Slow Baked Pork Chili and Kirschwasser Strawberry Shortcake

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. The day before yesterday, I had pulled out a pork roast to defrost for dinner, and I had the strawberries from my CSA that I planned to make into strawberry shortcake. I did not have a plan for the roast. Then, I saw a post from a foodie friend on Facebook announcing that it was National Strawberry Day, and National Chili Day. I thought, OK, I have half of that covered. And, as the day was cold and rainy (by San Diego standards), it was a perfect day for chili.

I have fallen in love with doing my chili by slow baking it in an enameled cast iron dutch oven. I think it gets the best texture that way, and there is no danger of scorching the bottom. It also gets the flavors to meld  to perfection.

I had a two pound pork sirloin roast, It was very lean. I cut it into 3/4" cubes. I dredged it in flour seasoned with berbere (an Ethiopian spice mix) cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, and salt. I seared the pork pieces in small batches in a little vegetable oil in the bottom of my dutch oven.

After pulling out all the seared pork pieces,  I added diced onion and green and red bell peppers to the oil, and sweated them.  To that I added diced fresh tomatoes, a can of crushed tomatoes, and a little pinot noir. I brought that to a simmer, and let it cook for about 45 minutes, to reduce the liquid some.

I seasoned the chili with oregano, rosemary, dried cilantro, thyme, cumin, bay leaf, chili powder, pepper, and salt. I returned the pork to the pot, then put on the lid. I placed it into a 280 F oven, where it cooked slowly for three hours.

After three hours, the pork was tender, and just starting to fall apart. The flavors had melded beautifully.

Strawberry shortcake has always been a major comfort food for me. And, I mean real strawberry shortcake, not stale store bought sponge cake rounds. Proper shortcakes are scones or biscuits, maybe lightly sweetened.

It was a summer favorite my grandmother made. Sliced strawberries are macerated in a little sugar, to get them to release their own juices. The biscuits are soaked with lightly sweetened cream or half and half. It's a simple dessert, but one I adore.

In this case, I tried to elevate the dessert by adding a little kirschwasser to the strawberries and sugar as they macerated. I also added a little of the kirschwasser to the heavy cream, with a little sugar. I used a whisk to whip it until moderately thick, but stopped well before it reached even soft peaks.

For the biscuits, I used my basic scone recipe. The spouse had made them to take to work, and had more than she needed. She rolled them and cut them out, to the stage where they were ready to go into the oven. She then froze about half the batch. I pulled the frozen scones out, and placed them on an ungreased baking sheet. I baked them for 20 minutes in a 375 F oven, and they turned out just as nice as if they hadn't been frozen. This is actually good news for the business.

I thought the kirschwasser added a nice touch. We both enjoyed the dessert very much.

Slow Baked Pork Chili

Coating Flour:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 Tbsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. berbere powder

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. onion powder

1 tsp. garlic powder

Chili:

2 lbs. pork sirloin roast, cut into 3/4" cubes

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1 onion, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

7 ripe tomatoes, peeled and diced

1 28 oz. can peeled crushed tomatoes

1 cup pinot noir

1 Tbsp. dried oregano

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. dried rosemary

1 tsp. dried cilantro

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. chili powder

salt and pepper to taste

Mix together all ingredients for coating flour.

Heat oil in a large enameled cast iron dutch oven over medium to medium high heat. Toss pork pieces in coating flour, shaking off excess. Sear pork pieces in the oil until brown on all sides. Remove from dutch oven, set aside.

Add onion and bell peppers to oil, cook until softened. Add fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, and wine. bring to a simmer, let cook for about 45 minutes, until somewhat reduced. Add herbs and spices, and return pork to the pot. Cover, place in a 280 F oven. Bake for three hours, until pork is tender.

Happy Eating!

Trying a New CSA

Last year we subscribed to Suzie's Farm. Now, we had absolutely no issues with them. The quality of the produce, and the value for the money was excellent. The problem for us was simply that it was difficult to come up with the advance all at once.

The spouse found a Groupon for Farm Fresh to You. They allow you to buy one box at a time, rather than requiring a seasonal subscription. They offer a wide variety of boxes, in a number of sizes. We chose the regular Valley box for our first delivery. The valley box is mostly vegetables, some fruit, and focused on local seasonal produce. Another advantage, they deliver to you, rather than having to go to a pickup point.

We got our first box today. It contained 2 navel oranges, 4 blood oranges, 3 beets, a bunch of broccoli, a large head of lettuce, a pint of strawberries, a bunch of carrots, and a large bunch of kale.

I'm looking forward to having fresh produce again to inspire experimentation.

That will, hopefully, lead to more blog posts.

