Sunday dinner #2: Pork loin

For my second Cochon dinner, I invited my cousin over to enjoy the lovely boneless pork loin. This is a very special and expensive cut of meat; I did not want to screw it up. I had picked up some wonderful bacon from the Butcher and Larder, so a bacon-wrapped pork loin seemed like the perfect choice. 

Bacon makes everything better. I never need reminding of this principle, but I especially liked Louis CK's take on bacon from his HBO special: "When you have bacon in your mouth, it doesn't matter who's president or ANYTHING!"

And that's just bacon. Just think of what would happen if you took that bacon and wrapped it around some meat! I served this decadent pork with a side of roasted apples and sweet potatoes (they cook underneath the pork and catch all its drippings) and a beet and greens salad. I happened to have beets around, but any green salad would cut the richness of the rest of the dish.

Bacon-wrapped pork loin with apples and sweets

Time: 10-15 minutes to prep, 90 minutes to cook and rest
Serves: 6 for dinner (or 2 with lots of leftovers!)

Ingredients
2 apples
1 large sweet potato

4 sprigs rosemary
8 sprigs thyme
16 leaves sage
6 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil

2 lb pork loin
1/3 lb of bacon (enough to cover the loin)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Chop the apples and sweet potato and place in bottom of foil-lined roasting pan. 

3. Mince the garlic (I like to use a garlic press) and chop the herbs. Place in a small bowl and add olive oil to form a paste. You could add salt, but the bacon may be good enough.

4. Dry the pork loin with paper towels and rub with the herb mixture.

5. Cover the loin with bacon and place on top of the apples and sweet potato (either directly or with a rack in between).

6. Roast for an hour and 10 minutes. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before carving.

Dissertation defense dinner, in pictures

My cousin recently defended his dissertation, a huge milestone for a PhD student. To celebrate, I took him out to dinner at the Publican. We stopped by Maude's Liquor Bar for some pre-dinner cocktails, and then walked a few blocks north for the main event.

Oh what a main event. If pressed to choose my favorite restaurant from the seemingly infinite list of great Chicago eateries, I would probably pick the Publican. The food is always great, and I feel at home there. I could wax poetic about my love for the Publican in general and this meal in particular for pages, but instead I'll let these images from our dinner to the work for me.

Our beers. Mine (on the right) was something in the sour lambic family.

 Daily pickles.

Spicy pork rinds. Like delicious pig-based popcorn. A must.

Mussels. A classic. Bay, celery, and beer. They gave us a sample to accompany the mussels and our next course. Even a half order was huge.

Potted rillettes with rhubarb jam and sourdough bread. Creamy, delicious, spreadable pork. Rhubarb was just coming into season and pervaded the menu.

Grits and greens, listed in the vegetable section of the menu but no doubt there was some ham in there. This was so good. One of the best things I've ever eaten here, and that's saying a lot.

Pork belly. For a restaurant so devoted to pork, this cut is rarely on the menu (I've only had it one other time) so this was a treat indeed. Topped with an asparagus and mint salad to cut the richness of the belly. This dish paired so well with the grits and greens. 

Frites. Great but so ill advised. We were already pretty full. We also got dessert (cheesecake with something rhubarb-y) but I forgot to snap a photo. Oops. It looked like a piece of cheesecake.

Share #3

I am now leaving class to pick up meat. Lecture started at 3pm. My CSA share arrived at 3:16pm. I could have made an alternative plan. Picking up meat isn't complicated. Hold on to my phone, answer it when the call comes that meat is almost here, go outside and pick it up, put it in the department freezer with a note pleading not to trash my bag of meat. I could have easily asked someone to take care of this for me. 

But instead I took my chances. I selected a seat near the door; I needed to be near a plug anyway because my laptop will die after about 30 minutes. I kept my coat on; it was cold outside, and I didn't want to make extra noise or waste extra time by putting on my coat for my brief escape.

I couldn't wait to see what was in my magical meat bag. So many great items; the wheels in my head immediately started turning. Ground goat could become homemade goat sloppy joe's (inspired by a dish I saw on the menu at Little Goat), or perhaps some chili. My first bit of beef! More raw material for my slow cooker. 

I am now writing about meat in class. Someone had taken my carefully chosen seat; she is now sleeping. I am stuck sitting on the floor next to my plug. But I have meat waiting in my office freezer, and that's really all I can think about right now.

Share #3:
Bone-in pork chops
Beef chuck roast
Ground goat
Lamb medallions
Sausage

Turkey drumstick FAIL

Turkey drumsticks round 2. As excited as I am to try these Ron Swanson-style turkey legs, their long cooking time pushed them out of my schedule for the moment. 

