Schnitzel, cucumber salad, fries and cauliflower

My last post is from April 7th. It's not that I haven't eaten since then, but sometimes I forget to take pictures. And other times the food is just not "photo" worthy. As you can see with the picture of the refrigerator soup, it looks awful. It looks more like a swamp in a plate! The soup looks awful but tasted wonderful.

The reason why I took the picture of my dinner tonight is for several reasons. One, to show how important color is when presenting a meal. The food is all white or white-ish and looks like a terrible combination. The other reason why I took the picture is because at least three of the items on the plate remind me of dear friends and new people I've met.

The schnitzel was made with some pork that was leftover from a picnic roast I purchased several months ago. When I interviewed Ursula from Germany for Idaho's Melting Pot, she prepared these fabulous schnitzels from scratch. I love schnitzels but somehow had never fathomed the idea of making them myself (yeah, I know, I'm such a dork sometimes). When I saw how easy it was to make and how wonderful they tasted, I knew this was going to be a keeper!

The cucumber salad is something I learned from Ursula as well. Salting the slices helps to remove some of the water from the cukes and improve the cucumber flavor, and a dollop of sour cream adds silkiness, flavor and a great balance. A great dish that is a winner everytime!

The fries were home-cut and home-fried in the oven. When I visited Mark in West Virginia I made these fries for dinner one night. Mark loved them and said they were the best oven fries he had ever tasted. Quite a compliment from such a good cook!

And the cauliflower.....I had forgotten how great cauliflower tastes. When I saw a recipe for cauliflower on My Kitchen In Half Cups, I was inspired to make it. As usual, I'm useless with recipes and ended up doing my own thing. Still turned out great (cauliflower with cheese is SOOOO Dutch!) but the real surprise was the few raw florets that were left over in the colander. I munched on them while I prepared the rest of the food and was delighted with the fresh, crisp taste. Gotta remember that!

But most of all, the reason why I'm posting the picture and the recipes is because all four items are so simple and easy to make. And I believe that in there lies the charm of good food: simple, easy to make and yet so tasty.

Schnitzel
4 boneless pork chops
1 egg
1 cup of panko or homemade breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon of italian herbs or your own favorite blend
1 tablespoon of butter or oil

Butterfly the pork chops, cover them with plastic film and pound them thin. Beat the egg in a plate, mix the panko and seasonings in another. Dip the meat on both sides in the egg, then dip it in the breadcrumbs so that each side of the meat is neatly covered. Pat the coating down carefully with a flat hand and repeat the process with the rest of the meat.

Heat the butter or oil in a skillet and brown the schnitzels on both sides, for about four minutes each. Since the meat is so thin, it doesn't need a lot of time to be ready.

German Cucumber Salad
1 medium size cucumber
1 teaspoon of salt
1 heaping tablespoon of sour cream
Pinch of dill and ground pepper

Peel the cucumber, then slice on a mandolin or cheese slicer into thin slices. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumber and mix well. Set aside for about 30 minutes. Pour off the excess water. Taste a slice. If it's too salty, you can rinse the cucumber and get rid of the saltiness. Stir in the sour cream, the dill and the pepper. Taste and adjust.

French fries
4 large Russett potatoes
4 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
Pinch of salt

Scrub the potatoes, dry them and cut into 6 wedges. Dry the cut pieces with a paper towel. Heat two tablespoons of oil on a rimmed baking sheet in a 450F oven. Toss the potatoes with the remaining oil and place the skin-side down in the hot oil. Bake for about 10 minutes, turn the potatoes on their side, bake for another ten minutes and turn them over on the other side. When they're golden brown, take them out, toss them in a bowl lined with paper towels and salt. Eat while hot.

Cauliflower with cheese
1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Pinch of italian seasonings
1/2 cup of grated cheddar cheese

Parboil the florets in the microwave, two minutes. Toss with the olive oil, add the garlic and seasonings and bake in an oven dish for twenty minutes. Sprinkle the cheese on top, bake for several minutes more until the cheese is melted and serve.

