Lots of emotion went into this dish.

Anger (This weather is pissing me right off.)

Hope (Something comfort food-y would give The Finger to this snow!)

Dejection (But said snow has made it impossible to drive to the store.)

Acceptance (Maybe I’m stuck, but there must be odds and ends around here that’ll do.)

That’s really the four-stage story behind this cassoulet — the product of snow and laziness.

Looking around the general kitchen area, I spied with my little eye:
lamb shoulder cubes
1 beef shin bone
Rancho Gordo flageolet beans
World Spice Merchants‘ Herbes de Provence (with lavender)
…and enough tomatoes, onions, garlic and beef stock to fill in the blanks

And that was it. I called it cassoulet, though I make no claims to authenticity.

——————————

Hard to believe that in just a few months we’ll go from this…

to this…

Spring can’t get here fast enough. I’ll even leave behind my precious cassoulet for it.

recipe after the jump

Lamb Cassoulet

I looked around for recipes and apart from the super-authentic ones that pile on the meat, there didn’t seem to be much of a consensus, so I happily plowed ahead and surprised the heck out of myself. This was thoroughly incredible. It just shows the magic of a few good ingredients and a long, slow braise. So, you know, feel free to substitute at will and make your own cobbled-together cassoulet. I’ll bet you’ll be as happy as I was. By the way, I love layering flavors, so if I’d had a fennel bulb I surely would’ve thrown it in there to play off the Herbes de Provence and Herbsaint.

1 lb. flageolet beans (or substitute the traditional tarbais bean or more easily found great northern bean)
3 slices bacon, chopped
1 lb. lamb shoulder, cut into cubes
1 meaty beef shin bone
salt and pepper
2 medium onions, diced
1 large carrot, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
8 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste
1/4 cup Herbsaint, Pastis or other anise-flavored alcohol
1/2 large can whole tomatoes, plus the juice
2 tablespoons Herbes de Provence
1 quart stock or water (plus a little extra)
bread crumbs (I made my own by toasting a few slices of Udi’s bread and whirring them in the food processor.)
olive oil

Rinse beans and pick through them, making sure to remove any small stones that may be mixed in. Place them in a large bowl cover with lots of water and soak overnight.

The next day, preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Drain beans in colander and set aside.

Season the lamb shoulder and shin bone well with salt and pepper. Heat a 5 1/2- or 6-quart heavy pot over medium heat. [Enameled cast iron is perfect for this.] Add chopped bacon and cook until much of the fat has rendered. Remove bacon from pot with slotted spoon and add a little oil to the pot if the bottom looks a little dry.

Brown lamb and shin bone in batches, making sure not to crowd the pan. Set browned meat aside on a plate. Add onion, carrot and celery to pot, stirring until vegetables begin to soften, then mix in garlic and anchovy paste, cooking until fragrant. Deglaze with Herbsaint and cook until there’s no more liquid in the bottom of the pot. Add beans, tomatoes and herbs, stirring to distribute, then add stock or water to cover by about 3 inches.

Bring liquid to a boil, then cover pot with a layer foil before covering tightly with lid. Place in oven and braise for 7-8 hours, checking level of liquid every 3 hours or so to make sure things aren’t getting too dry in there. When beans are creamy and have absorbed much of the liquid, they’re done. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.

You can continue from there, but this is even better if you cool it to room temperature and set it in the fridge overnight. When you’re ready to serve, toss breadcrumbs with a little olive oil to moisten, spread over cassoulet (I do this in small portions instead of to the whole pot at once), and bake in a 350 degree oven until browned and crunchy.

< cue swelling strings > OK, it’s not really special at all — just a garden-variety post — but if you’ve been here before, you’ll know I only update once a week at most. This is me trying to be better about that sort of thing.

Another change for the better? Instead of my annual satisfying-yet-ineffective tactic of resisting the return to fall, I’m embracing it with open arms this year. No, seriously: I didn’t whine even a little bit about the annual closet switchout, dutifully donned a hat and jacket when morning temperatures and the Hudson Hawk made my walk too brisk for bareness and have sucked it up about not seeing my house in daylight during the week. Just trying to Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive here, and the easiest way I know to do that is through cooking, focusing on seasonal goodness.