I decided to try this recipe instead, swayed by its promise of 30 minutes of cooking time. I invested a short amount of time the night before to make the brine, letting the turkey legs marinate while I was at work, and then a quick pop into a hot oven before their final stop on my dinner plate.

But I should have realized that there are no shortcuts when cooking large pieces of poultry. I added some cooking time (20 minutes at 300 instead of 10, an extra 10 minutes in the residual heat after I turned off the oven), but still wound up with underdone turkey legs. I trust my source of meat so I think I'll be fine, but this would have been a dinner-party disaster.

Though this was not my most successful kitchen endeavor, there are still a few lessons to be gleaned from the experience.

Lesson 1: Either turkey legs and turkey drumsticks are two entirely different things, or my turkey comes from the biggest turkeys in the Chicago area. If you have some chicken legs or normal-sized turkey legs, I think this recipe would work nicely. My colossal drumsticks look much bigger than those featured in the recipe. They barely fit into my 8x8 inch pan when I was brining them.

Lesson 2: I'm not perfect, and occasionally I cook things that don't turn out that well. I won't skip over these failures here, but I won't go through all my methods and adjustments in detail. Lots of spices would work well in this dish and I used things I happened to have around.

Lesson 3: I assumed that Montreal Seasoning was the same as Old Bay (it was not), and then discovered that my Old Bay was shockingly old and barely had any flavor at all. Spices really do lose their potency over time, so go through your pantry periodically and get rid of things that won't add good flavors to your cooking.

Lesson 4: Don't try to eat undercooked poultry. Even if you don't get sick, you'll be wary about it and won't really enjoy your meal. I salvaged these drumsticks by cutting the meat off the bone and finishing it in a hot pan. 

I served some of the meat with some Spanish-style spinach (a dish that I discovered in a set of tapas recipe cards that my mom gave me) and roasted string beans, and some of it in a lunch salad.

Spanish spinach

Time: ~15 minutes
Servings: 1 entree-sized portion, 2 smaller sides

Ingredients
1 apple, diced (peeled if you like)
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup nuts, chopped (I had cashews, but any nuts will work)
2 large handfuls spinach (regular or baby; baby will cook faster)

Method
1. Coat a pan with olive oil and heat over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the apples to the pan. Stir occasionally and cook until the apples are slightly browned, about 3-5 minutes.

2. Add the raisins to the pan, stirring frequently for about 30 seconds.

3. Add the nuts to the pan, stirring frequently for another 30 seconds.

4. Fold the spinach into the mixture, stirring so that the apple, raisins, and nuts are not all at the bottom of the pan. Cook until the spinach is wilted. If you use regular spinach instead of baby spinach, you might want to cover the pan so that it steams a bit.

Serve alongside meat, fish, eggs, or a grilled cheese sandwich!

Meat-stuffed eggplant

I love cookbooks. There are so many great recipes online now that I find it hard to justify buying them, yet I most of the books I own are cookbooks. I've read about the wonders of Jerusalem: A Cookbook on 101 Cookbooks and Smitten Kitchen. When I found this recipe for lamb-stuffed eggplant on Serious Eats, I unearthed a tube of ground lamb from my freezer so that I could try it out for myself.

Roasting the eggplant transforms an everyday vegetable into velvet decadence. And then you stuff it with lamb! I worked on this as a nighttime kitchen project, what I do after I eat dinner when I have a recipe that is too time consuming for a weeknight.

One tip: Thoroughly read a recipe before trying to make it for the first time. Sometimes this process goes awry when I try to cook things at 10pm. I definitely screwed up the sauce (no water! oops!), so I'll omit it here since I thought the eggplant came out quite nicely in spite of this misstep. But following the original recipe would probably be even more luxurious.

If you don't have lamb around, any ground meat could be worked into this recipe, though the mixture may require additional seasoning since lamb has a pretty strong and distinct flavor. Maybe even seitan? I don't really know how that stuff works, but go for it!

Meat-stuffed eggplant
Adapted from Jerusalem: A Cookbook, via Serious Eats

Time: ~2 hours
Servings: 8 small, 4 large

Ingredients
4 eggplants, sliced lengthwise into 8 halves
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 heaping teaspoon smoked paprika
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
2 onions, diced
1 pound ground lamb (or another ground meat)
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1/2 cup cashews, chopped (the recipe calls for pine nuts, so chop to about that size)
Large handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Small handful of mint, chopped
2 big sprigs of rosemary, chopped
4 sprigs of thyme (remove leaves from stems)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. In a large roasting pan, lay your eggplant halves cut-side facing up. Drizzle the eggplant with olive oil and gently rub into the flesh (or you use a brush, but why wash another thing?). Season with salt and pepper and roast for about 20 minutes. Your eggplant will be golden brown and velvety. 