See? Simple as can be, and yet so good, easy and affordable.

Biscuits and Gravy

Emile's comment the other day made me realize that biscuits and gravy could easily be misinterpreted as some outlandish concoction, especially if you translate the American biscuit for an English one and gravy for eh...gravy. It's not a biscuit and it's not gravy, at least not how you know it overseas. Trust me.

Here in America it's a regular item for breakfast, both at home and in restaurants, but I understand the confusion. Notes from a travel journal I kept on a trip to Memphis in the mid-nineties (yes, that was last century!) reads: "This morning we're eating breakfast at a large family restaurant. It's possible to order off the menu but most guests are gathered around the breakfast buffet, loading up their plates with the most bizarre combinations. The pancakes here are as thick as roof tiles and some of the items on the buffet line would do well to appear for dinner, but surely not for breakfast? Fried rice, shredded potatoes? And the most bizarre thing of all, regardless of what's on their plate, each guest is sure to ladle spoonfuls of some off-white, lumpy sauce on top."

Well, that off-white, lumpy sauce back then was gravy. I did not know it then and when I finally moved to the United States and figured it out, I avoided the stuff like the plague. It looked lumpy and pasty and I was convinced it would taste like wallpaper paste. I tried my hand at biscuits once but they emerged from the oven like hockey pucks so that was that. I shelved the whole "biscuits and gravy" thing away as one of those American things I'd never understand, like root beer and corn dogs.

Fast forward to last Spring. Talking about food one day with my friend Luke from West Virginia, he mentioned that his were the best biscuits and gravy. I was sceptical but was willing to give it a try. What can I say? The man was right. The biscuits were buttery, tender and flaky and the sausage gravy warm, spicy and comforting. To this day, I cannot make them as fluffy and buttery as he does but they'll do.

The key is, for the biscuits, to not overwork the dough: the less you handle it, the better. Easy to say, harder to do for a breadbaking fool like me, but I manage to restrain myself and just pat the whole thing together. As for the gravy.....get good quality sausage and make sure you cook the gravy long enough to get rid of the flour taste.

Biscuits and gravy
For the biscuits
1 cup of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons of cold butter
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon of sour cream
1 tablespoon melted butter

Mix the first three ingredients, cut in the cold butter and stir in the buttermilk and the sour cream. Carefully fold the dough several times until it comes together  (four or five folds will do) and pat into a rectangle on a lightly floured countertop. Take a glass or a cup that has the circumference for the biscuits you want (average of 3 inches will do just fine) and cut rounds out of the dough. In the meantime, heat the oven to 400F. Melt the two tablespoons of butter in the oven dish. Take each biscuit and carefully place it face down into the butter, then flip it over so that the butter-covered side is up. Continue until the dish is full but not crowded. Bake the biscuits golden-brown in about 12-15 minutes.

For the gravy
8 oz of mild pork sausage
8 oz of spicy pork sausage
2 tablespoons of flour
1/2 cup of milk

Fry both sausage meats in a skillet until it's crumbly and cooked. Sprinkle the flour over the meat, stir several times, then slowly stir in the milk. Keep stirring, making sure you get all the crunchy bits off the bottom of the pan until the sauce thickens. Taste and adjust the flavor if needed.

Tear open a warm biscuit and ladle a generous spoonful of gravy over the two halves. Sit down, take a bite and be comforted!

Somehow you always end up with a bit of leftover biscuit dough: too small to make another biscuit but too much to just throw away. Here's what you can do: pat it together, roll it out and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Roll up jelly-roll style, slice and place sliced side down into a buttered ramekin. Sprinkle some more sugar on top and bake with the rest of the biscuits at 400F. Yummie with a scoop of ice cream or just to munch on while you wait. Now, ain't that cute?