Gil can attest to my current pumpkin/winter squash obsession. (We’ll be attending castings for Jersey Shore if I don’t cut it out. Coming soon to a boardwalk near you: Amy “The Back End” and Gil “The Incident” Roth.) I’ve been roasting pumpkin like crazy for custards, puddings and mashes, but my favorite use so far has been for soup. What you see in the picture above isn’t revolutionary and won’t set the world on fire, but it’s thoroughly delicious and feels rich and indulgent even though it’s (gasp) vegan. It’s a lush pumpkin soup flavored with roasted garlic, coconut milk and Singapore curry — a lovely, light spice blend that doesn’t overwhelm any other components of the dish.

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I jumped feet-first into serious cold-weather cooking last weekend to satisfy a craving for chickpea soup (pasta e ceci, minus the pasta this time around). To make it gluten-free, I substituted ribbons of rainbow chard for the pasta, adding them to the soup just before serving so they wilted just enough to turn silky but still provided some texture with each bite. It’s a different animal than the original, to be sure, but the chard really added a nice dimension to the soup and I figure extra servings of greens are always a good thing.

When I was doing my grad school stint in St. Louis, one of the guys in my program announced to the office, “I can always tell who the Southerners are when it gets cold. You people bitch all winter long.” So yeah, I’m sure I’ll change my tune once we get deeper into the season, but for now, I’m happy enough not to fight Mother Nature. Wow, can roasted root vegetables be far behind?

recipes after the jump

Curried Pumpkin Soup

This is really just a base with which to play. Try any winter squash, or even already-cooked carrots or sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin. Make it a more savory, Moroccan-inspired dish by swapping in tomatoes, warm spices, preserved lemon and harissa for the coconut and curry. Maybe try some whole chickpeas tossed in at the end. Play, and enjoy.

1 medium sweet/sugar pumpkin
1 head garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil or melted butter
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 – 1 tablespoon mild curry powder (to taste)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 sage leaf, chopped (optional)
1 can coconut milk (I prefer full-fat, but feel free to swap in a lite version)
1/2 teaspoon salt
water to cover

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut pumpkin in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds and membranes with a spoon. Place pumpkin cut side up on a baking sheet and brush the cut halves with 1/2 tablespoon oil or melted butter. Slice off the top part of the garlic head, place on a square of aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil and salt and wrap tightly. Place on baking sheet with the pumpkin. Roast both for an hour or until a knife can be inserted into the thickest part of the pumpkin with no resistance.

Carefully unwrap garlic and set aside until cool enough to handle, then squeeze cloves from the skins and reserve. Scoop out pumpkin flesh and discard skins.

Heat remaining olive oil or butter in heavy pot over medium heat. When hot, sautée onion until translucent, then add curry powder and turmeric and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add pumpkin, garlic and remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Blend with immersion blender until creamy or, working in batches, use blender. Adjust seasoning and serve.

Chickpea Soup with Chard from Rachel Eats’ Pasta e Ceci

Like I said, I left out the pasta and added swiss chard, but I’m including the original recipe here because it’s perfection in a bowl. If you want to go gluten-free as well, just stop before you get to the stage where you add pasta to the soup.

serves 4

250g dried chickpeas soaked overnight and then simmered for 2 hours until tender or 450g tinned chickpeas
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
medium carrot peeled and finely diced
stick of celery finely diced
mild onion peeled and finely diced
2 tbsp tomato concentrate
small sprig of rosemary
500ml vegetable or chicken stock or water the chickpeas were cooked in with more plain water added to make up the 500ml if necessary.
optional -  500ml extra water or stock for if you cook the pasta in the soup.
Parmesan rind
salt and freshly ground black pepper
225g small dried tubular pasta
your nicest oil for on top

Prepare your soffrito of finely chopped onion, carrot and celery, sauteing them gently and slowly in the oil in a large heavy based pan until soft and floppy and translucent.

Then you add the tomato concentrate and a sprig of rosemary, stir, and then add 2/3 of your cooked chickpeas.

Stir again and then cover everything with stock or water, throw in a Parmesan rind. Bring the pan to a happy boil, reduce to a simmer and then leave the pan to bubble away gently for about 20 minutes.

Now remove the rind and rosemary and pass everything through the mouli or give it a blast with the hand blender to create a smooth gloopy soup.

Now you add the rest of the cooked chickpeas and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now the two choices:

1. you can either add some more water or stock to the soup, bring it to the boil and cook your pasta directly in the soup

or

2. you can cook your pasta separately in some fast boiling salted water and then add it to the soup, then let things rest for about 5 minutes so the flavors mingle. Serve dribbled with more extra virgin olive oil and some freshly grated Parmesan..

