Made for each other: Sweet onions, savory chops

Red wine, apricot preserves and curry lend a sweet touch to savory chops. Recipe below.

What is it about pork that plays so nicely with sweet flavors? Marion made some wonderful lemon ricotta pancakes with sautéed apples for breakfast Sunday [yes, I photographed them—they will be a post one of these days]. Tasting the apples, which had been sautéed in butter with some sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice, I said they would also be great with something savory. Marion immediately said, “Pig meat!”

Pork has a natural sweetness that lends itself beautifully to sweet/savory combinations. It also has a richness to it—even with today’s leaner pork production methods—which is a perfect foil to sweet additions.

In the past, I’ve sweetened pork with pears for Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Pears and Onions. And I’ve combined it with dried plums to make Pork Chops with Port Sauce. The sweetness in this week’s dish comes from sweet red onion, sautéed and mixed with apricot preserves. You don’t actually caramelize the onion, which would bring out its sweetness more completely, but would also take anywhere from 20 minutes to more than an hour depending on whose recipe you believe. But even sautéing the onion until tender, less than 10 minutes even, begins to caramelize the natural sugar in the onion, and adding an apricot preserves mixture at the end further ups the sweetness quotient.

The sweetness of this dish is subtle, not the overpoweringly cloying taste of sweet and sour pork, for instance. I can’t take a dish like that seriously—don’t feel as if I’m eating a meal so much as eating a dessert with meat in it. The apricots disappear into the onions, adding their sugar without their signature flavor.

The curry powder also brings a bit of complex sweetness to the party, along with a nice depth—and possibly a little heat, depending on the curry powder you use. I used Hot Curry Powder from The Spice House, which added a decided kick. Curry powder, by the way, is a British invention dating back to their colonial rule of India. Indian cooks often make their own curry blends from the wealth of spices readily available to them. Pre-mixed curry powder was an easy way for Brits to take some of the wonderful flavors they’d found back home to England with them.

For sides, you can go a few directions. You can stick with the curry theme and look for Indian or Indian-inspired dishes, such as the cumin-spiked Coconut Rice Pilaf I cooked as for Biryani Chicken Breasts.

You can also take the pan-Asian route. While curries began in India and are most associated with Indian cuisine, their use has spread throughout much of Asia—and indeed the world.

Or you can let these chops take center stage, serving them with simple sides like mashed potatoes and steamed green beans or a salad, for instance. That way, the chops become the focus of the meal, instead of competing against other big, exotic flavors. What I like about this approach is that dinner isn’t suddenly about an Indian, pan-Asian or other global dining adventure; it’s about borrowing from various cultures and cuisines to put a delicious, memorable meal on the table. Continue reading “Made for each other: Sweet onions, savory chops” →

Dangerously good: Linguine Non Carbonara

Linguine Non Carbonara, a delicious, non-traditional take on pasta carbonara. Recipe below.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about a dish that wasn’t just more than the sum of its simple parts—it blew right past them. This one does the same thing in spades. How can something so insanely delicious not even use any spices, unless you count salt and pepper?

The dish in question is Marion’s decidedly non-traditional take on pasta carbonara. It’s dangerously good on a couple of levels. First, it is highly addictive. From the first time Marion made it for dinner guests years ago, it became a go to meal when we had people over—even people who had already had it, at their insistence [in the form of a polite request, of course].

It’s also dangerous because it’s, well, dangerous. No poisonous fish parts in it [am I alone in thinking that is about the dumbest culinary choice ever?], but it’s an artery-clogging party for your mouth. Marion dispenses with the heavy cream found in most American takes on carbonara [but interestingly, not used in the traditional carbonaras of central Italy]. But you start with a pound of bacon, okay? You cook things in bacon grease. And you add eggs and cheese. This is why we only have it once a year or so now. It’s also why, when we do, we enjoy every last tiny morsel of it. All right. You’ve been warned. Time to let Marion take over the kitchen.