Kale with Kielbasa

The Dutch have a very solid and varied repertoire of winter dishes: solid in the sense that they all consist of the culinary trinity (meat, vegetables and potatoes) and varied because well....because there is scarcely a thing the Dutch don't add to their famous "stamppot". Literally meaning 'stomped pot", stamppot is a dish that consists of boiled potatoes mashed with either a raw or cooked vegetable. The meat is either served on top, on the side or cut into small pieces and mixed in. If the choice of protein generates any type of pan juice or jus, it will be served in a small hollow made on top of the mashed potato dish, the so-called "kuiltje jus" (kinda like a pothole in the road but different).

Those that know me well will be surprised to see that I served up mashed potatoes with kale, a dish simply called "boerenkool". There are few things in the food world that I don't care for, and one of them is boerenkool. Or was, should I say. Somehow the American kale is not half as bitter as the Dutch one is, so after preparing this dish with Michiel for Idaho's Melting Pot, I was pleasantly surprised, enough even to go home and cook it for myself two days later.

Kale is a dark-leaf vegetable that will add plenty of nutrition to your diet: it is riddled with vitamins and minerals and contributes plenty of protein. The butter and the kielbasa....not so much.

Kale with kielbasa

3 bunches of kale (or 1 lb)
6 large potatoes
3 tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup of milk, warmed
1 smoked kielbasa
Salt

Cut the leaves off the stems and slice the leaves into narrow strips. Peel the potatoes, quarter them and place them in a Dutch oven. Add water to barely cover the potatoes, then put the kale on top, add the kielbasa. Cover the pot with a lid and bring to a boil. Boil on a low flame for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done. Remove the kielbasa, pour off any cooking liquid that may remain and mash the vegetables with a fork or a potato masher. Add the butter and the milk and stir the whole into a creamy consistency. Slice the kielbasa and place it on top of the stamppot. Serve with mustard if desired.

Chile Verde Pork

Sometimes I'm at a loss. There are only a few choices of protein that I keep in the freezer: chicken, beef and pork, and its variants such as sausage, smokies and other obscure meat products. (Oh yeah, and a couple of pieces of salmon that I realllly need to use up one of these days, recipe anyone?). Anyway, back to the loss. Here's how it usually goes: if I pull beef out of the freezer, I'm inclined to go for a roast or some type of beef stew like Beef Balsamico or zuurvlees. If the choice falls on chicken, I come up with a myriad of ways to prepare it: roast, stewed, fried, grilled......you name it. But with pork, all I can think of is shredded pork. And that's it. And I really wasn't in the mood for shredded pork.

So when I found* a pork picnic roast in the freezer, I knew I had to come up with a different recipe. Browsing the web, I came across various ways to prepare "pork chile verde" and remembered that several months ago a dear friend from Colorado, Fred Fell, emailed me a recipe of pork chile verde. At first glance it seemed a bit spicy because of the jalapeños, and there was no bean in sight. And you know me, I love beans. I automatically assumed that "chile" meant beans. Well, not so much. Chile can also be eh...chile. As in peppers. Duh.....it took me a minute or two to process that thought. And here is me pretending to know it all!

But ofcourse, between one thing and another, I could not find the recipe and I didn't just want to get any old recipe from the web. I emailed Fred and hey presto! he responded this morning with the recipe. Just in time to get some essentials at the store and get cracking!

Now, Fred is going to wonder why I even bothered to ask him about the recipe at all: I ended up using a variety of different items that were not the original ingredients. But that's just how it goes, and I can't help it. I start following a recipe and halfway through I think: "Hmmmmmm, I wonder what happens when I use this instead?" or "Would that other thing be just as tasteful?". Yeah, so I'm useless following recipes, what can I say?

Chile Verde Pork

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 lb of pork meat, cubed

2 teaspoons of cumin

1 teaspoon of black pepper
2 teaspoons of dried oregano
1 yellow onion, peeled and sliced thin
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 lb of tomatillos, husked
1 can of roasted green chiles
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 cups of warm water
1/2 chicken bouillon cube (or 2 cups of chicken stock instead of the water and the bouillon)
1 cup of cilantro, stems and leaves

Heat the oil in a skillet or Dutch oven and quickly brown the pork, adding the cumin,the oregano and the pepper. Plug in the crockpot and transfer the pork after draining the fat, keeping enough fat in the pan for the next step. Sauté the onion and the garlic in the fat and add to the meat in the crockpot. Slice the tomatillos in half and place them, together with the unpeeled garlic, cut side down in the skillet. Cover and roast for about five minutes, then turn them over and roast for another five minutes or until the garlic feels soft. Put the tomatillos, skin and all, in a blender bowl and add the canned green chiles and the cilantro. Squeeze the soft garlic out of the skins and add them to the bowl. Quickly blend into a smooth, green sauce.