Nicoise Salad from A Twist of the Wrist

Bad Ass Mocha Cream Cake from The Crazy Kitchen

Sometimes it’s a good idea to revisit old favorites. I’ve been really blah with overtones of meh lately about pretty much everything including preparing meals. Like Milli Vanilli, I’ll blame it on the rain, but that doesn’t make the prospect of cooking any more exciting. So what’s a girl to do when her hair is permanently frizzy, she hasn’t seen the sun in days and can’t be bothered to update her cooking blog? Declare a Redo Weekend!

The day started with an update to the cornmeal blueberry pancakes I first tried last summer. With so many gorgeous berries at the market right now, it seemed a shame to limit the pancakes to blueberries, so I halved the batch and did a strawberry version as well. Couldn’t decide which I liked more, so I just alternated them on the plate and doused the stack with maple syrup.

Cut to two hours later.

After waking from my sugar coma, I got to work on another old favorite: tongue tacos and refried beans. Mmmmm-hmmmm. I’d picked up a three-pound behemoth at the Snoep Winkle Farm booth a week earlier and it had been weighing heavily on my mind. I tweaked the old recipe pretty heavily, doubling the beer in the braising liquid and adding hefty amounts of toasted cumin and coriander seeds.

After braising, I set the tongue aside to cool. Then came the peeling, which didn’t skeeve me out nearly as much this time around.

It still wasn’t pleasant, mind you, but my toes didn’t curl at all. PROGRESS!

While my hands were still covered in tongue juices (am I not the most enchanting creature ever?), I shredded the meat before cooking it down a second time with onions, additional spices and even more beer.

The tongue tasted heavily of beef as you’d expect, but turned silky and tender in a way no other cut can. We had the tacos with and without salsa because, again, it was too hard to decide which way was better.

No picture of the refried beans because I’m just not that good of a photographer, but they were creamy and delicious. I used borlotti beans (an odd choice, I’ll admit) from Rancho Gordo cooked in the usual way — onions, garlic, cumin, beer, beef broth, salt & pepper — until they were soft, then fried them with some bacon fat and onion, mashing them down as they simmered. It might be too soon for another Redo Weekend, but I’m really tempted to do this again for the 4th.

Inspiration has been peeking around the corners for me this week, so I hope to have something new for you soon. But in the meantime, enjoy the weekend and try a redo if you need to.

The situation is especially infuriating because this same dog (a husky) broke through his electric fence and attacked another dog just two weeks ago and it seems the owners didn’t do enough to make sure it couldn’t happen again. So our boy has a big chunk of his haunch missing and needs one surgery today to install a rubber drain and another in a month or so to remove the drain and close the wound. (Ru’s vet took plenty of pictures of the wounds and his office notified the police department, so thank goodness that was taken care of before I even got there.)

So I rushed home from work and got to the animal hospital in time to see him before they closed for the evening.

He was even more pitiful than this when I first saw him, but at least his bed made him comfortable.

There was some panting, but he was loopy from the pain meds, so he wasn’t in a bad mood at all. I think he enjoyed the dirty t-shirt I brought for him, too.

But even getting his favorite new toy (John Calamari or Squid Vicious, depending on which one of us you ask) didn’t stop him from accusing me with his eyes when I was ready to go.

a week’s wrap-up after the jump

Since I won’t be writing a proper post, here are a few pictures of our Toronto trip with a bit of commentary for you. (As always, click on any picture to go to the full flickr set.)

Yoshiro Tatsumi, one of the guests at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which provided our excuse for visiting the city again.

And hey, there’s Seth! I’m stupid and didn’t think to take a picture of Chester Brown, so you’ll just have to visit Gil’s flickr set to see him in all his glory.

As if daily visits to Tim’s and Lai Wah Heen weren’t enough, we got to enjoy Porter Airlines, the only way to fly. The designer in me loved everything about it, from the flight attendants’ perky hats to the in-flight magazine. The lunch they served (on a one-hour flight) wasn’t bad, either.

We also visited family. Yay, family! Here you see the Levins. Hi, Levins.

And I actually have been cooking, just a little bit:

Huevos rancheros with extremely spicy black beans, which rendered our jalapeno salsa completely unnecessary.