The way this recipe entered our household has passed into the mists of time. I think that maybe it might have been something I found in a magazine, possibly, could be around 1980—that makes some sort of sense, although so do several other interpretations of what passes for my memory of this. It called itself Spaghetti Carbonara and it contained many of the elements that I still use to cook this dish. By the time I figured out that this dish is not even slightly a true carbonara—for one thing, it’s got vegetables in it—it was too late for us. We call it carbonara, just as we have dubbed every one of our daughters’ dates The Boy and call Schumann’s compositions ballet dancin’ music [Terry’s note—this term dates back to a comment by a little first grader during my teaching days, not any philistinian tendencies on our parts]. It’s our lingo, and we’re sticking to it.

Bacon takes the lead in Linguine Non Carbonara, but it isn’t the neighborhood bully. If you wish, you can use wonderful applewood-smoked bacon from organically grown pigs, each of whom has a real name, but one of the nice things about this recipe is its pragmatism: the most average grocery-store bacon still lets you create a super dish. The only real caveat I have is: use a good olive oil, decent zucchini, peppers, and shallots and a good Parmesan cheese that you grate directly into the dish at the last step.

Yes, there are veggies aplenty in this carbonara. You know—vegetables, salutary, nutritious, radiating their sunny health benefits throughout your being. Well, don’t let the jolly presence of vegetables fool you. Any lurking health elements they may possess are eradicated by the lavish use of the bacon, and the sautéing, and then the great lashings of egg and cheese. All you have left is extreme deliciousness.

Linguine Non Carbonara is best accompanied by a big California chardonnay. On Sunday, we had this with a Girard from the Russian River area, which stood up to the pasta very nicely indeed. Continue reading “Dangerously good: Linguine Non Carbonara” →

Potatoes and garlic. What’s not to like?

Garlic is the star, but it doesn’t overpower these creamy mashed potatoes. Recipe below.

When I opened Blue Kitchen almost a year ago, I intended to have a recurring feature called A Little Something on the Side. It was supposed to be “all about the dishes that play the supporting role to the star of the plate—and on occasion, steal the scene.” I said as much in my first something-on-the-side post, Marion’s kasha, which she makes every Thanksgiving and as many other times a year as we remember how wonderful it is when we’re planning dinner.

I’ve posted a few sides since then, but somehow, main course ideas keep taking over. They just seem more postworthy, I guess. But you need something to go with them to make a meal, don’t you? So I’m rededicating myself to posting the occasional side on a more regular basis. Sometimes fancy or at least a little exotic, sometimes humble and hardworking, like today’s.

To up their postworthiness [in my eyes, at least], I’ve enlisted my friend Matt’s help in creating a special graphic for A Little Something on the Side. Maybe that will encourage me to do more of these. Thanks, Matt!

The potato—still #1. For all the low-carb, no-carb hysteria still occasionally gripping the media, potatoes are the most popular vegetable in America. Regarding the whole carbohydrates issue, without launching into a dietary diatribe, you need carbohydrates to live. Period. According to the Dietary Reference Intakes Report issued by the Institute of Medicine in 2002, “the minimum amount of carbohydrate that children and adults need for proper brain function is 130 grams a day.” So wise up. Have some mashed potatoes.

And since you’re having them, make them Yukon Gold. Yukon Gold potatoes are a relatively recent phenomenon in North America, but yellow-fleshed potatoes are common in Europe and South America. They’re the norm, in fact. The Yukon Golds we know and love [enough to pay more for] are the result of years of work by a Canadian research team. They’re a cross between a North American white potato and a wild South American yellow-fleshed variety [we all know that potatoes originated in South America, right?].

The result is an all-purpose potato with a naturally buttery flavor. In texture, it falls between the Idaho or russet [a potato with high starch content, great for baking, frying or mashing] and waxy or red potatoes [low starch, high moisture potatoes that stay firm when boiled and stay moist when roasted]. So while Yukon Golds don’t bake as well as russets do, they do just about everything else just fine.