Now add the sauce to the crockpot. Simmer for two hours until meat is tender. Taste and see if you want to adjust the flavor with some more cumin, cilantro, salt or pepper. Remember, a recipe is just a guideline! Serve with rice and tortillas and a refreshing dollop of sour cream.

What can I say? Heaven must be green. The meat is tender, the sauce is flavorful and has a lovely tomato-ey flavor but not the acidity from a red tomato, and the cilantro is a wonderful touch. You just have to try it, I guess! If you want to add some heat, blend in a jalapeño or two.

* It's not like I open the freezer one day and go "hey ho! what's this?". Well, actually I do but what I meant to say is that I was the one who put the roast there in the first place, it's not like I have some little gnomes running around stuffing food into my freezer. Or that my freezer is so huge that I lose things in there. Although I do sometimes wonder....I've been cooking out of this thing for the last three years now and there is just no end in sight. Maybe the gnome story is not so far-fetched after all?

Leftover dinner...............

Yummm.....I'm busy baking bread for tomorrow's Ladies Dinner so tonight I'm eating the leftovers from yesterday's pulled pork on tortilla chips with a dollop of sour cream and some refreshing salsa yummm! Wow, what a sentence......

Shredded Barbeque Pork with Black Beans

It's cold, it's dark and there is no sign of summer in any way, shape or form. The snow is still on the ground and, in my most pessimistic moments, I'd almost dare say I am sure the sun's left us for good. Global warming? Ha! Half of the globe is snowed in and iced over, and the other half is drowning in rain. Kinda sort of. But look at this....is this cold or is this cold??

I'm exaggerating a little bit but yesterday was one of those days where a healthy salad, a quick snack or a boring sandwich could not have managed to make the blues go away. Fortunately, I have just the food for that! The beautiful smell of barbeque wafting from your crockpot will put a smile on your face and make you feel a little warmer inside, and with the help of your faithful storage items, this dish is a cinch to make. Global warming? Huh. Cold outside? It's all good. Just pull up to the table, grab a plate and enjoy this gorgeous summery dish. If you don't like pork, it can easily be made with chicken or beef.

Barbeque Pulled Pork

1 pork roast (about 1lb for four)

1 medium size onion, peeled and sliced thin
1 small can of tomato sauce
1 small can of roasted green chiles
2 cups of your favorite barbeque sauce
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of chili powder
1/2 teaspoon of oregano
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

Salsa
Sour Cream
Tortillas

Fire up the crockpot and add the onions, tomato sauce, chiles, barbeque sauce and spices and stir. You can cut up the roast in chunks or put the whole thing in whole, whatever fits best but turn it over once or twice so it's covered in barbeque/tomato sauce.

Cook on high for 6 hours or until the meat is tender. Pull the pork out, shred it with two forks to pieces and stir it back into the sauce. Taste and adjust (you might like more cumin or chili). Stir in the can of black beans. Heat for another ten minutes or until the beans are hot.

Warm the tortillas, put one on a plate and put two heaping spoons of barbeque pork in the middle. Add a dab of sour cream and salsa, roll up and eat! For some crunch, you can top it with some shredded lettuce.

This meat is also good over a plate of tortilla chips nacho-style or served over rice.

Stuffed Pork Loin

The day before Christmas was one of much culinary debate (in my head) about what to eat. Turkey again? Prime rib (the official turkey replacement on this holiday) or perhaps even just a festive pizza? I knew for a fact that I did not house a full-fledged turkey in my freezer and could swear that no prime rib was hiding among the many UFOs (Unidentified Frozen Objects), so something else had to take its place. And something did: a beautiful, almost forgotten and pushed to the back frozen pork loin. A porker, you may well say, at almost two pounds. That should do the trick!