Mushroom tart, adapted from Martha Stewart with the additions of thyme and sherry vinegar, and substituting aged gruyere for the goat cheese. Because, as much as I like goat cheese, I’m just kind of over it at the moment.

And because Andrew (three photos up, on the right) thinks I have some sort of reputation for only enjoying special meals (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA), I wanted to include something that’s just as representative of the way we eat around here. Behold – chickpea salad! No out-of-the-ordinary ingredients, just chickpeas, lemon zest & juice, olive oil, shallot, tomato, and salt & pepper. And probably red pepper flakes, if I know myself at all. Nom.

I’ve been in love with Korean cooking for years, ever since I dated a Korean cowboy-type from Tulsa during my days of indentured servitude in grad school. He came from a family of amazing cooks and it really showed. Being me, I learned everything I could from him and then some, with the help of a basic, but now out-of-print cookbook.

The dishes that probably spring to mind when you think of Korean food are kimchi, savory-sweet bulgogi or my entry in the grilled-meats-that-can-make-you-weep contest galbee, but my favorite has always been yuk gae jang. It’s a beef soup so spicy with hot pepper paste it’ll turn your tongue inside-out. And I’m a fire eater, so you know, be careful if you order this in a restaurant.

Traditional versions of this soup still crop up in my kitchen from time to time, but over the years I’ve bastardized the recipe to make it more veg friendly. It’s meat-free, not vegetarian, but it’d be easy enough to substitute a mushroomy vegetable broth if you want to avoid animal products entirely.

Can you handle the heat?

I tweaked the basic recipe I last posted by making the stock with roasted meaty marrow bones to deepen the beef flavor. To increase the umami even more, I sautéed porcini mushrooms until they’d caramelized, then added them to the pot along with thinly sliced portobellos. It was just what I wanted that evening to warm my bones after the long greyhound hike, but was even better two days later when I stirred a couple of beaten eggs into the leftovers as they were reheating.

*  *  *

But I’m always on the lookout for something new, as my overfilled bookmarks folder and Google docs will confirm. One of the more recent entries was a truly vegetarian option from 101 Cookbooks, Giant Chipotle White Beans. It was a last-minute decision, so I didn’t have time to soak any of my Rancho Gordo selections; instead, I cracked open the two cans of beans we had in the pantry — cannellinis and garbanzos. It wasn’t as weird as you’d think when all was said and done, but I’d probably stick to just cannellinis in the future.

But I’m here to testify about the sauce, which was the star of the show — beautifully balanced, smoky and deceptively rich, and dead simple to make. (I doubled the sauce recipe so I could use the other half on pizza later in the week and think that was one of my better food decisions in a while. Truly spectacular.) The beans were topped with some Bulgarian feta I’ve had marinating downstairs for a couple of months, and even with the canned bean melange, the dish was a home run. We nearly ate it all in one sitting, but just managed to save enough for me to bring to work as leftovers. Yes, leftovers. Holy schmoley, this was good stuff.

*  *  *

Real Kitchens 101: Your weekend lagniappe.

Carefully sorting through the beans, I searched for rocks and discarded the misshapen beans, then chopped the other ingredients according to my all-time favorite recipe from The Prudhomme Family Cookbook.

The greens are more intuitive. I never make them the same way twice, but they always start with stemming, chopping and a vigorous washing before I even think of cooking them.

This time around, I chopped the 1/4 pound of tasso leftover from the beans and halved a small piece of salt pork, then covered the meat with water in a large pot. I brought it to a boil, then lowered the heat to simmer for about 30 minutes to create a flavorful cooking liquid for the greens. At that point, I added some chopped onions, cayenne pepper, a little bit of salt and the greens. They simmered for about 20 minutes, though you can certainly cook them longer; I just prefer greens when they have a little bit of bite to them.

I cooked the beans at a lower temperature than usual, so they were more of a soup than side dish, but still just as delicious as I remember from last year. The greens held their own when topped with cider vinegar, so I thought an extra helping couldn’t hurt, especially in these tough economic times. Call it an edible insurance policy.

