Brined pork shoulder

Ingredients:

1/2c salt

1/2c sugar

Pork shoulder, preferably skin on and bone in

Mix the salt and sugar. Rub all over pork shoulder. Let sit in the fridge at least over night, preferably 24h. 

Drain liquid from pan and rinse out. Replace pork shoulder in pan, skin side up, put in oven at 250*f. 

Cook 8 hours. 

Remove from oven and try to at least remove it from the pan before eating the whole thing. 

From Momofuku by the amazingly talented David Chang

Potato Boulangere

Ingredients:

3 small russet potatoes

2 small yellow onions

2 tbsp butter 

2 tbsp olive oil, plus some for oiling the pan. 

Salt

Pepper

Adapted for two people from The James Beard Foundation

Preheat oven to 375*F. 

Oil a small 4” dish. 

Thinly slice your onions and potatoes. If you have a mandolin, that’s the best way to do it, but watch out for your fingertips! I used a knife because our mandolin is MIA. 

Cook the onions with the butter and olive oil until they’re soft and golden. I didn’t know exactly when this was, but stopped when it was about here. 

Start with a layer of potatoes until you can’t see the bottom of your dish. Add a layer of onion and some salt and pepper. Keep going until you’re out of potatoes and onions or until you have the stack as tall as you want it. 

Add water to the dish until the top layer of potatoes are just covered. (All the way up over the top layer. I didn’t do this and the top layer dried out and were sad.)

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the potatoes are all the way soft. (For me, that was actually about an hour.) Then serve. 

Peruvian Ceviche

From Ceviche by Martin Morales

Ingredients

8 limes

1/2in fresh ginger

2 tsp amarillo chili paste

1/2 tsp salt

1lb fresh fish (original calls for sea bass, I get whatever the fishmonger says is freshest for ceviche)

1/2 large red onion, very thinly sliced

1 sweet potato, baked, peeled, and cubed 

1 clove garlic, minced

1 habanero, minced

Bake your sweet potato until soft. Remove from oven and cool, then peel off skin and cube into 1/2”-1” cubes. Set aside for now. 

Thinly slice the red onion. Let sit in bowl of ice water for 10 mins to remove some of the bite. Again, super important. Don’t skip. Drain and dry the onion. 

Mix the lime juice and sliced ginger, let sit together for 10mins. Remove and discard ginger. Add 2 tsp Amarillo chili paste. This really makes the dish, do not skip it. 

Cube the raw fish into relatively same size as sweet potato chunks. Add garlic, onion, habanero, sweet potato to fish cubes. Pour lime juice mixture over the top, and stir all together to mix. Let stand 2-4 minutes. You will see the fish change colors as though it’s been cooked because now it has been. (If you like cilantro, which I do not, this is where you would toss in some chopped cilantro.)

Enjoy with corn chips or straight out of the bowl. Very refreshing! 

Sourdough country white loaf

Ingredients:

65g bubbly starter

300g warm water

12g white sugar

15g melted butter

500g flour

9g salt

Oil to coat the pan

From Artisan Sourdough Made Easy which is super awesome, even if you’re just getting into making bread. 

Using your scale, add all ingredients to a large bowl. Usually I mix the starter and the water together before adding the other ingredients, but that’s your call. 

Mix with your hands. It’s fun! Or, if you have kids, I bet they would love this part. (Wash your hands first, everybody!!!)

A loose dough will begin to form in the bowl. Some parts will be really wet. Other parts will be ashy. It’s your job to combine the two. It will look like this. 

When the ashy bits are mostly gone, your dough will look like this. 

Cover it with a damp towel (not Saran Wrap, not the glass top that normally goes on my now-bread-mixing-bowl-formerly-casserole-dish) because it needs to breathe, and leave it alone for an hour.

After it rests for a while (it doesn’t have to be a hard and fast hour - when ever you walk by and remember works), remove the dough from the bowl. 

It will probably look something like this. 

I use a pull and twist method to stretch it out and build up the gluten. Stretchy dough = happy gluten. What I do looks sort of like this, but do whatever you want. Slap that bad boy on the counter and knead if that’s your thing, but really this should take maybe 30 seconds. A minute at most.

 

Here you can see I’m literally just wrapping it around my fingers. 

Then pulling it off my fingers.

And smooshing it into a ball shape. 

Tada! Ball. Sort of. 

Ball in bowl. Cover back up with your beloved damp (yes, keep it damp!) towel. 

