Zha Jiang Mian

Another ATK IG recipe: Beijing-style meat sauce...

Recipe

8 oz ground pork (we replaced with vegan crumbles)
1/8 tsp baking soda (I guess ignore for vegan crumbles)
5 tbsp red miso paste
5 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp molasses
8 scallions - white & light green in 1/2 inch pieces, dark green sliced thin
2 garlic cloves
1/2 in ginger, peeled and sliced
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 lb lo mein noodles
1/2 english cucumber, cut into matchsticks
6 oz bean sprouts

• Toss the pork with 2 tsp water and the baking soda, and let stand for 5 minutes.
• Whisk together 1/2 c water and the miso paste, soy sauce, hoisin, and molasses.
• Pulse the white and light green scallion parts, garlic, and ginger until coarsely chopped, then add mushrooms and make an awesome-smelling finely-chopped mixture.
• Heat pork mixture with some vegetable oil in a large saucepan for a minute, then add the mushroom mixture.  Cook 5-7 minutes.
• Add the miso mixture and cook 8-10 minutes while noodles cook.
• Combine sauce and cooked noodles, top with cucumbers, sprouts, and scallions, and eat!

Pork Fried Rice

Was looking for a good use of the last (still large) serving of carnitas, plus odds and ends of some vegetables left over from the holidays.  Some Googling suggested this idea for a kind of Asian-Latin fusion, took cues mostly from here & here...

Recipe

~1/2 lb pork, pre-cooked (e.g. Chinese barbeque or that carnitas)
6 c rice, cooked
1 egg
butter

Veggies - your choice of:
broccoli
carrot
frozen peas
mushrooms
onion
bell pepper
bok choy
etc.

Sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
5 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp sugar

Heat a tbsp of butter and heat up your pork.  Next add your veggies and stir fry until tender.  Crack in your egg next and scramble it up.  Then add in your rice (you cooked it already, right?) and the sauce mixture and finish stir-frying.

Notes

 Great call - filling and delicious, enough veggies to be probably healthy?

One of those recipes said to start with uncooked pork loin, which is worth considering too I guess depending on what you have on hand - most everything else should be lying around!

Pork & Tomatillo Stew

I'd had this recipe saved for a while.  Seriously, it's been number 2 in my Gmail draft (I need a better system) for years (long enough for the host of number 1 to go out of business?).  Why did it take so long?  There's nothing too out there about it, but it takes the right combination of ingredients (tomatillos may not be easy to find), equipment (dutch oven), time (2+ hours), and appetite (doesn't scale down too well).

What are tomatillos, you may ask?  I kind of assumed the full name was "tomatillo pepper," but apparently it's a Mexican tomato wrapped in a cool husk.  Easy to find at your local Colorado Whole Foods.  Onward!

Recipe

2 lbs pork shoulder (or loin if it's way cheaper...), chopped into big-ish chunks
1 lb tomatillos, de-husked and quartered
1 bottle dark beer
12 oz orange juice
28 oz diced tomatoes
10 cloves garlic, peeled
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
2 jalapenos, chopped
1 can black beans
oil, salt & pepper
sour cream, lime (optional)

Boil your tomatillos and tomatoes in the beer and OJ, then simmer while other stuff goes on.  Season your pork chunks with salt & pepper.  Heat about a quarter cup of oil in a sturdy dutch oven, toss in your garlic, and brown the pork in batches.  Once that's out, in go the onions, cilantro, and jalapeno, then the pork and tomatillo mixture.  Simmer for 2 hours (or pop in the oven at 300).  Last, add in your black beans until heated (and mash up your garlic cloves if you can find them).  Serve with your fixings of choice.

Notes

Really interesting combination of flavors!  To be honest, I was not hopeful smelling the initial tomatillo mixture - all OJ, didn't seem to get much other than foam from the beer.  Meanwhile, I didn't handle the pork quite right - probably should have been bigger chunks, and gotten the oil much, much hotter and crowded the pan less to really let it brown.  (Also added a can of corn with the beans, why not?)  In the end it came together nicely!  Thanks to King Sooper's almost suspiciously-good pork deal, I got like 4 meals-worth of meat- and veggie-rich food for like $10!