Thank you for visiting last year, keeping up with my infrequent food and Rufus postings. I’ve loved hearing from everyone and wish y’all a happy and safe 2009, filled with friends and food and many, many naps.

recipe after the jump

The Prudhomme Family’s Black-Eyed Peas

serves 8

1 lb. dried black eyed peas, rinsed
2 quarts plus 1 1/2 cups chicken or pork stock
1/2 lb. slab bacon, diced
1/4 lb. tasso (or 2 smoked ham hocks)
1 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
black and cayenne pepper to taste

Put all ingredients except salt and pepper into a large, heavy pot. Bring to a boil over high heat, place lid on pot and continue boiling, stirring occasionally, for five minutes. Lower heat and simmer with lid askew for 1 hour, stirring occasionally and more often toward end of cooking time to keep beans from sticking.*

Add salt and pepper and continue simmering beans for another 30 minutes with lid askew, stirring often. Remove lid and cook for 10 minutes, or until beans are creamy.

* If beans do stick, don’t stir them. Just transfer them to another pot to continue cooking, leaving the burnt bits in the old pot.

I don’t think I’m being especially controversial by saying our food preferences are largely culturally-influenced. My dad traveled to China on business quite a bit during his career, and came back with stories of food that often sounded delicious, but also occasionally made my toes curl. Being raised on alligator (usually dry, stringy and flavorless), frog legs (pretty darned good, if a little tough), and boudin (head cheese and rice stuffed into a sausage casing, and slap-yo-mama-good), I’ve had my share of strange looks when talking about meals that aren’t so popular outside of Louisiana. Yet the very same people who introduced me to those foods somehow make the poo-face at tongue, a meat popular at both hole-in-the-wall taquerias and Jewish delis in this part of the country.

Boggles the mind.

OK, maybe not so mind-boggling when I put it that way. Check out the underside.

But the gross-out factor aside, tongue is damned good eating — rich, moist, tender, and so, so flavorful. I realize I tend to wax rhapsodic about certain things, but I fell in love with this cut of meat probably 20 years ago and that’s a long time to go without shouting it from the mountaintop. Those were the years before Food Network, so I was still in my PBS cooking show phase; one of the many programs in the rotation was The Frugal Gourmet. Not my favorite by a long shot, I watched mostly to see how badly Jeff Smith would treat his poor assistant, Craig; I found it fascinating that someone so prickly could’ve been both a minister and a successful TV host. And it was on one of his shows that I was introduced to the wonders of the tongue taco. If you remember his enthusiastic proclamations at all, you’ll understand why I sought it out at the earliest opportunity — at Taqueria Corona in New Orleans. Those tacos never disappointed, and I even managed to turn on a few of my more adventurously-paletted friends to their charms.

But oddly enough, I’ve had trouble finding an equally good version here in New York (in Chelsea, specifically, since I don’t have much time for lunch). Sure, there’s a decent place across 6th Avenue, but the meat is too gamey for my taste. So when I saw tongue for sale at the Snoep Winkel Farm booth at the farmers’ market, I picked some up to try my hand at recreating the experience.

After exhaustively researching the topic, I decided on a simple approach — braising the tongue for four hours on the stove, cooling it overnight in its cooking liquid, then baking it in the oven for another hour the next day. That protracted cooking time is magical, so just step back and get ready for an experience you won’t forget.

To serve, I heated some corn tortillas in a cast iron skillet until they were lightly charred, then topped the tongue with a mixture of onion, cilantro, and lime juice, a sliver of avocado, shredded lettuce, and copious amounts of Cholula hot sauce. We had it for lunch and dinner yesterday, which should tell you how good it was.

And Santa Maria Pinquito beans were the perfect accompaniment, though I didn’t do anything special to them. After an overnight soak, I cooked them for a couple of hours with the usual cast of characters — beer, bay leaf, jalapenos, onions, garlic, and a smoked pork hock. At that point, I added cumin, paprika, chile powder, and salt and let everything simmer for another hour.

So if you’ve never tried tongue and don’t feel comfortable doing so, please give it a shot. For me? Pretty please? You won’t regret it.

recipe after the jump

Tongue Tacos

I have a few ideas for next time, mainly adding spices and pepper to the braising liquid and crisping the meat in the oven just before serving, but this is a good, basic recipe.

1 beef tongue, 2 1/2 to 5 lbs.
salt
a bottle of your favorite beer
1 bay leaf
1 onion, quartered
4 fat cloves of garlic, smashed
corn tortillas
shredded lettuce
1/2 small onion, finely diced
handful of cilantro chopped
2 limes
1 avocado, sliced

Scrub beef tongue with salt to get rid of any slime. (I didn’t have any problems with slime, but took this step as a precaution.) Rinse thoroughly under running water and place in a large pot with beer, bay leaf, onion, and garlic. Add water to cover and bring to a boil, then immediately lower heat, cover, and simmer for four hours.

