but I did come across this. Looked to be an intriguing list from A Year of Slow Cooking:

Slow Cooker Fall Favorites

i got you babe

via the nytimes. beloved. beef.

visit.

Ah, the Happy Meal

The experience with a 5 year old lovingly rendered in the NYTimes this week. My kids often get Happy Meals for lunch on Saturday. They get plain burgers, apple dippers, and milk. What they really want is the toy. Most often they eat the bun, ditch the pickle, nibble the burger, and finish the apples. Kids.

Cooking with Dexter: Happy Meal Me

However, I'm completely grossed out by ground beef now thanks to the Sunday NYTimes frightening article about beef processing. It takes a lot to gross me out, too. I'm so completely offended by the "It's not my fault, must be the wholesaler/supplier/feedlot, blah blah blah." Belly up to the bar. You're going to get sued anyway, wholesaler/supplier/feedlot.

E coli Path shows Flaws in Beef Inspection

First the water supply. Now this. I guess I'll stick to candy corn and Diet Coke.

What if I used bacon?

Taking a leaf from a Top Chef improvisation substituting bacon for pork belly, how about if I made this with slab bacon--which I conveniently have arriving along with the rest of a cryovac'ed pig--instead of pork belly.

Chashu via norecipe

Stuffed eggplant and the 12 foot window

Image by Brooklyn Museum via Flickr

Long ago, before I went to medical school, Monsieur Latte and I took a trip to Turkey. This was one of our best trips. There were so many wonderful, colorful, aromatic moments. Istanbul is amazing. (I haven't had a lot of coffee yet, so bear with my turgid writing.) We felt as though we were in wonderland.

One wonderful evening we "spent a little extra" on dinner. That means we probably dropped $20 for the two of us including alcohol. We sat one evening on top of a rooftop restaurant, about 3 or 4 stories high, in the lovely, sparkly Istanbul weather. We looked out over the old City, the Sultanahmet, right across from the Blue Mosque. I had one of my ten best meals ever, stuffed eggplant. Two things, in fact. On that trip, even though (as usual) Monsieur Latte drove me crazy it became absolutely clear to me that I couldn't be separated from him. Ever. We weren't married yet and he was living in Connecticut, but I'd figured out bigger problems.

I also fell head over heels completely gaga crazy for eggplant on that trip. Monsieur et the Aubergine. They are still with me.

Monsieur and I live in a house with a 12 foot window in the living room. Try covering that for $100. We've been limping along for sometime with an Overstock.com meets Lowe's solution and I tire of it. What to do? Well, I was just having a chat with Google about it, and one thing led to another and I found a new cookbook. Not only that, I found a GORGEOUS new cookbook with a recipe for stuffed eggplant.

For a moment, at 7:14 this morning, gazing at the picture I clicked on a lark, Google sent me on a virtual magic carpet back 15 years ago to a rooftop restaurant with my beloved, kooky, neurotic Monsieur, in a far away place surrounded by exotic, ancient, enormous buildings, enveloped in a scented, silky cocoon of eggplant. A land before children, patients, sick parents. I'd never seen a leg amputated. I'd never delivered a baby. I'd never fallen in love with the chortle of my own babies. I didn't want to go back for long, but my, my, what a way to start a day.

Here's the recipe, in case you're interested.

Vefa Alexiadou's Meet Stuffed Eggplants Recipe

Few more cookbook links:

Vefa's kitchen (there are links here at Phaidon to recipes)
Amazon (with a few pics of the inside of the book)