Do this every few hours/as you remember to or walk by. The dough will spread out in the bowl. Sometimes it doesn’t want to come out of the bowl. This is normal. 

At this point you’re probably close to going to bed. It’s been about 3-4 hours since you started the loaf. Cover it with your damp towel and either leave it on the counter overnight or in the fridge. Both work. 

Now it’s the next morning! Hooray! Time to stretch and fold the dough again while you wait for your coffee. 

Good morning, dough. You sure puffed up a lot. 

It might look like it’s screaming underneath. That’s ok. Stretch and fold!

Another hour or so later, take the dough and plop it onto a floured surface. Then dimple it with your fingers to get all the air bubbles out. Fun fact! You get to go this with focaccia also!

Then fold it in half hot-dog way, nestle your hands behind it and pull it towards you in a sort of rolling motion to make a dough-log. 

When the dough-log looks smooth-ish, tuck the ends underneath and go oil up your baking dish. 

Now we wait for it to rise about an inch above the top of the dish. Usually it takes 3-4 hours. Mine took forever today because it was cold in my house. Your mileage may vary. The pic above was at 9:30ish am. The one below is at freaking 3:30pm. I gave up waiting. That’s ok. We aren’t in GBBS and Paul Hollywood isn’t coming to my house to critique my bakes. Sadly. Pop this bad boy into a preheated 375* oven for 40-45 mins. 

See you in 40 mins bread! 

Damn, I wish I had a window in my oven door. 

When your alarm goes off, open the door and we see what we see. This is my loaf. Not perfect but tasty! 

Wait about 10 mins and slide that sucker out of the pan. 

Even if yours doesn’t look fancy, if it tastes good, that’s what matters. I once made a loaf that came out looking like a doughnut. Not sure what happened. Ate it anyway. 

Happy loaves to you all!

Pan steak and green peppercorn sauce

Ingredients:

8 oz steak

1 tbsp oil

Salt and pepper

Small shallot, minced fine 

1/2 c brandy

1/4 c cream

1/4 tsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp green peppercorns 

1/4 tsp thyme

Salt to taste

Put the oil in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Pt steaks dry and season liberally with salt and pepper. Put steak in pan and cook without moving/touching for 4 mins per side. (Rare. For medium do 5-6 mins.) move steak to plate to rest. 

Add shallot to pan the steak was just in until browned. Add the brandy and milk, until simmering, stirring constantly to get up all the browned steak-bits. Reduce heat to simmer, add in vinegar, any drippings from the resting steak, peppercorns, and thyme. Stir until sauce coats the back of the spoon. Add to steak and enjoy. 

Spanish red onion and orange salad

Welcome back to my food blog. It’s been a hot minute. 

Ingredients:

4 oranges

1 small (!!) red onion

2tbsp vinegar (your choice - I have an use strawberry for this, apple cider vinegar works great, and so does lemon juice instead)

6tbsp olive oil 

Small can black olives, sliced 

2tbsp sunflower or pumpkin seeds, toasted

A few mint leaves, chopped

Salt

Black pepper

Peel orange with a knife, slicing the top and bottom off, and then removing rest. Segment orange out, removing the outer casing. I use a knife for this since it’s easier than trying to peel everything yourself. 

Alice the red onion into thin strips. Mix together in a bowl with the orange segments, sunflower/pumpkin seeds, olives, and chopped mint. 

In a jar, combine the oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Shake vigorously (with lid on) to make your vinaigrette. 

Dress salad and serve. 

Shoutout to Spain Recipes for this great recipe. 

Potato and Leek Soup

An Irish classic that also incorporates my love of blended soup.  What's not to like?  You can make this a vegan recipe really simply by using a vegan butter substitute.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 45 mins

Ingredients:
3 medium potatoes
3 leeks
2 quarts vegetable broth
1 tbsp butter
salt to taste

Slice the leeks, using only the white and light green parts.  Rinse them in water to remove any sand that may be hiding in the leeks.  Saute the leeks in the butter over medium heat until they are translucent, about 10 to 15 minutes. 

Peel and slice the potatoes into small cubes.  Add the potatoes and broth to the leeks.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium.  Simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.

Let soup cool, then blend in a blender.  If you try to blend the soup while it is hot, the pressure will blow the lid off of your blender and possibly burn you while making a huge mess.  No fun.  You can skip the cooling step and blend in the pot if you have an immersion  blender.

Reheat the soup and serve.

Feeds 8.