Remove tongue from pot and allow to cool. Once cool enough to handle, remove the outer layer of skin. (It’ll peel right off, but might give you the heebie-jeebies. Just a warning.) Place in a covered container with about 1 cup of the cooking liquid and refrigerate overnight.

The following day, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place tongue and cooking liquid in a baking dish, cover with foil, and bake for one hour.

Remove from dish and set aside until just cool enough to handle. At this point, shred, dice, or thinly slice the tongue and place in warm oven until ready to serve.

Combine diced onion, chopped cilantro and juice of 1/2 lime in a bowl with salt and pepper to taste. Heat tortillas in a screaming hot cast iron pan, assemble tacos as desired, and dig in.

Last weekend’s kitchen adventures were spent in the service of Cinco de Mayo with a chicken and hominy soup and a recipe for beans that took the better part of a day to make, but were worth every last stinkin’ second.

But by the time the fifth rolled around, I just couldn’t bring myself to post anything about it.

What’s that word again? Oh yeah, Procrastination.

Which brings us to today.

The aforementioned soup.

Looking for a quick lunch to tide us over, I foraged in the freezer and came up with some chicken stock and shredded cooked chicken which turned into the underpinnings of a rich, smoky soup. I’m relying on my sometimes-faulty memory here, but I’m pretty sure I cooked some onions, garlic, and celery down in a little olive oil before adding the chicken, stock, and a can of plum tomatoes, which I broke up with the back of the spoon. I blended together a small can of chipotle chilis in adobo and added a hefty dose of that to the pot along with some hominy and chopped cilantro, gave it a good stir, and let it simmer for about an hour. It’s entirely possible I added cumin and oregano as well, but I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law.

Served with lime wedges, it really took the edge off our hunger, but didn’t fill us up too much before our mega-mega bean-filled dinner.

Not anasazi beans. But I caught them just as the mothership was approaching and thought it was too important not to document.

The centerpiece of our dinner was Cassoulita, or braised anasazi beans. The recipe was long and involved; therefore, you will have to follow the link for it, because that procrastination thing? It was caused by my desire not to type out this recipe, even though my changes were so minor as to be almost not worth mentioning. But here I go, mentioning them! I substituted mostly dried chipotle chilis and some other mystery dried chili our friend Tom brought us from New Mexico, where they obviously know their stuff.

The person who wielded that Sharpie did not lie. All the other Sharpie-wielders of New Mexico, I gots no opinion of.

So the beans were mildly spicy, is what I’m saying, but awfully good.

They were also not photogenic in any way, which is why they’re blurred out. Go, shallow depth of field!

The beans went great with our grilled chicken and asparagus that night, but were even better the next day, refried with a bit of bacon fat and converted to some hot burrito action.

No picture of the hot burrito action. It was a burrito. Use your imagination.

Since I didn’t have quite enough of that smoky chipotle flavor last week, I used more of the frozen adobo mixture in a chicken marinade for lunch today. I pounded a couple of skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I KNOW!) to about 1/3 of an inch and marinated them in a mixture of chipotle/adobo, ground cumin, lime juice, honey, olive oil, and salt. Thinking that pounding the breasts to within an inch of their lives would speed the cooking process and keep them moist turned out to be the correct assumption. For once. I topped them with an avocado-lime-sour cream sauce, and Gil actually complimented me on the meal, so I had to pat myself on the back.

Now, have I mentioned how much I love grilled asparagus?

I make it All The Time…

because it is delicious…

and let us not forget healthy…

but mostly delicious, if repetitive.

Even Rufus agreed.

nomnomnomnom

lf you’ve spent any time at all around these parts, you’ll know that I haven’t historically concerned myself with superspecial high-end ingredients. I do what I can, but if it’s a question of getting in the car and driving to Whole Foods in north Jersey traffic for something decent or just down the street for passable, I’ll admit to the laziness that so grips me.

But. During my dinner with Claudia of cook eat FRET fame, we discussed this very thing and I realized there’s absolutely no reason for me to live this way. I’m a food (for the most part) blogger, found my first NYC apartment online, met my roommates that way, and even met my husband online ferpete’ssake! Why wouldn‘t I think to order better-quality ingredients online? Clearly, I have a brain defect.