Blackberry Glazed Pork Chops

These taste a lot fancier than the amount of effort required to make them! That and a short ingredients list makes these a great dish to impress on the fly...the recipe calls for blackberries, but raspberries work too! (You get a deeper sweeter taste with blackberries. With raspberries, the dish is tangier, more tart.)

(from PaleOMG)

INGREDIENTS:
(2-4 servings)

1-2 lbs. pork chops
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper
12 ounce fresh blackberries (OR RASPBERRIES!)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp water

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Turn grill on.

2. Place pork chops on a plate and cover both sides with cinnamon, thyme, salt, and pepper. Press the spices into the chops.

3. While the grill heats up, place a small saucepan over medium heat and add blackberries, balsamic vinegar, water, and a pinch of salt.

4. Stir sauce frequently to avoid burning on the bottom as it mixes and heats up.

5. Turn heat to low and let sauce simmer for 3-5 minutes.

6. Pour half the sauce into a bowl for glazing purposes. (You can leave the blackberries in the pot, since those look best on top of the chops later.)

7. Use a glazing brush to glaze one side of your chops then place that glazed side down onto your grill.

8. Then glaze the other side, cover grill and let cook for 5-7 minutes per side. Glaze as much as you want...3-4 times preferably.

9. Plate chops and top with the leftover blackberry sauce that has been simmering and thickening up.

Slow Cooker Peach Salsa Pork

New job, so time to experiment with crockpot options for meals ready to eat back at home.  I was hesitant to try this one, since pre-made peach salsa seems like a bit of a shortcut.  But it does make it so simple and easy - just three ingredients!  To wit:

Recipe

2+ lb boneless pork roast
1+ lbs sweet potatoes
2 c peach salsa
vegetable oil, salt & pepper

Chop your sweet potato into 1" chunks - no need to go too small! - and place in the bottom of the crockpot.  Heat a tbsp oil in a heavy skillet.  Season your roast with salt & pepper.  Brown on all sides, then place on top of sweet potatoes.  Pour over the salsa.  Heat on high 4-5 hours, or low 7-9.

Serve with rice, spicy sesame oil, cilantro, parsley, chopped green onion, anything else.

Notes

It took a while to get to this since it's not quite as simple as putting everything in the crockpot and setting it to go for a while.  But it came out well in the end!  The original recipe tells you to neatly slice your pork into chops, but as soon as I tried to do that it shredded.  Not a problem though!  The way my day went, it cooked on the higher end of the time range so maybe dried out a little; a little extra salsa can address that.  The sweet potatoes came out amazing...

Ancho-Cola Pulled Pork

Pork shoulder, peppers and coke?  Sounds good!

Recipe

3 onions
6-9 lb. bone-in pork shoulder
2 cans of chipotles in adobo
24 oz. cola

Peel the onions, cut them in half, and lay them across the bottom of the crockpot.  Put the pork shoulder on top, fat side up.  Pour the chipotles and cola over the pork.  Cook on low for 8-9 hours.

Once it's cooked, remove the pork to a cutting board or bowl and begin to tear apart.  Pour the liquid through a strainer into a saucepan (pressing the solids to squeeze out as much as possible).  Boil down (aggressively) to about 1/4 the volume.  Mix the sauce back into the pork.

Lastly, you have to crisp up the meat.  The original recipe says to fry it with some oil in a skillet, but I preferred to pop it under the broiler.  Once it's crisp, serve with stuff like rice, tortillas, salsa, cheese, sour cream, lime wedges, etc.

Notes

It's a simple recipe, but very rich, especially with the sauce so concentrated down.  A lot of crockpot recipes end when the meat is done, but the texture is worth the extra effort.  Making it in such bulk means you expect to have leftovers, and coming out of the fridge or thawed from the freezer, you just pick up at the crisping step...

Crockpot Pork & Chiles II

I'm always up for a new crockpot recipe.  This one is similar in a lot of ways to one of my favorites, but ends up very different...

Recipe

1 lb pork kebabs or roast
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chicken or veggie broth
1 cup tomato paste
1 can (15 oz) black beans (drained & rinsed)
1 can (4.5 oz) diced chiles
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp sugar (or honey)
salt & pepper

Put it in the crockpot and cook low for 4-5 hours (longer for a roast).