Pork on Christmas day almost seems blasphemous, but heck. See if you can get a nice pork loin with some fat on the top: it'll make the roast more moist when you prepare it. Pork nowadays ranks lower in fat than chicken and is leaner than we've been used to so adjust your cooking times accordingly. Internal temperature for pork is, according to the USDA's safety chart, safe to eat at 160F. Go much higher than that and you risk a dry brick for dinner: at 350F in the oven and somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds, you can calculate up to 25 minutes per pound.

Stuffed Pork Loin

1 pork loin, 2 lbs.
1 package of Boursin*
2 cups of fresh spinach leaves, no stems
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of butter
Thyme
Salt
Pepper
Kitchen twine**

6 red potatoes, small
1 red onion, medium size
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 bay leaves

Roll cut*** the pork loin, cover with plastic wrap and pound flat to about an inch of thickness. Spread the soft cheese over the inside of the pork, leaving about an inch of margin on all sides. Cover the cheese with the spinach leaves and roll up the pork, tucking in the ends. Tie the loin with kitchen twine. (Don't worry about how it looks since you'll cut the pork into slices before serving it. For now the most important thing is that the meat stays together and the cheese doesn't have a chance to seep out once it's melted.) Sprinkle salt, pepper and thyme on the cutting board and roll the stuffed pork loin in it so that it is evenly seasoned.

Brush the potatoes under streaming water, pat dry and cut in fours. Slice the red onion in six to 8 pieces.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Heat butter and olive oil in a cast iron skillet or Dutch oven and when hot, sear the pork loin on all four sides. Arrange the potato chunks around it, divide the onion on top and add the garlic in between. Place the bay leaves on top of the vegetables and place all this in the oven, middle rack.

Roast for 45 minutes or until the internal temperature reads 160F. Remove the pork from the pan and cover with aluminum foil on a cutting board for about ten minutes. Then cut the string, slice the pork and serve with the potatoes. Merry Christmas!

* Boursin is a soft creamy cheese with garlic and herbs. You may find something similar at your grocery store or if you want to make it yourself, blend four ounces of whipped butter with one package of cream cheese (softened), two minced cloves of garlic, a pinch of salt and pepper, large pinch of your three favorite herbs: thyme, oregano, marjoram, chives, parsley, dill....they can be either dried or fresh, whatever is available to you. Taste and adjust, then blend until smooth and refrigerate overnight, so that the flavors can blend. The leftovers are great on toasted bread or crackers, or whipped into eggs for a wonderful omelet.

** If you don't have kitchen twine, plain old cotton crochet thread or cotton string will work just fine. Avoid waxed twine, or sisal/hemp twine because they will leave fibers in your food. Dental floss is not recommended either! If you have nothing at all that can substitute the twine, hold the pork loin together with toothpicks but the pork loin will loose some of its juices. Compensate by placing a tablespoon of butter on top of the roast when it goes in the oven.

*** Roll cutting allows you to cut the pork loin so that you can "roll" it out into a flat sheet of meat, cover it with stuffing and then "roll" it back up into a stuffed pork loin. It takes a bit of practice, but check here to see how it can be done: http://www.ehow.com/video_2336362_prep-meat-stuffed-pork-loin.html.

Pork Panini with Roasted Red Peppers

Panini is plural for panino, bread roll, in Italian. The word itself creates a visual image of crunchy grilled bread with dark crisscross marks on the outside, and hot tasty meat, roasted vegetables and oozing cheese on the inside.

Yesterday I pulled four thin cut pork loin boneless chops out of the freezer. The thin cut serves especially well for sandwiches, as it cooks quicker. And with four crunchy rolls from our local Tres Coronas Bakery (more about this place some other time!), we'll have a quick and tasty lunch today. Serves four.

