Main Course

Pork Shoulder Ragu

- Elspeth 3 Comments

I am fairly intimidated by sauces of almost any variety. So when my friend David made a delicious pork shoulder sauce with what seemed to be minimal trouble and intelligence (just kidding, David. You can untwist your panties now), I got inspired. I got excited. I got…

…Slabs of meat! These piglets became a hearty Pork and wine sauce, stew, type thing. This has to simmer for several hours, so make sure you allot an appropriate amount of time for it or else it won’t meld properly.

You will need:

1 medium onion
Olive oil
1 large leek
2+ lbs pork shoulder
3/4 c flour
S+P
1+cup red table wine (and yes, that is the cheapest Italian table wine I could possibly find. Thank you for asking)
3 T tomato paste
1/3 c tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes
1 c chx stock
chili flakes
1 Bay leaf
3 fresh basil leaves
Polenta or pasta, for serving
Parmigiano cheese, for serving

Finely chop your onion and add to a hot (medium heat) dutch oven or cast-iron pan with enough oil to thoroughly coat the bottom.

I must say I did a smashing job chopping this onion. Usually I’m a total spaz when I have to chop things into small, uniform shapes. I must have been channeling someone on Adderall.

Cut the green parts of the leek off and discard:

Finely chop and rinse very, very thoroughly. Leeks are pretty filthy when you shed the layers, so make sure you’re not too focused on the Tyra Show whilst performing this chore.

Stir up the onions, and when they look like this:

ie, soft and translucent, add the leeks.

Turn the heat to medium low, but stir frequently while you’re preparing the pork.

Oink!

Prepare these puppies by trimming the fat and cubing them into whatever “bite-size” is to you.

This takes awhile, since fat is a real SOB to get off the meat. I found that I fared better sometimes when I scraped with my knife instead of cut. When you’ve got a nice pile of porky goodness, prepare a separate pan with some oil and place over medium high heat.

Place flour in a wide, shallow bowl with a bunch of salt and pepper (approx 1 t each). Coat your meat chunks thoroughly and shake any excess flour off before adding it in batches to the hot pan.

Brown it on both sides, then add to the onion/leek mixture (which you should be stirring periodically and keeping over low heat!).

I had to do three batches to get all of the pork browned and added to the pot. When it was done, the leek/onion mixture was very soft and fragrant, but not brown. It’s very important to stir this periodically and to add enough oil initially, or else it will burn.

Push everything to the side and slowly add the wine, scraping any brown bits from the bottom of the pan as it deglazes.

Add the tomato paste

And give it a good stir:

It’s going to be very thick because of the paste and flour, so add the chicken stock and tomato sauce to ensure it doesn’t burn:

I had some stock frozen, which is why it is in a solid state….

You should also throw in some extra salt, pepper, the chili flakes, and bay leaf.

Now comes the magical part. Turn this down to low and cover, letting it simmer for a few hours. You will need to stir it frequently, or else it will stick and burn on the bottom. It will start to smell absolutely fantastic and look better and better.

Feel free to add more wine, tomato sauce, stock, whatever suites your fancy. I found myself adding dashes of things here and there, depending on how the flavor was moving along. And let me tell you….it turned out simply magical!

I cooked up some polenta to go with this pile o’pork.

I love this stuff and feel that it was a creamy, more comforting alternative than pasta. Polenta is also a great way to “hide” healthy bits of nom without your guests being any the wiser. Pureed spinach, some flax meal, or fresh arugula stirred in would be magnificent additions.

We enjoyed this with a nice salad and a fabulous carrot cake, baked up by my friend Adriana (she’s the real deal, peeps. Culinary school grad, woot woot!). It was all amazing, so dive in!

NOM…..nom….

Creamy Pea Pasta

- Elspeth Leave a comment

It may sound stupid, but it is so good. Giada gave it some other name, but let’s face it: mine is better.

Italian Sausage, sweet peas, and mascarpone pasta. Boom goes the dynamite.

Normally, I give Giada a wide berth because, to be honest, she’s kind of special (as in special needs). And I don’t mean that she’s stupid, she just sounds really, really dumb walking around in her American clothing spouting off about Italian food. Perhaps I subconsciously dislike her because of her giant head, which sits atop a dainty little figure like some sort of unrealistic Barbie doll (the guidette version).

But really I think it’s because of the way she pronounces every. single. syllable. in any Italian word that comes up during her shows. I’m sorry, but I can’t take you seriously when you’re describing the fantastic way that paaaaRRRRmmehhGIannno crumbles and are yelling it condescendingly in my direction.

Not to continue on too much in this negative direction, but it also gets my goat that her cake recipes often go like this:
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
1 box cake mix….

…what? You’re an acclaimed chef and you’re telling me to make a cake from a box? Shut the front door.

Enough of that bad-mouthing; she does have some great recipes, the following included. Hers comes with ricotta instead of mascarpone and calls for spicy sausage, but I just wanted to be different and went with the following:

You will need:
1 bunch basil
1 pound pasta
8 oz mascarpone cheese (sub ricotta or cream cheese)
1 lb sweet or mild italian sausage
1 lb frozen peas, rinsed and mostly thawed
3-4 cloves garlic
1 t olive oil
1/4 c half-n-half
1/2 c parmigiano cheese (pronounce however you gosh darn please)
1 bunch asparagus, rinsed and woody part trimmed off
S+P

Put a pot of water on to boil, heavily salted.
Chop up your garlic

And get it going in a pan over medium heat with the oil. Once fragrant, add the sausage and brown,

breaking it up into small pieces with a wooden spoon. While that browns, shred your cheese

and finely chop the basil into shreds:

Basil is a very sensitive herb and can bruise very easily, so don’t abuse it too much or else everyone at the table will know what you’ve done. Once the water boils, toss the asparagus in for about 4-5 minutes, or until desired doneness. Remove it with tongs, then add the pasta with some more salt.