Valentine's Day Food Fest

The spouse and I both had yesterday off in celebration of Lincoln's birthday (which was on Wednesday, but I guess school admins would rather have a four day weekend than be temporally correct.) This year that also happened to coincide with Valentine's Day. We don't usually do much about this holiday, but since we did have the opportunity to spend it together, I decided to make it all about the food.

I started by making breakfast in bed for the spouse. I made an omelet with caramelized onions and sauteed fresh mushrooms. It also had cheddar and Parmesan cheese. When I caramelized the onions, I added a little hot smoked paprika, as well as salt and pepper. I sauteed the mushrooms in olive oil, and added a little garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper. I'm finding that if I make a dish with multiple components, I like to season the components separately. When spices are added subtly changes their flavor, and adding them into the components seems to provide more subtly and complexity of flavor.

To go with the omelets, I had some mixed red, white, and purple fingerling potatoes that I sliced on my mandolin and shallow fried until crispy.

After breakfast, we went to an early showing of The Lego Movie. We enjoyed it. I found it one of the most entertaining flicks I've seen  in a long time. Also, the more pages you've read at TV Tropes, the more jokes you will get. 

For lunch, I made club style BLT's. We had picked up some thick cut maple glazed bacon at Costco. We had some nice ripe cluster tomatoes, and bronze leaf lettuce. 

I slow cooked the bacon on a broiler pan in a 350 F oven. It took about half an hour, but this helped the bacon remain flat. This was a good quality bacon, as there was little shrinkage, and less grease run off than you would normally expect. 

I toasted whole wheat bread, and used just a little mayo on each section.

Dinner, however, was the star of the day. We went by the store, and found a nice rib eye (my favorite steak). They also had a nice deal on Maine lobster tails, just $4 each. We both love lobster, so We grabbed a couple. We had already picked up some lovely asparagus. 

If this seems a little deja vu-ish, that's because last year's Valentine's Day menu was also grilled steak and asparagus. I used the same rub (cocoa powder, cumin, salt, onion powder, and chili powder) as last year. 

I also grilled the lobster tails. I snipped off the little palps (legs), and used kitchen shears to split the underside of the shell. The lobster tails took about 3/4's as long to cook as the steak took to reach medium rare. I also grilled the asparagus, and finished it with a little fresh lemon juice and some smoked Serrano sea salt. For the starch, I made quinoa in the rice cooker with some garlic and kosher salt.

For dessert, I also sort of repeated myself from last year. I made a sabayon, though this year's was a spiced rum sabayon. 

To go with it, I made apple pumpkin butter galettes. Traditionally, galettes use frangipane or marzapane (almond paste) for the base. I did not have any, but I had a jar of maple pumpkin butter. The galette is a round of puff pastry, with a layer of the pumpkin butter in the center, and slices of pink lady apples. It came out really nice, and matched well with the sabayon.

To accompany the meal, I had a bottle of 2012 Bella Bolle' Moscato D'Asti. It is an Italian sparkling Muscato. It was sweet, with crisp green apple and citron notes, with a bold attack and a clean finish. It went surprisingly well with the meal. If you are every looking for a sparkling wine that is not brut(ally) dry champagne, I can heartily recommend this one.

Recipes

Spiced Rum Sabayon

6 egg yolks
 1/3 cup spiced rum
1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar

Whip cream to medium stiff peaks. Set aside.

In a double boiler over barely simmering water, whisk together egg yolks. sugar, and rum until thick and smooth. Place bowl with egg mixture in an ice bath, continue to whisk until room temperature. Fold cream into egg mixture. Pour or spoon into serving containers. Chill in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Apple and Pumpkin Butter Galettes

1 pink lady apple, sliced

4 3" rounds puff pastry

4 Tbsp. pumpkin butter

2 Tbsp. butter, melted

1/4 cup sugar

2 Tbsp. simple syrup

Pre-heat oven to 375 F.

Spread a tablespoon of pumpkin butter in the center of each round of puff pastry, leaving a rim of  1/4" clear. arrange apple slices to cover pumpkin butter. Brush pastries with butter. Sprinkle liberally with sugar.

Place on an ungreased baking sheet, and bake for 15 - 18 minutes, until pastry is brown and crisp. Remove to a cooling rack.

Let cool to room temperature. Brush with simple syrup.

Happy Eating!

First Week of Classes

January was a bust for blogging, sorry. Between breaking my laptop, and dealing with a resurgence of my clinical depression, I didn't get a lot done.

Last week Spring semester started. I am taking three classes this semester. I have a class on sanitation, which should be fairly simple. I also have a class on cooking for healthy living. Finally, I have a class on cake decorating, which won't begin until April.

