To be Mrs. Marv…

Every now and again there’s a bunch of pork in the house. Then stuff needs to be made from it or it goes bad. (Bad pork, bad, bad pork!)

In the meantime, you get pulled pork. But not the pulled pork you would expect in the summer. No grills or smoke are in use. It’s been rainy and cold here - so I just braised it in the oven. (Although, you could easily braise on a grill.) But in an effort to try to pretend that it’s summer, I decided to play with one of my favorite sauces for pork made from equal parts of vinegar, yellow mustard and brown sugar. To work the sweet/tang taste, I braised braised in beer and mustard. Yummy. A bit of a taste of summer even if there’s no proof of it outside.

Pulled Pork Braised in Beer & Mustard

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I love creating something out of nothing. It’s funny, because one could reasonably argue that my life is about creating nothing out of nothing. When the power goes out, my work no longer exists. Perhaps that’s why I’m so partial to baking bread. It’s something out of nothing - that brings people joy. You don’t need much in the way of resources. Bit of flour, water, heat and time and you’re good to go. I’m convinced that if you have a warm loaf of bread all is right with the world.

It’s love… really.

Um, yeah. This worked quite well.

So, perhaps my work is not nothing out of nothing. If (by incredibly abstract extension from bread-making) it’s love, then it transcends medium. A case that may prove this point is Figs With Bri creator and author, Bri Brownlow. She is one of the many kindly people who has invited the world into her life through the words that she writes and the food that she eats. The grateful people who read what she writes have answered back. When Bri wrote about her recurrence of cancer they arose out of the nothing to help. Which means that, while all is not right with the world, it’s not crap either.

Along with the fundraiser there’s a CLICK photo contest, in honor of Bri. Photos are to feature the color yellow which made me think of my chubble bread. Bri made this recipe of mine (with her own modifications) a few months ago and talked about making a sweet version. I’ve thought about this as well and while a most appropriate version would have featured figs and brie, I chose to go with lemon, blueberry, pecan and mascarpone cheese. (It’s decidedly lighter and healthier than it’s predecessor.)

CLICK - that’s the zest. Zest is good.

The bread worked well. When it was done, we (Marv and I) decided it was good, but needed a bit of glaze to polish it off. Yeah… that was more good.

Please, join me in sending your best wishes to Bri and eating good bread.

Love, always.

MrsMarv

That’s right, when life gives you lemons - make bread.

Sponge:
1 t active dry yeast
1/2 c warm water 105°f to 115°f
3/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour

Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a large bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until very bubbly and doubled, about 45 minutes.

Dough:
1 t active dry yeast
1 c warm water, 105°f to 115°f
3 T olive oil
Sponge, above
1/4 c honey
1/4 c dried milk
3 1/2 - 3 3/4 c unbleached all purpose flour
2 t kosher salt

Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a small bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 5 to 10 minutes. Using a heavy-duty mixer, add the dissolved yeast, honey, dried milk and olive oil to the sponge in the mixer bowl; mix in with the paddle attachment until well blended. Add in salt. Add in flour 1/4 c at a time - when you get to 3 cups add flour slower checking it until dough stops being very sticky and is only slightly sticky.

Change to the dough hook and knead at medium speed until the dough is soft, velvety and slightly sticky, 3 to 4 minutes. At this point you will be able to pull the dough up into peaks with your fingers. Finish by sprinkling 1 T of flour on your work surface and kneading the dough briefly. Transfer to a bowl lightly coated with olive oil and cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled 1 1/2 hours, or so.

Stuffs:

6 oz marscapone cheese, frozen then cut into small chunks
1 c pecans
1c blueberries
1/3 c sugar
zest from 2 - 3 lemons
3 T olive oil
1/4 t salt

Just before the rise is done, prep and toss together all stuffs ingredients in a large bowl. Coat the mixture with oil.

Stuffs & Second Rise:

Put a coating of stuffs in an empty wide bowl. Empty out bread on a non-sick surface. Shape into an flat rectangle, approximately 1/2″ - 1″ thick. Using a pizza wheel, cut loaf into inch wide strips. They do not need to be uniform. Then cut off one inch ends and put them into the stuffs bowl. Toss dough cubes into the stuffs mixture and gently coat them. Add in more stuffs periodically so that they stay separate.

Divide mixture into your baking pans. I generally do two pie plates but you can do loaves, cake pans or even muffin tins. Once you have dough in pans cover with plastic wrap and leave for second rise in a warm area. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Baking:
Preheat oven to 400°f. Brush top with olive oil and bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. (If top starts to brown too much, place on top shelf of your oven.

Glaze
1/4 c powdered sugar
2 oz marscapone cheese, melted
1 T lemon juice

Whisk all together and drizzle over bread. Enjoy!