So order online I did. Looking for organic meat purveyors in the area, I found Fossil Farms and sat drooling as I clicked on page after page of meats both exotic and commonplace. They don’t have a store front, but that didn’t deter me; I contacted their customer service department and was assured we could pick up our order at their office, which just happens to be over the mountain, one town away. Yippee! After much deliberation, I chose a variety of their best offerings, but was most excited about the pork belly.

Obviously.

I’ve had pork belly in restaurants, sighed over countless versions on any number of blogs and pined for it incessantly, unable to find it in stores nearby. But now, I have a pork belly of my very own. And I will love him, and pet him, and name him George.

So let’s just take a moment to meditate on the porkly pleasures that await from this lovely 8-10 pound specimen of loveliness. That knife is there for scale: it’s about a foot long.

I quartered it, vacuum sealed three of the portions for the freezer, and set about preparing the fourth, which was still at least 2 pounds.

Witness the Stack o’ belly:

Indeed, it was a Great Wall of Belly — the only man-made porcine structure visible from space!

So again to teh interweb I turned. I didn’t want to waste this little bit of heaven on some crackpot idea of mine, but knew I wanted to use soy, brown sugar, and star anise in the braising liquid, so I entered my search terms and off I went down the google slide. It led me in short order to Gastronomy Domine, run by Liz Upton, who loves her pork perhaps even more than I do. Her recipe for braised belly had me licking my screen, so I knew it would be the perfect thing for my first adventure.

And here we go. After cutting the belly into 3/4-inch strips, it marinates for an hour in a mixture of soy, honey, and five spice powder.

Stir fry the aromatics and brown sugar until they turn golden.

The pork and its marinade go in next and get tossed about until they’re beginning to brown. It doesn’t look like much at this point, but the smell was maddening and had Rufus pacing the kitchen, hoping for a handout. He didn’t get it, but still pined for the next two hours while the pork braised.

You’ll find this nigh-impossible to believe, but we waited until the next day to dine! Not that I didn’t nibble. I mean, quality control, right? I would’ve been too alarmed to even think of having some of that fatty sauce with the belly (which, I’ll admit, is mostly fat anyway).

After refrigerating the sauce overnight, we were left with a fat mantle thicker than the antarctic ice shelf.

But let me take a moment to reflect on another web purchase that completed the meal. I first read about Rancho Gordo at Last Night’s Dinner and wondered how much better heirloom beans could be than the regular dried stuff you buy at the store. Then they got a mention at cook eat FRET, and then seemingly everyone else in the known universe picked up on the idea, so I knew I had to place an order. And oh, let me tell you, if you haven’t tried them already, you must. They’ll change your life.

I cooked a half pound of marrow beans very simply, with onion, garlic, and bay leaf in water, adding salt near the end. They were a great complement to the belly, especially topped with some of the braising liquid.

To serve the belly, I just crisped it up in a frying pan for a few minutes before topping it with braising liquid for serving. It isn’t beautiful, but the the aroma, taste, and simple texture of the dish more than made up for any lackluster visual.

recipe after the jump

Soy and Anise Braised Pork Belly adapted slightly from Gastronomy Domine

2 pounds pork belly
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
2 tablespoons canola oil
5 cloves garlic
6 shallots
4 flowers of star anise
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
4 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 cup pork or chicken stock

Using a very sharp knife or a Chinese cleaver, chop the pork into strips about 3/4-inch thick. (Do not remove the skin.) Mix one tablespoon of the soy sauce with the honey and five-spice powder in a bowl, and marinade the sliced pork in the mixture for an hour.

Chop the garlic and shallots very finely. Heat the oil to a high temperature in a heavy Dutch oven with a close-fitting lid, and fry the garlic, shallots, star anise and brown sugar together until they begin to turn gold. Turn the heat down to medium, add the pork to the pan with its marinade, and fry until the meat is colored on all sides.

Pour over the white wine and cook until most of it is absorbed. Add the chicken stock, salt and the rest of the soy sauce. Bring the mixture to the boil, reduce to a gentle simmer, cover and continue to simmer for two hours, turning the meat every now and then. If the sauce seems to be reducing and thickening, add a little water. (This wasn’t a problem for me. The sauce barely reduced at all.)

This is one of those recipes which is even better left to cool, refrigerated, and then reheated the next day. Skim the fat from the sauce before reheating. Brown the slices of belly over medium-high heat before topping with sauce. This renders even more of the fat and magically turns the belly into a health food.