Your sausage should be almost done at this point, so you’re ready to add the peas. Scoot the sausage over in the pan and throw in the green pods. Now mash them all up with the back of the spoon or a potato masher.

Turn the heat off and add the mascarpone and half-n-half.

Stir it all together until the cheese has melted into a saucy deliciousness. Drain the pasta (if done, silly!) and place back in the pot. Add your sauce, shredded cheese, basil, and S+P to the pot and stir gently.

Daintily prepare your serving bowl with a heaping portion of yum and a side of asparagus.

And you’ve got yourself a tasty meal! I finished this off with some Lemon Lavender bars with Macadamia nut crust, which are my Lemon Bars with the addition of 1 T Lavender in the crust and a handful of pureed nuts. Very tasty, if I do say so myself!

The dish was very creamy and delightful. Feel free to reserve some of the pasta water to add to the sauce, or just throw in some extra 1/2 and 1/2. If you want extra smooth, puree the peas with the half n half before adding it to the pot!

nommynomnoms

Shrimp Po’Boys

- Elspeth 1 Comment

Laurenand I decided to go with Southern cuisine, after much deliberation and battles of will. We threw around Red beans and Rice, Gumbo, and a variety of seafood dishes, but finally we settled on a dish that no one can be dissatisfied with:

Fried stuff on bread with some vegetables as an afterthought! Or, as it is more widely known, Shrimp Po’boys.

Most acquaintances of mine know that I am very proud of my Southern roots. If someone starts spouting ignorant babble about my peeps, then they will soon feel the wrath of my Amazonian stature and temper. I’m no warrior, but my rage black-outs don’t often differentiate my body from that of Chuck Norris’s and will deliver a round-house kick to the face for any rude comments delivered in my presence.

The point is, Southern food makes you glad to be alive and capable of tasting all the wonderful flavors that are available to our tongues. So give thanks to Moses, Buddha, or whoever you’re praising today, for this wonderful meal you’re about to consume!

Most Po’boys I’ve encountered have fried shrimp or oysters (or both), but I’ve heard of delicious variations with sausage, crawfish, etc Shredded lettuce, tomatoes, hot sauce, mustard, pickles, and mustard as the usual suspects when it comes to additionals, all sitting atop a French or hoagie-esque roll.

Lauren objected to the squishy-ness of most hoagie rolls you find out there, so we went rogue and settled on Challah: it’s soft but with more oomph and is just so darn delicious. It did prove rather heavy when eaten in such vast quantities, but that can easily be avoided by simply not eating so much of it. Hmmm what a thought….

Here’s what you’ll need (for 2-3 sandwiches worth):

1 pound uncooked shrimp, deveined and tails removed
1/2 c hot sauce (we used Sriracha)
3 eggs
1 c flour
S+P
1 t Garlic powder
oil for frying
Rolls
1 head purple cabbage
1/2 onion, color of your choice
1 jalepeno
2 carrots, shredded
Tartar sauce
peppronicini
pickles

Lauren makes a meanslaw, so she graciously obliged and took the reigns for this one. She shredded up the cabbage and diced the jalepeno

Added some onion and carrot, then mixed up some dressing for marination.

Of course, I am completely blanking on what she put in it, but I know it included beer and lemon juice. Lauren? Be a doll and write it out in the comments?

A dressing to any slaw or salad comes with a bit of trial-and-error, but it’s always good to reference a recipe before you dive in. I am all for jumping in and just going with instinct, but you’re usually working with ingredients that are intense and can come out very wrong if you don’t ease into it. It might be wise to find yourself a solid base dressing to work off of, such as:
2 parts oil
1 part vinegar (balsamic, rice, red wine, etc, depending on what you’re putting it on)
shallots
mustard (again, depends on what you’re making, but dijon and honey are good foundations)
spices/herbs (S+P, garlic powder, cumin, cayenne, rosemary, chives, etc)
citrus (grapefruit is a very tasty alternative to lemon)

While Lauren was working her magic with the slaw, I cut out our bread recepticles:

We cut the challah loaf into quarters and carved it into the “buns” you see above. Yes yes, very crafty of us. We know! I then rinsed the shrimpies

and de-tailed them. The eggs got hot sauced and the flour tossed with S, P, and garlic powder.

I got the pan hot and added about 1/2 in of oil. Once it was all shimmery and ready for action, the assembly line began:
dunk in egg mixture
dredge in flour
plop in the oil

It only took them a couple of minutes per side and, since over cooked shrimp are a worse crime than grand theft, make sure to keep your eye on these suckers.

While I was frying my life away, Lauren mixed up the tartar sauce with some diced pickles and pepperonicini:

We tossed the bread under the broiler to toast it up a bit, but before we knew it….HAMMER TIME!

Red cabbage slaw, vamped-up tartar sauce, fried shrimp, and toasted bread. All. For. Me. I mean, us!

They were difficult to eat since they were only slightly smaller than a watermelon, but by gum it was worth it. The shrimp had the perfect amount of spice from the hot sauce dip and were perfectly accented by the slaw. It was crunchy and soft all at once, spicy yet refreshing, and altogether delicious. Of course we had to finish them off with something equally as epic, so we went with peanut butter cookies stuffed with reeses:

No big deal. (Yea right, it was a huge deal because they were fan-freaking-tastic). This was all very exhausting, so a nap was in order:

NOMnomNOMnom!