Including making fluffy, delicious mashed potatoes. Buttery, rich and golden. I make them a lot of different ways, but my favorite is with plenty of garlic. There are probably as many ways to make garlic mashed potatoes as there are cooks. A quick search on epicurious.com turned up 198 recipes. Some called for roasting entire heads of garlic before adding them to the potatoes; some called for sautéing garlic in oil, then adding it to the cooked potatoes. And with some, like mine, you add raw garlic to the water while the potatoes are cooking, letting it impart its oils and flavors to the potatoes—and its wonderful fragrance to the kitchen.

Garlic amounts called for varied wildly too. One recipe called for sautéing a single sliced clove of garlic in oil, then discarding the garlic and adding only the flavored oil to two pounds of cooked potatoes. That one fell firmly into the “why bother” camp for me. At the opposite end of the spectrum, our friend Joan advocates three large cloves of garlic per potato. I haven’t had the nerve to try that one yet.

So without further ado, let me throw one more garlic mashed potatoes recipe on the heap. Continue reading “Potatoes and garlic. What’s not to like?” →

Bacon, marmalade and pumpernickel. Seriously.

The strangely delicious Bacon & Marmalade Sandwich on Pumpernickel Toast. Recipe of sorts below.

Bacon & Marmalade Sandwich on Pumpernickel Toast

Today’s post actually contains two recipes. Well, not so much recipes as ways to celebrate bacon. Bacon is the über meat in my book. I mean, I love a good steak, a juicy seared chop, a nice pot roast… [okay, so I guess I’m saying I love meat], but there’s just something about bacon. If the aroma of a chicken roasting in the oven is intoxicating [and it is], the smell of frying bacon is crack. Continue reading “Bacon, marmalade and pumpernickel. Seriously.” →

A few simple ingredients take center stage

White Bean Soup with Sausage and Chard is a simple, satisfying country soup. that comes together quickly. Recipe below.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about soup. Last week, beans. So this week, naturally enough, it’s bean soup.

This particular soup came out of a failed attempt at a promising sounding recipe that just didn’t deliver. I’ve talked in the past about my overflowing, unkempt binders of recipes. As often happens, I was flipping through them looking for one recipe when I found another, for Tomato Bean Soup with Pasta. I love cannellini beans and I thought they would have more of a starring role in this soup. But the recipe turned out to be too busy, with too many ingredients all vying for attention—the white beans that caught my interest originally and tomatoes and pasta and either Swiss chard or kale. In the end, the results were only okay, with no one flavor asserting itself.

Still, the idea of a soup like this one should have been was intriguing enough that it started me searching for others. As usual, I found a couple/few recipes that all gave me ideas for what I ended up creating.

The original recipe called for either Swiss chard or kale. Both are cruciferous vegetables, meaning they contain cancer-fighting antioxidants. They also contain healthy doses of of vitamins A and C as well as iron. Chard is a member of the beet family. Its flavor has been described as spinachlike—mild and earthy.

Kale is a mild-tasting member of the cabbage family. It has been called the archetypal winter green because it prefers cold climates—it will survive even if left in the ground all winter—and its flavor is actually enhanced by a winter frost. Both chard and kale have a slightly bitter undertone that adds depth to their flavors.

Marion has also used escarole in soups for that same slightly bitter touch. Any of these greens—as well as spinach—would work well in this soup, I think. Continue reading “A few simple ingredients take center stage” →

Two continents, one plate: Biryani chicken breasts

Indian biryani curry paste gets a little Tex-Mex help in firing up spicy Biryani Chicken Breasts with a side of Coconut Rice Pilaf. Recipes below.

THIS IS AN EXCITING TIME FOR FOOD. There are more options now than ever before, from global grazing to eating local. And palates are more adventurous than ever before, as the minds and mouths of diners open up to cuisines and flavors from just about everywhere. The success of the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations is a perfect example of this growing culinary curiosity. Continue reading “Two continents, one plate: Biryani chicken breasts” →

Busy weekend + fridge raid = quick lunch

A quick improvised lunch with chickpeas, couscous and pork. Recipe below.