I'm a little bit concerned about the healthy living class. I'm afraid I will be the lone skeptic. I'm picking up a major anti-GMO vibe, and am afraid there will be some very pro-woo moments. I hope I am wrong.

A Day Spent Canning: Grapefruit Marmalade, Orange Marmalade, Pumpkin Cranberry Chutney

Yesterday I spent the day canning. One of the things we want to be able to offer for the business is choices of homemade spreads for scones. My plan is to buy fruit whenever it is in season, fresh and relatively cheap. I will then make various jams, jellies, marmalades, curds, etc. to store for later.

If you haven't canned before, you will probably find it easier than you think. It's more logistics than anything. You just need a large pot with some sort of insert to keep your glass from directly contacting the hot bottom. The jars are kept submerged in simmering water to stay sterile until you need them, and the same with the lid rings and seals in a separate pot. When it is time to actually fill the jars, having done your mise en place is really important. That includes having a tool to lift out the jars. I have a magnet on the end of a long plastic rod which is really useful for retrieving seals and lids.

To can something, you pull out a hot jar, dumping the water back into the pot. Fill the jar, leaving adequate airspace at the top (this will vary by the size of the jar, and what you are canning. Clean the rim, and place a seal on top. Screw a ring on, just tight enough to keep the seal in place. The seal needs to be able to allow air bubbles to escape. The sealed jars are returned to the water, and completely submerged. They need to sit in the boiling water for a length of time, which will again vary by the size of the jar and what is in it.

A classmate had given me three large, ripe white grapefruit, so I decided to make marmalade out of them. The recipe I adapted is this one from about.com. I peeled the grapefruit with a sharp vegetable peeler, then went back over the peel with a sharp knife, to eliminate any remaining white pith. I then cut the peels into a fine julienne. I then peeled the remaining pith off the grapefruit, and carefully cut out supremes from the inner membranes. I did squeeze out as much juice as possible from the remaining core.

The cores were wrapped in cheesecloth, and cooked with everything else to help add pectin for jelling. I didn't trust it to jell naturally, however, so added a pouch of liquid pectin. The juice, segments, and zest are cooked with a little water and a whole lot of sugar until it reaches 220 F. It takes a while to get there, a lot of water has to evaporate to allow it to get to that temperature.

Once it got to the required temperature, I added the liquid pectin, and cooked it further. Finally, the cheesecloth bag was removed, and squeezed to get out as much marmalade as possible. The result was canned.

It turned out having a very strong grapefruit taste. Despite the huge amount of sugar, it retains a lot of the grapefruit bitterness. You may need to be a grapefruit fan to like this.

I had a lot of oranges left over from the SCA lunch we did last weekend. I thought was a good idea to use alt east some of them for orange marmalade.  All the orange marmalade recipes I found included lemons. I adapted this one from Sure Jell. It had me cook the fruit with the pectin first, then add the sugar. I realize now that the recipe expects powdered pectin, not liquid. It worked, so no complaints. I think next time I'll do it the same as the above recipe.

I did the same with the peels as above. I removed them from the fruit, cleaned them up with a sharp knife, and julienned them. I sectioned the fruit the same way.

The peels were simmered with a little baking soda in water for a bit, then the fruit and juice added. This was simmered some more, Then measured out. The recipe wants exactly 4 cups of fruit and peel mixture. Luckily for me, that is exactly what I had.

The mixture is brought to a boil, have the pectin added, then brought back to a boil. The sugar is added, and it is once again brought back to a boil. It is cooked for one minute, then removed from the heat, and canned.

It has a nice orange flavor, and the lemons help give it a bit of sharpness.

One trick I figured out with the marmalades. If you do not want all the peel to end up at the top of the jar, while the jars are cooling and the jell is setting, every five or ten minutes give the jars a good shake. As it gets thicker, it gets harder for all the peel to float to the top.

After Thanksgiving, we had a very nice pumpkin that we cut up and froze the meat. We wanted to do something with it. However, the National Center for Home Food Preservation (of course there is a National Center for Home Food Preservation) does not recommend canning pumpkin butter. Pumpkin butter is too low acid to be safely canned using the water bath method.

Chutneys, however, are a pickled product. All the added vinegar makes it more than acidic enough to can. I started with this recipe, but replaced the dried cranberries with fresh, added currants, and used date molasses rather than maple syrup.

I caramelized sliced onion in olive oil, then added the pumpkin, cranberries, currants, minced Serrano chili, molasses, date molasses, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, minced ginger, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, salt, and a little water. This was allowed to simmer for forty five minutes, until thick, and the pumpkin and cranberries tender.

This was then canned.