3. Turn the oven temperature down to 375 degrees when you take out the eggplant. Make a dent in each eggplant half with the back of the spoon -- this will create a cavity for the meat.

4. Meanwhile, get started on the stuffing. In a small bowl, put together a spice mix: cumin, paprika, and cinnamon.

5. Coat a pan with olive oil and bring up to medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the spice mix to the pan. Stir frequently and cook for about 8 minutes.

6. Add the lamb, herbs, and nuts to the pan, along with 1 teaspoon of salt and a few shakes of pepper. Stir often and cook for about 8 minutes until the meat is cooked. The paprika makes it a bit hard to tell when the pink is gone, but the meat will continue cooking in the oven so don't worry too much.

7. Spoon the stuffing into the eggplant halves. Cover your roasting pan tightly with tin foil (be careful -- your pan might still be hot). Return to the oven and roast for 90 minutes.

Just give it a go

My friend and colleague Casey introduced me to an interesting blog recently: Rohan Anderson's Whole Larder Love. This blog, and now a book by the same name, chronicles Rohan's journey to unplug from Australia's industrial food system (which sounds a lot like the current state of affairs here in the U.S.) and reconnect with sustainable, local food networks. He hunts, forages, grows his own food, cures his own meat, and trades his skills and wares with other local food producers.

Rohan is currently touring America to share his book and thoughts on food and life, and Casey and I had the chance to check out his book talk/rabbit-butchering demonstration at Longman & Eagle. It was a beautifully clear day, warm but not hot, the perfect atmosphere to sit outside, talk about food, and think big thoughts about life. And watch an Australian man cut up a rabbit. This event was not for the faint of heart.


Not only was this event free, but they also brought us some delicious rhubarb gin punch and shared a taste of freshly butchered rabbit. As Rohan promised, it does taste like chicken. So of course I bought the book. It has that new book smell. Thick, substantial pages. It feels hefty, in its physicality as well as its ideas. Pages full of color, in its beautiful images as well as Rohan's humorous prose. Bullets next to produce, a stark reminder that eating meat requires taking a life. 

Could I kill an animal myself? I think this is an important question for every meat eater to consider. Could I hold an animal, feel its heart beat, and take its life? I'm not sure that I could. I've been fishing before, and I've cooked whole fish so I can certainly look into a fish's eyes and then eat it. But a pig or a cow? Maybe I could do it, but I can't say for sure.

"Just give it a go" is a phrase Rohan used frequently during his talk, one of his guiding principles. If you have an idea, try it. Put two flavors together and see how they taste. Plant some seeds and see if anything grows. Experiment. Take small steps. What's the worst that can happen? Starting is the hardest part; once you've crossed that hurdle the rest sometimes just falls into place. 

No one is perfect, but if we all tried to do just a little better, maybe we could effect some positive changes in the world. I'm trying to do that by buying meat from a local farm and writing about my experience. I could do more. Drive less, bike more, buy better produce, garden, compost, be more discerning about what I eat outside of my own kitchen. The list of things I to work on seems endless. I don't have any land; I've tried growing herbs in my apartment but with little success. I have no idea where I could go hunting or fishing nearby. And sometimes I really just want to eat a hot dog. But I have a freezer and internet access, so I can do this. We can all do something. Just give it a go!

Lamb brat frittata

I love eggs. I love how quickly they cook up when I arrive at home in darkness, hungry for the quickest meal I can scrape together. I saw this frittata recipe on my gym's website and I quickly thought about the contents of my freezer - lamb brats. Perfect. 

Frittatas are a great way to use up leftovers, so once you have the basic framework down you can work in anything you like or need to use up, and in roughly 15 minutes dinner is ready.

I had four brats, and needed two for the frittata. I also recalled a recipe from a Whole Foods e-newsletter (another nice recipe source) for a sausage salad and figured out a use for the other two.

I cooked the sausages in the oven - 350 degrees on a wire rack for about 30 minutes. But I wasn't convinced that they were cooked through, so I sliced up the sausage for my dinner salad that night and finished it in a hot pan. I tossed the cooked sausage with some arugula, leftover roasted asparagus, bell pepper, avocado, and herbs in a vinaigrette.

Meanwhile, I roasted some squash. Cut in half lengthwise, flesh-side down on a roasting pan, 400 degrees, 45 minutes. These were plenty done. I let them cool, and stored the squash and sausage in the fridge for the next day, the main event, the frittata. I only ended up using part of the squash for the frittata, so I kept some for a sausage and squash lunch salad.