Notes

This one ends up with a much thicker sauce - tomato and bean-based - than the other, brothier recipe.  It can mask the chiles a bit, but still a good one!

Quick Pork Chili

Chili.  Some people get very intense about their recipes and traditions.  Recipes usually take hours to let the elements mingle.  But you don't always have the time or energy for that.  So I gave one of Rachael Ray's recipes a try.  I don't know if it really lives up to her 30-minute claim, but it's pretty tasty for the amount of time and effort that goes in!

Recipe

1 to 1 1/2 lbs ground pork
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp ground cumin
4 shakes hot sauce
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 bottle of beer
1 can (14 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 jalapeno, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped (optional)
chopped cilantro (optional)
grated cheese (optional)
salt & pepper

Heat a pot high and brown the meat, seasoning with the chili, cumin, and hot sauce (and salt & pepper, if you want to do that here).  Then add the onion, pepper(s), garlic, celery, etc., and cook 3-5 minutes.  Pour in the beer and scrape up the bottom of the pot, then add your tomatoes (and cilantro).  Bring to a boil, add salt and pepper if you haven't already, and serve (with cheese).

Notes

I made this with a few differences from dear Rachael's prescription.  First, only in typing this up now did I realize that I used teaspoons of seasoning, not tablespoons.  Rookie mistake, but it didn't really taste under-seasoned...  I also used veal instead of pork as a special birthday treat/because Key Foods didn't have ground pork.  She also recommends half each of a red and green bell pepper.  I think not.  I used a whole red one.  If you're simplifying your purchases too, maybe go with green so it stands out more from the tomato?  No big deal, though.  She also didn't include the jalapeno; I added that in, and ignored the celery and cilantro.  Also, Rachael doesn't address over-sensitive smoke detectors, but I preemptively deactivated mine.  Hmm, think that's about it.  Turned out pretty good!

Apple Smothered Pork Chops

Every once in a while (usually when I haven't had a serving of Chipotle carnitas in a while), I feel like whipping up pork chops for dinner.  This recipe comes from a meat cookbook that's provided a couple strong recipes already.  I skipped straight to their version that subs in some apple and cider:

Recipe

4 bone-in pork chops
4 oz bacon (4 slices), chopped
2 tbsp flour
1 3/4 c apple cider
1 onion, halved & sliced
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and sliced into thin wedges
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
2 bay leaves
oil, salt & pepper

1. Sauce: Fry up the bacon, then remove but leave as much of the grease as you can.  Reduce heat to medium low and whisk in the flour.  Cook, whisking frequently, until it's a rich brown (about 5 minutes).  Then whisk in the cider, increase heat, bring to a boil, then cover and remove from heat.
2. Chops: Heat a tbsp of oil in a skillet over high heat until smoking.  Sprinkle the pork chops with pepper, then put them in the skillet to brown (about 3 minutes per side).  Set aside.
3. Stew: In the same skillet, reduce heat to medium, add a tbsp oil and the onion, apple, 2 tbsp water and a sprinkle of salt.  Caramelize the onions (about 5 minutes), then stir in the garlic and thyme.  Then put the chops back in, cover with onion mixture, pour in the sauce, and add the bay leaves.  Simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, or until you can stab the pork with a knife easily...
4. Gravy: Remove the pork chops to a serving plate.  Increase heat to medium high and simmer the sauce until it thickens into a gravy (about 5 minutes).
5. Serve: Serve the pork chops over a starch, pour over the gravy, and sprinkle with the bacon.

Notes

This one's a bit more labor-intensive than I'm usually looking for.  I definitely like the combined browning and stewing pork chop approach.  I may not have browned them quote enough (I felt like the times above were underestimations), but you do get some good flavor and keep it tender while not overcooking in the pan.

In the end,  I think this came out very well, with a better balance of sweet and savory than some other apple/cider-based recipes I've tried recently.  Sprinkling bacon on top is almost cheating, although I guess the grease plays a key role earlier on.  The recipe recommends egg noodles for a starch.  Here's the (somewhat crowded) final plate I ended up with: chops and gravy over spinach & goat cheese mashed potatoes.  No recipe for that side; just added the extras to the flakes...

