Pork & Bok Choy Stir Fry

Here's something I put together that came out surprisingly well for a first go.  I bought a couple of pork loin chops, sliced them into strips, and marinated them for about four hours in a mixture of about a quarter cup of rice vinegar, a few tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, a few tablespoons of soy sauce, and a tablespoon each of brown sugar and roasted red Thai chili paste.  Then I took a couple of stalks of celery and a large onion and chopped them.  Next I cut two heads of bok choy into small pieces.  I got a tablespoon or two of toasted sesame oil hot in the wok and slightly browned the pork, then set it aside.  I added the onions and celery and sauteed them for a minute or two.  Next I added the bok choy and continued sauteing until it shrunk down.  Then I added the marinade plus a sauce made of about a half-cup of vegetable stock, a little fish sauce, and another tablespoon of the chili paste.  I then brought the sauce to a boil  (this is important since the marinade had the raw pork in it), then lowered the heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally in order to ensure even cooking.  After a few minutes I returned the pork to the wok and continued cooking until the bok choy was tender.

Carrots & Fennel

Here's a dish that I came up with recently that has three of my favorite attributes: is easy, healthy, and delicious.  The bitter earthiness of the celery is the perfect antidote to the aromatic sweetness of the fennel, while the carrots and onions round out the flavor.

Cube 2 - 3 large carrots and one large fennel root.  Dice half of a large onion and chop one or two celery stalks.  Heat about a tablespoon of oil or butter and sauté them over medium heat until the celery starts to get a bit brighter green.  Salt with a couple of pinches of kosher salt (I'm sure regular salt works too, just not sure how much to use) and continue sautéing until some of the liquid starts to come out of the vegetables.  Add about a quarter of a cup of white cooking wine.  Turn down to low and cover, simmering until the carrots are just soft to a prick with a fork.  Remove from heat and serve.

Potatoes: What are they good for?

Of course they're great for a lot of things, like providing the prime example of a Giffen good in Hal Varian's microeconomics text.  But this being the Hop and Hearth, after all, I'm going to talk about eating them.  The reason that I even ask the question is that Nina and I don't eat very many potatoes.  We tend to favor quinoa, or rice, or quinoa pasta for our dinner carbs.  Anyway, I bought a bag of mixed potatoes yesterday because Nina recently got into breakfast (I'm talking full-on American breakfast).  Yesterday I shredded a handful of potatoes and blanched them.  Then this morning I sauteed some onions in oil and added the shredded blanched potatoes (and a decent amount of salt).  I cooked them on pretty low heat in the pan--mixing them up occasionally--until they were pretty well browned all over.  Not too bad.

Come dinner time I still had a bunch of 'taters.  I decided to make an American potato salad (as opposed to German or Serbian potato salad).  I boiled the potatoes in salty water until they were just soft enough to get a fork into.  (I have learned that the #1 potato salad FAIL is to overcook the potatoes.)  I immediately removed them from the heat, drained them, ran cold water over them, and refrigerated them.  In the meantime I chopped some onions and celery and sauteed them in oil, salting them once they just started to get translucent.  I was careful not to over-do it, and soon removed them from the heat and refrigerated them as well.  I also hard-boiled two eggs and refrigerated them when they were done.  Shortly before serving time I took all out and mixed in a bowl with a healthy dollop of mayonnaise along with salt and pepper to taste.

It was one of the best potato salads I've made, and I think the reasons were:

• Plenty of salt in the water when I boiled the potatoes
• Didn't overcook the potatoes (as I said, this is critical)
• Use a lot of celery and onions: by volume there was almost as much of them as potatoes

Overall I was very pleased with the results, and definitely would make this again.

French Twist

We've been working on a good steak condiment for a while, and I think that last night we nailed it.

Three medium onions
1/3 cup Marsala cooking wine
2/3 cup chicken stock
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt

Slice the onions into thin ribbons and sauté them in the oil. As they start to become translucent add the salt and stir. Continue to sauté the until they are thoroughly carmelized. Grab a spoonful of onions and throw them into a reducing pan. When the pan gets hot add the wine and stock and reduce completely. Stir the reduction into the onions and keep the mixture warm to serve over the steak when done.

Roasted Garlic Potatoes and Rosemary Green Beans
To round out our steak dinner we chose two classically French sides for steak, but gave them a bit of a twist. First we minced garlic and rosemary and separately warmed them in olive oil to infuse it with their respective flavors. We cut the potatoes into small pieces and tossed them in the oil, added salt and then roasted them in the oven at 400 degrees for about forty minutes. The green beans we kept whole and steamed until tender, then tossed them in the oil and added salt to taste.