Lamb sausage and squash frittata

Servings: About 4
Time: 15 minutes (not counting the time to precook the sausage/squash)

Ingredients
1 onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
2 lamb sausages, diced
3/4 of a roasted butternut squash, peeled and diced
4 eggs
A few sprigs of mint, parsley, thyme, and rosemary, chopped

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

2. Chop the onion and red pepper. Heat an oven-proof skillet over medium heat and coat the bottom with olive oil. Saute the onions and pepper until tender, 3-5 minutes.

3. Chop the sausage and squash into even, bite-sized pieces. Add to the pan and cook until heated through.

4. Beat the eggs, add a dash of salt and pepper, and mix in the herbs. Pour the eggs into the pan over the meat and vegetables and rotate the pan until the egg mixture is evenly distributed. Cook until the edges of eggs are set, about 3 minutes.

5. Carefully transfer the skillet to a hot oven. It's probably a good idea to put the skillet on a baking sheet to keep it from spilling into your oven. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the eggs are puffed up and look/feel done (they should be the consistency of an omelet).

6. Cut into slices and serve. This frittata was fairly thin, so I served two pie-sized slices stacked on top of each other (a short stack of frittata) and topped with arugula.

Sunday dinner #1: Pork chops

Recently I won a large amount of high quality pork. Windfall meat. I spent $15 on a raffle ticket, and came home with 4 exciting cuts of heritage-breed pork. Pork chops, a loin, a picnic roast, and neck bones. 

Where to begin? Who to begin with? So many choices. I want to find the optimal use for each cut, and for pork chops I think I have a pretty good idea already. I made some great pork chops when my dad came to visit in April, so I invited my friend Samantha over for another round. 

Samantha is my officemate, my close friend and confidant, and one of my favorite people to eat with. We both have September birthdays, and a few years ago we celebrated together with a meal at the Publican, my first there. Three years later I still remember what we ate. Pork rinds, mussels, rabbit cassoulet, and pork belly. Oh what a pork belly (more on that in an upcoming post!). We must have had dessert - what kind of birthday dinner would not include dessert - but nothing is springing to mind at the moment.

I could probably write an entire blog just about great meals that Samantha and I have shared together. Here is just one. The recipe for the chops is simple and remains unchanged from my previous post. Instead of brussel sprouts, I served these pork chops with similarly prepared roasted broccoli. After the chops are done in the oven, turn up the heat to 400 degrees and get the broccoli started while the chops are searing and then resting.

Pan-seared pork chops
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated

Time: About 2 hours
Servings: 2

Ingredients
2 pork chops, at least 1 inch thick
Salt
Fat

Method
1. Pat the chops dry and salt on both sides, let stand for about 45 minutes. 

2. Cook the chops in a 275 degree oven for about 40 minutes. 

3. Sear in hot fat on each side for 2-3 minutes, rotating midway through to redistribute the fat. 

4. Let rest for at least 10 minutes before digging in.

Roasted broccoli
Loosely adapted from Epicurious

Time: About 20 minutes
Servings: 2-3 (I think I had some leftover, but not much)

Ingredients
2 things of broccoli (what is a unit of broccoli? a head?)
2 slices bacon, chopped
1 small onion
1/2 cup beer or broth (I used beer)
A large handful of golden raisins
1/4 scant cup apple cider vinegar

Method
1. Chop the broccoli. I like to cut off the florets and cut them into bite-sized pieces. I really like the stems of broccoli too (people often find this strange), so I also cut them into bite-sized pieces and mix them in with the florets. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper on a large roasting pan.

2. Roast the broccoli in a hot oven (about 400 degrees) until the stems are tender and the florets are a little crispy. Check their progress after about 8 minutes and shake them around in the pan before returning to the oven for another 8 minutes or so. I don't time this strictly; cook it until you like its taste and texture.

3. While the broccoli is roasting, heat a heavy pan or skillet over medium heat. Fry the bacon until it crisps, leaving the fat in the pan. Remove the crispy bacon and save in whatever dish you'll be using to serve the broccoli.

4. Add the onions to the pan and cook until soft and slightly browned (3-5 minutes). Keep the onions moving; as you stir scrape up any browned bits from the bacon.

5. Reduce heat to low and add raisins. Cook briefly and add the beer and vinegar. Bring to a simmer and cook down until the mixture resembles a sauce. 

6. Toss the roasted broccoli, bacon, and beer/vinegar sauce in a serving dish and serve alongside the pork chops.

Blue(s) pig and fig

I love Chicago in the summertime. The weather here can be a bit, well, difficult, so I rarely mark the start of the summer by the first 90 degree day or the first brat off the grill. Summer starts at the Chicago Blues Festival, and even though I wore a sweater and a jacket and was still cold, summer began last night.