Last weekend was action-packed, even by our standards. On top of all the standard issue weekend errands and household stuff, we were preparing for an upcoming camping trip [although not nearly enough]. Marion was attending a four-day convention that had me shuttling back and forth to McCormick Place at odd hours—well, and joining her and other attendees for impromptu cocktails. Friday night found our living and dining rooms converted to dorms for four nice young men from Michigan who were attending Lollapalooza.

Oh. And Sunday afternoon, we managed to make a small contribution to the record-breaking $70.2 million the amazingly exciting Bourne Ultimatum took in over the weekend.

In the midst of all this, it was hard enough to even schedule meals, let alone get them on the table. Friday night I expected to be fending for myself, but suddenly had both Marion and daughter Laurel at home. So after a smash-and-grab run to the grocery store, I threw together a quick dinner—sautéed pork chops with bowtie pasta and mushrooms in a brandy sauce and a salad on the side. Must have been okay. We inhaled it.

Early Saturday afternoon, the polite young Michiganders grabbed their backpacks and with a final thanks, headed back to the Eastern Time Zone. Suddenly, it was just Laurel and me, and we were hungry. We had a passel of errands to run, so I’ll admit my first thought was some kind of fast food take-out. But we do more of that than I care for already, so I decided to see just how fast I could throw something together with what we had on hand.

I had recently made a nice, spicy side dish based on something I’d seen at Toni’s blog Daily Bread Journal. She had combined couscous with chickpeas [or garbanzo beans, as she called them], along with some veggies and spices, into a hearty backdrop for leftover osso buco. I had always treated couscous as a standalone side dish, enhanced with parsley or arugula or sautéed garlic, perhaps, but strictly a solo act. The idea of casting couscous in a supporting role was a revelation to me.

My version of Toni’s dish, made with onion, garlic, a jalapeño pepper and cumin, sounded like a good starting point. So I grabbed a can of chickpeas and some couscous from the pantry, then raided the fridge. Onion, check. Garlic, check. While failing to find the jalapeño pepper that I’m sure is still lurking there, I uncovered a small zucchini and half a red bell pepper. This was beginning to sound interesting. Then I remembered the lone uncooked pork chop, left over from the four pack bought for the previous night’s dinner. Cayenne pepper stood in for the fugitive jalapeño. Here’s how all that became lunch. Continue reading “Busy weekend + fridge raid = quick lunch” →

A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes

All you cook is the pasta for Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes. Recipe below.

I first posted this recipe over at Patricia’s Technicolor Kitchen in May. She had done a delicious Brazilian Rice and Beans dish here at Blue Kitchen, and this was my chance to return the favor. Now that we’re in the thick of summer heat and other excuses to avoid the kitchen, I thought it was worth repeating here.

This one of my summer favorites—a quick, colorful pasta that makes a great lunch or light supper. The only thing you cook is the pasta, so the kitchen doesn’t get too hot. It’s also another great example of just how versatile pasta can be once you think beyond red sauce.

In Italy, a no-cook pasta sauce like this is called a salsa cruda. The room temperature sauce slightly cools the cooked pasta, and the pasta slightly warms the sauce, making for a meal that feels less heavy than many pasta dishes. The shells catch bits of tuna and the other ingredients, delivering big taste with each bite.

There are so many wonderful flavors at play in this dish too—garlic, lemon, parsley, tuna, artichoke hearts… and my favorite, the briny tang of the capers. They combine for a fresh, bright meal that just tastes like summer. In fact, I’ve been known to make it as a winter lunch for that very reason.

A note about the tuna. For this dish, bring out the good stuff—quality tuna packed in olive oil. The olive oil becomes part of the sauce. I use a brand imported from Italy. As you can see in the photo, the quality of the flesh is far superior to the ground-up mush you often find in canned tuna. Spain also produces excellent olive oil-packed tuna, so whichever you can find locally will work. Continue reading “A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes” →

Grill, schmill. Give me a good hot pan.

A good hot pan nicely chars bistro-style steaks and creates those delicious “browned bits” to be deglazed from the pan. Recipe below.

It’s summertime. That time when everyone cooks every possible meal on the grill. Well, almost everyone. Me, not so much. We have an old Weber kettle that sees action maybe three or four times a season [although so far this year, I’ve used it—oh, let me think now—zero times].