Yum!

Onion as Vegetable and a Tasty Vegetable Medley (with Onions)

I can't remember where I had it first or what it's called, but I'm under the impression that there are some Indian dishes where onions are one of the main ingredients. I used this as the inspiration for what I'll call "Curried Fish."

Curried Fish
1/2 - 3/4 lb. tilapia filets
3 yellow onions
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp Morton & Bassett curry powder
1 tsp salt

Slice the onions into thin ribbons and cut the tilapia into cubes about a 1/2 inch on each side. Saute the onions in the oil until they begin to turn translucent. Salt them to draw the water out and saute a minute or two more. Add the curry powder and continue to saute until most of the onions are thoroughly translucent. Add the chicken stock and fish. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally until the fish just begins to break apart. Serve over rice or quinoa.

Vegetable Medley

In the past couple of months Nina and I have tried simmering every imaginable vegetable in cooking wine and stock (depending on how much water the vegetables themselves contain). We've created some seriously delicious combinations this way and I'm only blogging about this one because I made it with the fish and wanted to blog about that. That said, one of the really great features of this method is that the flavor of the veg itself really gets to shine, and this particular mix of veg goes great together.

2 medium zucchinis
2 yellow or orange bell peppers
1 yellow onion
6 - 8 button mushrooms
4 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup chicken stock
1/8 cup white cooking wine
Salt to taste

Cut the veggies into pieces of approximately the same size (I used 1/4 inch slices of the zucchini as a guide). Mince the garlic and saute it in the oil until it starts to mellow. Before the garlic starts to brown, add all the veg except the mushrooms. Continue to saute until the onions start to turn translucent. Add the mushrooms and shortly thereafter the wine and then the chicken stock. Cover and simmer until zucchini starts to get soft (but be sure not to let it get mushy). Add salt to taste while it is simmering.

Voila!

Garlic and Parsley Trout

My brother prefers his protein in non-mammalian forms. That's fine with me, because I love to grill fish. When he came to visit yesterday he and I selected four whole trout. I stuffed them with a stuffing seasoned with garlic, parsley, and lemon. To prepare them for grilling I seasoned the skins with salt and pepper and coated them with oil. The grilling was indirect medium for about 20 minutes. The result was a soft, moist, aromatic meat and a crisp, flavorful skin.

4 whole trout
2 Tbsp minced garlic
4 Tbsp minced parsley
1/3 cup rice
8 thin slices of lemon
salt
pepper
oil

A Second Try

Since the stuffed chicken breast and endive salad that I made last weekend didn't quite come off as well as I liked, I decided to give it another shot last night.

For the stuffed chicken breast I went with basically the same composition of the stuffing, but toned down the basil bit. That's because rather than serve sun-dried tomato stuffing with tomato sauce I made fresh pesto for the pasta instead. I also added grated aged parmesan cheese to the stuffing, which succeeded in adding an additional earthy dimension to the flavor.

In the endive salad I dispensed with the radishes, substituted raisins for dates, and added parsley. The addition of the parsley was a mistake as combined with the endive the resulting flavor was too bitter. Still, it was a tasty fresh salad and worth continuing to refine.

Chicken Stuffing (Revised)
2 cups sundried tomato halves
1 jar seedless olives
3 cups white mushrooms
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
2 cups finely grated parmesan
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt
black pepper

Homemade Pesto
2 cups finely minced basil
1/3 cup finely minced garlic
3 Tbsp finely minced parsley
3 Tbsp finely chopped almonds
1/3 cup olive oil
salt
pepper

When I was making the pesto I minced too much garlic, parsley and almonds, so to avoid wasting them I invented what with a little work could become a great appetizer: garlic-almond-parsley balls! (GAP Balls?) Obviously need to work on the name...

Garlic Almond Parsley Balls
3 Tbsp finely minced garlic
3 Tbsp finely chopped almonds
3 Tbsp finely minced parsley
2 tsp xantham gum
1 tsp olive oil
water
1/2 tsp salt

Mix together the garlic, almonds, parsley, xantham gum, salt and oil. Slowly add water at a trickle until the mixture starts to thicken into a paste. Form the mixture into golf ball-sized balls. Fry in hot olive oil until evenly browned.