Let me count the ways… All right, there aren’t many ways, but I do love the falafel. The best falafel I ever had was in Austin, Texas. Ah, Austin, home of many vegan delights… Yes, it was silly - but we had driven from Minneapolis to Austin, and after Iowa it gets hard to find much to eat on the road besides meat. I needed a break, and it was so good. The little patties were crispy on the outside but tender, savory and flavorful on the inside.

Falafel made from scratch at home has always eluded me. But I’ve had to keep trying because the place by my house that has falafel on the menu serves up these mini falafel pucks that only serve to make me wish that I was in Texas. Or knew how to make it myself. It seemed that every time I tried the little beasts would explode or suffer from some sort of garbanzo bean plate tectonic syndrome. Soon there would be little fried bean bits floating and bursting into flames in hot oil, victims of the unfair and unstable universe on which they lived. And I didn’t have a clue why.

“It’s street food for crying out loud! It can’t be that freakin’ hard,” I’d cry to Marv who would just roll his eyes over my falafel incompetence. Then, while I was on a plane, I read a description of falafel that said it was a dough made from garbanzo beans and spices that’s fried in oil and served in pita bread with cucumber sauce and lettuce. A dough. Doh! All the recipes I had tried were basically bean patties with nothing holding them together.

Armed to the teeth with this new information - I had another go. And it worked beautifully. Yea! Falafel for me!

Falafel

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Several weeks ago, Marv made the observation that we never had a wedding cake. I really couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember the cake that he made, considering I clearly remember looking up to see the top layers slowly gaining speed as they slid off their base. Doing the whole wedding reception ourselves had seemed like a good idea. (We tend to do things like this.) For some reason, we also wanted to have it where we lived, in an illegal loft space in ghetto central, with bullet holes through the windows, prostitutes on the street and whatnot. We even briefly considered having a bbq out on the roof but there was no telling who or what would be wandering through the alley so we decided to have Sunday brunch inside. (Prostitutes, pushers and pimps generally sleep in on Sundays. Preachers have somewhere else to be. The street would be relatively hassle free for our people.)

Yep, this sign was in the alley. It is my all time favorite handmade sign. (This one is a close second.)

Regardless of our highly questionable logic, we did have the skills to pull this off. Marv had recently retired (at age 27) from being a chef. At his last cooking job he worked 80 - 100 hour weeks for almost a year at a bakery/cafe and had proven that he could cook brunch in his sleep - with a crazy woman screaming at him if need be. But not this crazy woman. I was running around getting everything else but food done. Oh, and it was 105°f out. I was having problems just wearing clothes, therefore generating more heat by screaming was absolutely out of the question.

Marv was a rock. Not only did he crank out a half dozen different kinds of muffins, several salads and sandwiches (on bread he baked, of course) but he also took on making a flourless almond cake he was going to make for a wedding while at the bakery. The wedding got called off, so he never made it and when we decided to do the reception ourselves, he said he wanted to make the cake that got away. My response was, “Dude, you’re doing the baking, make what you want.” Little did I know that chocolate ganache + 105°f = very slidey cake.

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I missed the one bit of competitive cooking I do every year… but I still couldn’t get it out of my system. Hence, the overwhelming desire to dork around with a tuna noodle casserole. I could not resist. (Frankly, I don’t think you should either.)

I’ve changed it up from “tuna surprise,” to nice big chunks of tuna paired with edamame and bacon. The sauce is a bit sweet with the addition of some corn and topped with a bit of bacon grease tossed breadcrumbs for a nice crunch. And while it does take more work than the whole mix random stuff together and stick it in a pan bit, I think you will like it.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

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Insert rant about how easy it is to cook a fresh meal quick fast in a hurry here. Alright, so I misremembered and there really wasn’t much of a rant there. I’m just feeling lazy and unranty. What can a girl do?

I guess she can make dinner in about 5 minutes flat. Here goes.

Alabama White Sauce
1/2 c mayonnaise
1/4 c cider vinegar
juice from half a lemon
1 T honey
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1/2 t cayenne

Stir together sauce ingredients and place in refrigerator for 1 hour. This sauce can be made ahead and it will keep in your refrigerator for weeks.

Panko Breaded Catfish
Heat pan over medium-high heat.

Beat one egg in a shallow bowl. Add in some salt, pepper and whatever other spice you eould like. Coat catfish fillet in egg mixture.

Put some panko in a a shallow dish. Press catfish into panko firmly. Add some oil into the pan and then the fish. Cook until brown, flip, cook the other side until brown and fish is firm.

Serve with sauce.

Cooking for my mother can be tough. She’s picky. She’s very picky. But when she called me up in November and said, “I’m almost out of the good ones biscuits.” I knew exactly what she wanted.

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Answer: my brother.