Pork Panini

1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced very thin
1 can of mushrooms, 4 oz, drained
4 thin cut pork loins, boneless
1 tablespoon of rosemary (dried or fresh)
4 rolls
4 slices of Swiss or American cheese
roasted red peppers (the dollar stores carries these often, buy some extra next time you're in there!)
salt and pepper

Melt 1/2 of the olive oil in a large skillet or grill pan and add the sliced onion, letting it simmer on low until the onion is soft and lightly browned, about ten minutes. Drain the can of mushrooms and add to the onions, simmer on low for five more minutes, add a small pinch of salt and pepper, then push them to one side of the pan.

Lightly salt and pepper the pork chops on both sides and rub in the rosemary. Melt the rest of the oil in the pan and quickly sear the meat on both side, then turn to low. Stir the onions with the mushrooms once or twice to make sure they heat evenly.

Mix the mustard with the mayo, and cut the bread lengthwise, spreading the mayo-mustard on the bottom piece. Slice the roasted red peppers.

Assemble the sandwich as follows: place a piece of pork on the bottom part of the sandwich, on top of the mayo-mustard. Cover the pork with a slice of cheese. Scoop a good helping of onions and mushrooms on top, garnish this with roasted red pepper slices and cover it all with the top part of the sandwich. Place this between the plates of your former-boxer-turned-cooking-fiend countertop grill and grill briefly. You can also use your stovetop grilling pan or skillet, turning it over so both sides will toast evenly. Place a plate on top of the sandwich to weigh it down.

*if you like a bit of heat, put a pinch of red chili flakes on top of your onions before you grill the sandwich

Bon Profito!

Scrambled Eggs with Hash Browns, Sausage, Peppers and Onion

Sitting on the counter, defrosting, is my first UFO. Actually, there are three UFOs, but they all seem to contain the same type of food. In my "freezing fervor" I often forgot to mark the bags thinking "Ohh, I'll KNOW that this is beef stew/goulash/spaghetti sauce/etc etc." Let's face it, once frozen, they all look alike, one a bit lumpier than the other perhaps, and there is no way of telling which is which. By the way, I freeze most of my leftovers in ziploc bags so I can flatten them. They stack well and take up a lot less space than containers do!

At first glance it looked like these bags contained something unsuitable for human consumption and would look more in place in eh....dare I say it, a sick baby's diaper. But even in my most frugal moments, I cannot imagine having frozen something like that. I'll just have to wait till these bags thaw out! Ah...patience....it's a scarce thing to come by in this house.

In the meantime, I've located some other, more easily recognizable food items. A 3/4 full bag of frozen hash browns, a bag of pepper stir fry, 1/2 pound of breakfast sausage and 1/2 bag of grated Cheddar cheese. There's some eggs left in the fridge, so let's use those too. This will be great for an easy breakfast fix.

Scrambled Eggs with Hash Browns, Sausage, Onions, Peppers (cheese optional)

2 cups of pepper stir fry mix (you can replace this with fresh peppers and onions)

5 eggs

1 cup of grated cheese (optional)

1/2 pound of breakfast sausage

Brown the breakfast sausage in a skillet or stirfry pan, and pour off the fat. Add the pepper stir fry mix ( or fresh sliced onions and peppers), until the onions are soft, and add the hashbrowns. In the meantime, beat the eggs in a bowl (you can add a little milk for more fluff). When the potatoes are cooked thoroughly, add the eggs to the mixture in the pan and scramble until the eggs are done. Pepper and salt to taste. Sprinkle cheese over this mixture if you wish, I'm more of a cheese girl but some people love this dish with hot salsa. Also excellent on some whole wheat toast or one on of those sliced bagels from your freezer.

You can freeze the leftovers in ziploc bags, making single portions. Flatten them and refrigerate before freezing. They microwave very well and make it an easy fix for a quick breakfast or improvised lunch. Make sure you mark your bags with the date, the contents and instructions on how to re-heat the food. You may want to eat this breakfast food within six months.

Well, the bags on the counter have defrosted sufficiently and I know now what they are. More on that tomorrow!