On my way to the festival, I stopped by Pastoral to pick up a sandwich, to be eaten picnic-style as I enjoyed the sweet sounds of the blues. I selected my favorite, the Blue Pig 'n' Fig. I must have had blues on the brain; it didn't occur to me that I had created a pun in sandwich form until taking my first bite - Serrano ham, Aderkase Reserve blue cheese, fig and black tea preserves, dijon mustard, greens. Bold flavors, great music.

Today I participated an entirely different kind of summer kickoff, Murph Day at Windy City Crossfit. I signed up with some friends/colleagues/fellow crossfitters, primarily because of the promised pig roast at the finish line. 1 mile run, 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, 1 mile run. 66 brutal minutes, but it's hard to complain on a day like today. Blue skies, sunshine, Pimm's cup, pork. Perhaps Murph Day, like the blues festival, will become part of my weekend tribute to the start of summer. 

Sweet home Chicago.

Thanks Mom!

My mother reads my blog. I am certain of this because she sent me a meat thermometer, after reading in a recent post that I did not have one. 

My mom likes to send me funny packages to my office. The best was probably a flat-rate box filled with little baggies of spices and salt after a productive trip to this spice store near Cleveland. 5 different kinds of salt. I'm still not sure what to do with all of them.

Now that there is a Trader Joe's near my parents' house, I get more funny packages. Smoked paprika, which I love and already used a lot and now I use it even more. A pink Himalayan salt grinder. More fancy salt!

How do I cook turkey drumsticks?

[May 5, 2013]

I have no idea what to do with these things. They are huge. Turkeys are huge. At Thanksgiving, the drumstick is my favorite -- I love dark meat. But what to do with the drumstick alone? No clue. Internet, I need help!

A quick search revealed that are lots of ideas out there for cooking turkey drumsticks separate from the rest of the turkey. This Ron Swanson-inspired dish seemed quite intriguing, but I am already planning on wrapping some other meat in bacon soon so I'll save this one for another time. Instead, I settled on an osso buco-style braise from Emeril.

I've always had a soft spot for Emeril. My mom and I started watching his show The Essence of Emeril when we first discovered the Food Network in the mid-90s. My dad was traveling a lot for work, and Emeril reminded us of him a lot. He looked like my dad, he sounded like my dad, he had a big personality like my dad. Unlike my dad, he knew how to cook. With every "bam!" we felt a moment of relief from the sadness of only spending every other weekend with my father and his mega-watt personality.

When I saw this recipe, I welcomed Emeril into my home once again to slow cook some turkey legs. Turkey doesn't provide the same unctious tone as veal shanks, but I think this recipe turned out well. I have another set of drumsticks from Share #2, and therefore another chance to find the optimal cooking method for turkey drumsticks. I served the turkey over mashed sweet potatoes, though the recipe's suggestion of polenta (or anything else that can soak up sauce) would be good too.

Turkey Drumstick Osso Buco
Adapted from Emeril

Time: ~3.5 hours
Servings: 4

Ingredients
1/3 cup dried porcini mushrooms
1 cup red wine (I used one of my favorite red blends from Trader Joe's)
2 turkey drumsticks
1 handful of flour (I used all-purpose, whatever you have is probably fine)
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs fresh thyme
Olive oil, salt, pepper

Method
1. Combine the mushrooms and red wine in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Steep for 5 minutes, then strain the mixture. Save the wine for later; roughly chop the mushrooms and set aside.

2. Pat the drumsticks dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper. Coat with flour.

3. Coat a the bottom of a dutch oven (or the deepest pan you have) with olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, brown the drumsticks, about 8 minutes per side. Carefully remove the turkey from the pan and set aside; I like to use the lid of my dutch oven but a plate works fine.

4. Replenish the pan with more oil, enough to coat the bottom. When the oil is hot, add the onions, carrots, celery, and tomato paste. Scrape up any browned bits left over from browning the turkey. Stir often and cook until vegetables are slightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir the garlic into the pan and cook briefly, for about 30 seconds.

5. Add the red wine to the pan, scraping up any new browned bits. When the wine is reduced to about half its volume, add the mushrooms. Continue to reduce until the wine is almost evaporated, then add stock, bay leaves, and thyme to the pan.

6. Bring stock to a boil and carefully place the drumsticks back into the pan. When the stock comes back up to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer and cover. The drumsticks should cook for about 2.5 hours until you can easily shred the meat with a fork. Turn the drumsticks halfway through cooking so that the meat is cooked on both sides.