I could chalk up my lack of enthusiasm for grilling to the pain-in-the-ass factor: Starting the coals, cleaning the grill before and/or after, the fact that we live on the second floor and it lives down in the yard… but that would be less than honest. I readily do plenty of things that rank high in the pain-in-the-ass department.

For me, it’s more a control issue. Mainly my apparent lack thereof. Sometimes, food grills beautifully, and it is indeed sublime. Other times, it overcooks, undercooks or just plain underdelivers on wonderfulness. Admittedly, even then, the smoke does its magic flavorwise [and that’s why I stick with charcoal on the rare occasions when I do grill]. But the frustrating thing is that, while the results vary wildly, my cooking methods don’t, at least as far as I can tell.

So give me a good pan and a gas flame every time. I become one with pan and stove. Which brings me to the topic of cookware. As with most cooks, our collection of pots and pans has grown organically over the years. Among the cast of characters are always a couple of non-stick skillets which we tend to view as semi-disposable—however gently you handle them and whatever the warranty promises, sooner or later, they lose their non-stickiness. So we buy decent heavy ones, but don’t go overboard. And we don’t become too attached to them—when they stop working, we replace them.

At the other end of the spectrum are some very beautiful, very heavy French copper pots and pans that Marion heroically lugged back from Paris over a few visits—because of these, our total foodie friend Dan says we are the only people he knows whose cookware he covets. In between is a varied collection that includes everything from a copper pot Marion’s mother found at a yard sale for a quarter to a sturdy, utilitarian aluminum saucepan recently bought for cheap at a Chinese restaurant supply store and a gorgeous Staub La Cocotte roasting pan, also French, picked up at the National Restaurant Association’s trade show here in Chicago.

And then there is this pan. Is it possible to love a pan too much? I don’t think so, not if it’s a Calphalon One Infused Anodized Fry Pan. It sears meat beautifully and provides those delicious “browned bits” you’re supposed to scrape up when you deglaze the pan, much like the vaunted All-Clad stainless pans. It also releases food easily when it’s properly caramelized and, unlike what I’ve heard of the All-Clad, it cleans up easily, pretty much like non-stick pans do. And they don’t just let you use metal utensils with this baby—they recommend it. The better to scrape up those browned bits.

I had read about the wonders of these pans and was totally ready to try one, but the $135 price tag for the 12″ fry pan for something that might or might not be all it claimed seemed a bit steep. Well, sometimes he who hesitates is saved. I found it for 40 bucks at a Chef’s Outlet store in Michigan City, Indiana. Yes, it was a factory second, but all that had kept it from being a factory first at Bloomingdale’s Home Store was some minor scuffing along the pan’s rim. And if you’ve got food out where those little scuffs are, you’re not cooking—you’re spilling.

So I tried one, digging through the dozen or so in the store to find the factory second least deserving that label. Then I took it home and cooked with it. It. Was. Amazing. I think I cooked chicken breasts the first time. After they’d been in the hot pan for maybe four minutes, I started to slide the metal spatula under one of the breasts. Nothing doing. It was stuck. So I waited another minute, as the instructions said, and tried again. Bingo. One by one, the chicken breasts released effortlessly and, when I flipped them, revealed a beautifully caramelized browned side. I was in love. And when I achieved a perfect char on what I like to call my bistro steaks, I knew that love was here to stay. Continue reading “Grill, schmill. Give me a good hot pan.” →

Garlicky vinaigrette and a three-legged beagle

A very simple, very French vinaigrette elevates this mixed greens salad. Recipe below.

aunt_jo_salad — Aunt Jo’s Garlicky Vinaigrette

ALL OF US WHO LOVE TO COOK CAN THINK OF CERTAIN “AHA!” MOMENTS in our culinary lives. Moments when we’ve learned some new technique or connected a couple of dots and suddenly know something that changes how we cook or how we think about food or, as in the case of this simple vinaigrette, adds a lasting weapon to our food arsenal. Continue reading “Garlicky vinaigrette and a three-legged beagle” →