It is a really nice sweet, spicy, vinegary mix. I could just eat a bowl with a spoon. Will make a great butter for scones.

Recipes

Grapefruit Marmalade

3 large, ripe white grapefruit

7 cups sugar

1 pouch liquid pectin

4 cups water

Use a vegetable peeler to remove skin. Use a sharp knife to remove any remaining white pith on the zest. Cut the strips of peel into a fine julienne. 

Remove remaining pith from the fruit, and cut out the sections of fruit without taking any inner membrane. squeeze out any juice from the remaining cores. Wrap cores in cheesecloth, and tie securely.

Place peel, fruit, juice, water, and sugar in a large pot over medium heat. Once it comes to a simmer and the sugar is dissolved, add the cheesecloth with the cores.

Allow to simmer until mixture reaches 220 F. Add in pectin. bring back to a simmer, cook for seven minutes. Remove cheesecloth bag, squeezing out as much liquid as possible. Remove pot from heat, allow to stand for five minutes. Ladle into jars, seal and process in a water bath for ten minutes.

Makes 7 half pint jars.

Orange Marmalade

4 large navel oranges

4 small lemons

2 1/2 cups water

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1 pouch liquid pectin

5 1/2 cups sugar

Use a vegetable peeler to remove skin. Use a sharp knife to remove any remaining white pith on the zest. Cut the strips of peel into a fine julienne. 

Remove remaining pith from the fruit, and cut out the sections of fruit without taking any inner membrane. squeeze out any juice from the remaining cores.

Place peels, water, and baking soda in a pan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, cook 20 minutes. Add fruit and juice, bring back to a simmer, cook another ten minutes.

Transfer mixture to a large pot. Bring to a full boil, add pectin. Bring back to a boil. Add sugar. Bring back to a boil, cook for one minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat. Ladle into jars, process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

Pumpkin Cranberry Chutney

1 onion, cut into thin slices

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 1/2 lbs. fresh or fresh frozen pumpkin, cut into 1/2" cubes

4 oz. fresh or fresh frozen cranberries, rough chopped

4 oz. currants

2 cups apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup date molasses

1/4 cup molasses

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 Serrano chili, minced

2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, minced

2 cinnamon sticks

6 whole cloves

1 Tbsp. kosher salt

2 Tbsp. yellow mustard seeds

In a large pot over medium high heat, add olive oil. Add onion, cook until caramelized. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a simmer, cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

When mixture is thickened, and pumpkin and cranberries are tender, ladle into jars. Process in a water bath for 15 minutes.

Happy Eating!

Equipment Review: Beater Blade Pro

This is the first time I've discussed a product on the blog. I don't know if this will become a regular thing. Probably not. I am doing this because I have been seriously impressed by both the product and the company that made it.

The product is the Beater Blade  Pro by NewMetro Design. It is a self scraping beater blade. Mine is for my Kitchen Aide. They make versions for Cuisinart, Kenwood, and Viking mixers as well. It scrapes the bowl while working, so you don't have to stop and scrape the bowl.

It is made of some light weight resin or polymer. I was surprised by that when I bought one as a Christmas gift for the spouse last year.  We used to often, and it held up well. Recently I noticed a small crack in one of the support struts.

I contacted the company, and asked if there was any sort of warranty. I honestly didn't expect any. I was very pleasantly surprised when they said that all I had to do was e-mail them a picture of the broken one, and they would send me a replacement.

I got the replacement today. I am very impressed with the customer service. They were unfailingly polite and pleasant. I can't remember the last time a company just went and did the right thing, rather than the cheap thing.

So there you have it, for what it's worth. My first unasked for endorsement. Take it as you will.

Intermediate Culinary and Bread Classes: Final Grades

For my bread class, our practical final was to make a loaf of sourdough bread from then starter we created in class. I was pretty happy with mine. We had to submit a slice, with a short description of our experience. We also had a short written final, with questions about types of flours, and types of pre-ferments for making bread. I don't know exactly what my score was on either, but I can infer that both were good, as the posted grade for the course was an A+.

For my intermediate culinary class, we had a practical final where we had to make a composed salad and a stable vinaigrette. This is my salad. It is baby greens with yellow bell pepper, candied pine nuts, feta cheese, Persian cucumbers, kalamata olives, baby red onions, and pomegranate seeds. I made a cracker of puff pastry with a pomegranate molasses glaze. My vinaigrette was olive oil, pomegranate red wine vinegar, red currant mustard, and fresh basil. I got a 43 out of 50.

On the written final, I scored 42 out of 50. That gave me a final of 184 out of 200 points for the class, or a 92% and therefore an A.

I can live with that.