Crispy Carnitas

This. is. UNBELIEVABLE.

slightly adapted from Mark's Daily Apple:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/crispy-carnitas/#axzz2K3ExGQtN

INGREDIENTS:

3-4 lbs. boneless pork shoulder/butt, cut into 5 pieces
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 onion, sliced
water, for braising

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together salt, cumin and chili powder and rub all over meat.
Place the meat in a large, heavy pot with cinnamon stick, bay leaf, garlic and onion (Ideally the pot is large enough so that the meat is in a single layer).
Add enough water to almost, but not entirely, cover the meat.
Put the pot in the oven, uncovered, and braise for 3 to 3 1/2 hours.  Stir the meat just a few times while it cooks.
You'll know the pork is done when it's really tender, slightly browned and most of the liquid is gone.
Shred or break up the meat with forks or your hands into the desired level of shredded-ness or chunkiness.
Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaf from the pot.  Return the pot to the oven.
Roast the meat, mixing occasionally, until the meat is as dark and crispy as you like it.  (This process will go even faster if the meat is spread out on a roasting pan or baking sheet with any remaining liquid that was left in the pot.  If time is tight, you can also put the meat under a broiler.)

NOTES:

I cannot even begin to describe how delicious and succulent this is.

We used a bone-in pork butt, which we cut the bone out of and gave to the dog.  So everyone was happy.

We skipped the browning part at the end in favor of 

incredibly moist meat with just the outsides crispy--a fine option--and also cuz we wanted to consume it asap.

As this was the main dish of a Superbowl-themed meal, I served it with nachos (for the non-paleo eaters), homemade guac and sweet potato fries.

MAKE THIS NOW!!!!!!  

Crockpot Apple Ginger Pork

I first tried this recipe a little while back at the convergence of a few themes of my cooking experimentation to that point - paleo recipes from CrossFit, getting use out of my crockpot, and trying to incorporate ginger.  This isn't my favorite crockpot pork roast preparation, but it's a solid recipe with distinctive sweet-but-not-too-sweet flavors.

The Recipe

2 lb pork roast
1 onion, sliced
2 apples, sliced
2/3 cup broth
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp ginger, grated
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp pepper
1 garlic cloves, smashed
1 bay leaf

It's a crockpot recipe.  Put it all in there and cook for like 6-8 hours on high.

Notes

Because of my much lamented mini-crockpot I really had to cut back on the onion and apple just to fit everything.  And I used vegetable broth as the liquid base.  Otherwise, not much to improve on!  I would point out that the recipe doesn't specify a type of apple, but since it gets kind of mushed into the gravy it's not a big deal - I just lean toward something sweet versus tart.

Here's the finished product - that crispy green on the side is a batch of kale chips:

Apple Onion Pork with Butternut Squash

Fall is in the air, but maybe not enough of an autumn chill to turn entirely to soups and stews and such...  Instead, we started with some seasonal produce with this recipe.  It's a bit of an ambitious undertaking, appropriate for a group cooking and eating evening.  Butternut squash is always a bit of an ordeal, and this preparation took longer than anticipated to cook.  On the plus side, though, the crockpot can really turn not-quite-ripe squash into a pleasant goo...  It was a shame it wasn't ready with the rest of the entree, though, because the pork and apple-onion relish (?) really could have used another savory component, and it was not nearly sweet enough to pass off as a dessert.  But it was interesting and fun, and now that I've rambled on, I guess trying to provide those thousand words to make up for no picture...  But yeah, no picture :(

Crockpot Chile Pork

I went through a phase where I was ducking out of work briefly to set up a crockpot meal about once a week - don't know why I stopped!  Aside from the Johnson family classic, this crockpot pork and peppers was maybe the biggest success.  A lot of peppers and spices in there - too many to fit into my kiddie crockpot, unfortunately.  But even cutting back gives the meat plenty of flavor and a great sauce.