See that bottle there poking it’s spicy little head out from my mother’s refrigerator? That’s my brother’s doing. And even though he’s cheffing all the way on the other side of the state, his influence on my mom’s kitchen is seen and appreciated.

The second best thing about cooking in Florida is walking into markets and smelling the sweet smell of calico scallops fresh from the gulf singing out to you like little crazed sirens while you’re still 20′ away. They smelled like dinner to me. I decided to combine them with some pasta, asparagus, parmesan shavings and a burre blanc sauce.

Burre Blanc sauce is one of them classic French sauces, basically you cook some shallots in some wine (+citrus) until it reduces a lot and then you whisk in butter (a lot of butter) one lump at a time until you have sauce. The only problem there was to how to make sure my mom didn’t know how much butter I was sticking in the sauce.

The upside of all that butter is that a little goes a long way, and then you have what is essentially flavored butter you can use for other things. One look at the sauce the next morning and I figured I now had breakfast too. Scrambled eggs using the sauce and parmesan, with a side of the leftover asparagus tossed in orange juice and some nice sourdough toast drizzled with truffle oil suited me just fine.

So, for any who know me and are startled by the fact that I’m eating eggs, by themselves, yeah, you’re right, I don’t like them. But then again, then you also know that I’m (almost) always up for proving myself wrong. It’s entirely possible that I’ve only had scrambled eggs made by substandard cooks. (Although, this isn’t actually the case.) My deal with eggs (and nearly everything else I don’t like to eat) is the texture. If they’re cooked so that… uh, curds(?) don’t form I’m all good. Watch this clip of Gordon Ramsay from The F Word if you want to see the basic method (although I tend to take a slower boat to get there), you even get to see him burn toast.

Scallops with Pasta and Burre Blanc Sauce

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I love making sausage. I know, I’m an odd duck. But there’s just something about all that squelching that makes me happy. I love the way it feels under my fingertips, the way it looks when it’s being ground, the way it smells when it’s being cooked and of course how it tastes (most of the time.)

Even though you might think that making sausage at home, from scratch, is quirky at best, it really is a lot easier and tastier than you might think. Look at it this way; pretty much anything you could make with any other meat could be replicated in a sausage, cheaper, easier and don’t forget; portable. Alright, take these sausages for example; I decided that I really wanted to try to make a chicken curry type thing in a sausage. I had grandiose plans of using coconut milk and fresh ground spices, but ended up using a spice mix and upping the ginger and garlic. Then I got the sweet coconut flavor it was missing by using ground up raisins. Granted this isn’t a literal translation, but it sure is good. It’s also pretty economical, I got at least couple dozen sausages for under $10.* I know exactly what’s in them. And I enjoyed making them every step of the way.

Thai Spiced Chicken Sausage

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In the midst of our kitchen remodel Marv turned to me and said the sweetest words a girl can ever hear, “Can I just have this refrigerator for my birthday so that I can start cold curing sausage and you just get a new one.”

Why, yes, my dear, you can.

Few things can be better than having more random meat products* show up in the house, but the new refrigerator is. We downgraded. Couldn’t be happier about it either. We had the smallest standard-size refrigerator you can buy here. It was 19cf or so. For the new one we got a 14.5cf Summit which is counter depth and about 6.5′ high. We can now actually find things. I hope to never again loose anything that was really tasty but I didn’t know we had any left.

There was one problem. We did have to clean out the freezer a bit. Maybe not so much a problem. Had some lamb, had some pie crusts and had some Bells Expedition Stout a kindly chef left me. To me, that looked like a pot pie. (I do so love a pot pie. Alright, I love any pie, but pot pies do keep their own special place in my heart.) As a last little touch I added in some manchego cheese (the kindly chef also left behind) to melt right under the crust. It was frightfully good.

Lamb Pot Pie

6 lamb chops
1 onion, coarsely chopped
olive oil

2 T butter
2 T flour
2 c organic beef broth

1/2 onion, chopped into bite sized pieces
4 carrots, chopped into bite sized pieces
8 oz brown mushrooms, into bite sized pieces

1lb fingerling potatoes, boiled and cut into bite sized pieces.
3 T beef demiglase
salt to taste
1 c Bell’s Expedition Stout
manchego cheese, sliced

pie crust

Heat a bit of olive oil until it gets hot enough to shimmer. Place lamb into the oil and cook until nicely browned. Turn over and brown the other side. Remove from heat and add in onions. Cook until tender and add in butter. Once butter is melted add in flour. Lower heat and cook until browned. Add in beef broth 1/2 c at a time and cook until thickened before adding in the next 1/2 c. Once gravy reduces down to be a bit too thick add in the stout.

Break up the lamb into bite sized pieces. Heat up a bit more olive oil and cook onions and carrots until just about tender. Add in mushrooms and cook until they’re all tender. Add in the gravy and the lamb. Remove from heat and let sit while you roll out the dough.

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