Writing With My Mouth Full

Sweet and Sour Pork Picnic

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to eat at least one fruit a day, everyday. It’s been difficult with the small selection of fresh fruits this winter, so the sale of canned pineapple chunks at my local grocery store caught my eye. I rarely buy anything canned, but three cans of pineapple for $2 seemed like a good deal to me. I thought of making a sweet and sour sauce with the pork picnic, or lower part of the shoulder, I picked up from Chinatown. Slivers of pork belly would be a good substitute, but I opted for the meatier part of the pig here. A melee of colorful vegetables made this the perfect Sunday lunch with family.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound of pork picnic, trimmed of fat and excess skin, chopped
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
1 cucumber, julienned
a handful of string beans
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 yellow bell pepper, julienned
1 red onion, thinly slice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a small bunch of chives, chopped
a dash of sesame seeds, toasted
salt, oil

For the sweet and sour sauce:
1 can of pineapple chunks, drained
3 tbsps sugar
a jigger of red wine vinegar
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced

1. In a small pot, combine all the sweet and sour ingredients and simmer for 5 minutes while occasionally stirring to avoid sticking.
2. In a large wok, heat some oil and cook pork pieces until evenly browned.
3. Add green beans and stir-fry for 8 minutes or until tender. Add the rest of the vegetables and stir-fry for 5 minutes.
4. Pour in the sweet and sour sauce and toss. Season with salt to taste. Sprinkle with chives and sesame seeds before serving.

Pig’s Ears Salad

The new year has just begun and I already have a favorite cookbook: StÃ©phane Reynaud’s Pork & Sons from Phaidon. I immediately wanted it when I saw JosÃ© Reis de Matos’ pig illustrations and Carlotta’s hand-written curly titles bounded in baby pink and white gingham checks, but I held off from buying yet another cookbook. In Austin’s Bookpeople, it was sold at a discounted price; I finally walked away with it.

The front page has “for the love of sausages” written on it and there are drawings of pigs in hammocks, on bicycles, wading in mud and even pole dancing on the cover of a chapter called “A Piggy Party”. This book was made for me! If not to make your own sausages or cook this pig’s ears salad from page 186, just buy it to squeal–pun intended–at the illustrations.

As soon as I saw this recipe, I knew how it was going to taste and feel in my mouth. The pig’s ears will be gelatinous and the cartilage crunchy; the ginger and the shallots adding a kick while the spinach tames everything down. I loved the pig’s ears appetizer at El Quinto Pino and I could imagine this being served there as well. I would even try this with some flat parsley leaves or spicy arugula if I don’t have spinach handy. It’s good with a glass of white wine, but even better with cold beer.

Ingredients:
3 pig’s ears, thoroughly washed
half a bunch of baby spinach
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 small knob of ginger, peeled, julienned
a handful of fresh chives, chopped
a few jiggers of red wine vinegar
salt, oil

1. Cook the pig’s ears in boiling water for 1 hour. Drain and let cool.
2. In the meantime, combine the shallots, ginger, chives and some canola oil in a bowl.
3. When the pig’s ears are cool enough to handle, slice thinly.
4. Heat some frying oil in a skillet and cook the ears until golden brown, while stirring occasionally using a wooden spoon to scrape off the gelatinous stuff that sticks to the bottom of the pan. Splash with the red wine vinegar and cook for 2 more minutes.
5. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel to drain the oil a little bit, and then transfer to the bowl with the spinach and shallot mixture. Toss and season with salt.

Baked Egg Appetizer with Vegetables

I loved this Mark Bittman recipe from The New York Times. I liked the idea of serving egg as an appetizer, but I loved that each guest was getting his own ramekin on the table even better. But for my first try, sans ramekins in our rental house in Austin, I buttered up a small baking pan to pull this off. I used some random vegetables we had in the fridge. When I served them, I just cut out each cooked egg with a spatula and served them on plates. It was a new take on eggs for our New Year’s Eve dinner.

Ingredients:
5 eggs
2 tomatoes, sliced
3 asparagus stalks, blanched, chopped
1 cup of white mushrooms, chopped
a handful of fresh basil
knob of butter
salt, pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375Âº. Coat the inside of five ramekins with butter. Put one tomato slice at the bottom, then top with the vegetables. Two basil leaves per ramekin will do. Break one egg into each ramekin and season with some salt and pepper.
2. Put the ramekins on a baking sheet and bake for 12 minutes or until egg is set. Because the ramekins retains heat, the eggs will continue to cook after you remove them from the oven, so it’s best to undercook them slightly.

Rack of Lamb with Apricot-Lime Chutney

We went crazy in Central Market when we were in Austin. Every produce aisle should look like theirs. After Cameron pushed the cart to pick up the ingredients she needed for her salads, we bought a $50 rack of lamb. I knew I wanted something savory for our New Year’s Eve dinner, so I went to the spice aisle and happily weighed some loose curry powder and bought it for 45 cents. With iPhone on hand, I Googled a chutney to match the Indian flavor. Because we were expecting a couple to join us for dinner to make us five, I wanted to do something low key as well. In fact, I was able to prepare the lamb in between courses; only the chutney was done before our guests came in. Cameron’s spinach salad peppered with blueberries, cranberries and almonds and roasted fingerling Peruvian potatoes were nice sides with this.

Ingredients:
rack of lamb
garlic cloves, minced
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced
curry powder
salt, pepper, oil

For the apricot-lime chutney:
6 fresh apricots, pitted, chopped
juice from a lime
lime zest
honey
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced

1. Preheat oven to 350Âº. Make small slits all over the lamb using a sharp knife. Insert garlic and ginger. Cover the rack of lamb with the spices and let sit for half an hour or until ready to cook.
2. Place all chutney ingredients in a saucepan, add water and bring to a boil. Lower heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add a little water if it begins to dry when simmering. Allow to cool before serving.
3. Using an oven-safe frying pan, brown one side of the rack in hot oil. Transfer in the oven and cook for 25 minutes or until medium-rare. Let rest on a wooden block to finish cooking before slicing and serving.

Mandu Gook, Korean Soup with Dumplings

I had a dozen dumplings in the freezer and a cold, so I could only think of making myself a big bowl of hot and spicy soup to combat the sniffles. I was too lazy to go anywhere to buy ingredients. I had to make do with whatever I could rummage in the pantry. Arugula? Check. Baby carrots? Check. Cabbage? Oooh, check. I found a small jar of dashi to make the broth taste like miso, and of course, there is a jar of kochujang paste to make it spicier.

Koreans call dumplings mandu. Included in a soup using clear broth, it becomes mandu gook. Most restaurant mandu gooks come with rice cakes, or dduk, and therefore called dduk mandu gook. And that’s enough Korean lesson for today. Here’s my Filipino version of the soup that helped keep the medicine away.

Ingredients:
12 dumplings, thawed if frozen
8 dduk, thawed if frozen
a small wedge of cabbage, roughly chopped
a handful of baby carrots
a handful of arugula
1 shallot, halved
1 tbsp kochujang paste
2 tbsps dashi granules
1 tsp sesame seeds, toasted
salt

1. In a stock pot, boil 8 cups of water with the dashi and the shallot. Turn the heat to medium-low when boiling and add the vegetables until the carrots are tender.
2. During the last ten minutes of cooking, add the dduk and the dumplings to soften. Season to taste with salt and kochujang paste.