The Recipe

2 lb pork roast
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 4-oz cans of diced chiles
2-3 jalapenos, diced
2 cups broth
1 8-oz can of diced tomatoes
1 tsp each of oregano, salt, pepper
1/2 tsp each of cumin, sage, paprika, cayenne pepper

Put your pork in the crockpot, then veggies, then chiles and tomatoes, then spices, then broth.  Cook on low 6-8 hours.

Outcome

Because of said mini-crockpot, I had to stretch the pork for a couple people.  With some tortilla, papaya and kale chips, made a very nice meal:

Baked Breaded Pork Chops

After trying out a number of pork chop recipes, here's the one I've gone back to by far the most.  Breading and baking the chops just seems to be much simpler and harder to mess up than pan-searing it.  Instead of stressing about not over- or undercooking your chops, you have a little bit of fun getting your hands dirty breading it, then just let it sit in the oven some 40 minutes. OK to get specific:

The Recipe

pork chops
butter crackers (1-2 servings per chop)
1 egg
butter
garlic powder, salt and pepper

Beat the egg(s); crush the crackers and sprinkle in the seasonings and anything else you want to mix in.  Dip the chops in egg, then coat with the cracker mixture.  Put in a baking dish with pats of butter - a quarter cup for two chops.  Cover and bake at 375 degrees for 35-45 minutes.

Thoughts

I've experimented with different substitutions and additions to the breading - Corn Flakes, pretzels, Goldfish, Parmesan.  But it's hard to top the way the butter crackers absorb the juices and, yes, butter.  If you do want to change it up, I recommend mixing equal parts crushed butter cracker and breading element of choice.

Another advantage of the hands-off baking approach is that, while it's cooking, you have plenty of time to prepare a vegetable or other side, e.g., roasted asparagus, Parmesan zucchini, or sauteed kale.

Pretzel pork with roast asparagus

Cider-Brined Pork & Gravy

Notes
This is apparently some sort of award-winning pork dish from Food52.com.  As such, it's probably most appropriate for special occasions - it requires some fancy liquor ingredients and a day's advance preparation.  But you can't very well promise it to guests without giving it a run though first, can you?

So what actually is/are calvados?  Some fancy kind of Spanish or Portuguese brandy?  Are there any non-fancy brandies?  In any case, it's not something I have lying around, or would invest $40 (as per recipe comments) in for one cooking experiment.  So I gave it a shot (heh) with some spiced rum instead.  Similarly, I replaced the various mustard/mustard elements with spoonfuls of good old Gulden's from my fridge.  I also used milk instead of cream, which in general seems not to not effect the texture too adversely in small portions.  Otherwise, the ingredients were surprisingly simple and mostly on hand.

Recipe

Pork
2 thick bone-in pork chops

Brine
2 cups apple cider
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp peppercorns
2 tsp mustard seeds
3 sprigs thyme

Sauce
1/4 cup calvados
1 shallot, minced
1 tbsp thyme, minced
1/3 cup apple cider
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp mustard

Day 1
Combine brine ingredients in a saucepan and simmer until dissolved.  Remove from heat and let cool.  Put your chops in a single layer in a pan, pour in the brine, cover, and let sit overnight.

Day 2
Rinse and dry the chops and season with a little salt & pepper.  Heat up 1-2 tbsp oil in a skillet and saute your pork until cooked through, 4-5 minutes a side.  Set aside your chops, pour out excess oil, and deglaze the pan with the calvados, scraping up bits.  Add 2 tbsp butter, then the shallots and thyme.  Saute a couple minutes, then add the cider and cream, and boil to thicken.  Then stir in the mustard and serve over the pork.

Outcome

This was dear-God good.  Yes, a lot of it came from the straightforward salt part of the brine.  It was hard to pick out the distinct components of the sauce, let alone the brine, but overall it was a very rich combination.  Shallots and thyme are very solid, flavorful ingredients.  And despite the whole cooking process spanning over 24 hours, no one part of it was too time-intensive.  The process left me time to cook dinner the night before, and could leave time for side dishes the day of, although I just served it (to myself) with some greens and carrots, extra sauce poured over the top, of course

One tip: I went pretty quickly from heating the brine to pouring it over the meat, which looked like it actually mildly started cooking the outside edges of the chops.  I'd probably let it cool first next time.