So I was reading the blog post over at 5 second rule (cute blog, enjoy it very much) and when Cheryl Sternman Rule (she’s a Silicon Valley food writer by profession) posted the recipe for this pork ragu, my mouth watered. Sure sign that I need to try the recipe. When my DH offered to go grocery shopping for me I asked him to go to Costco for a big pork shoulder. WELL! Can you imagine 11 pounds of pork shoulder?  Certainly more than I wanted for this dish, but when I opened the package it divided itself almost into two equal pieces. The other one is frozen for another day. The recipe came from a cookbook, Big Night In, by Domenica Marchetti, a book geared towards Italian family meals for a large group. If this recipe is any indication, I may be investing in yet another cookbook!

My friend Cherrie and I offered to take dinner to our son and family a week or so ago – that way Cherrie and her husband could see the huge remodeling our son and his wife had done to their home (completed about 9-10 months ago). Karen’s sister and husband came too. Karen made dessert, I made guacamole and this pasta dish, Cherrie made a crispy mixed green salad. And Janice brought some bolognese she’d made the previous night. What a feast!

Now I happened to make this in my slow cooker, but the directions are for stove-top simmering. You can do it either way. If you slow cook, do it for about 7-8 hours and it will be meltingly fall-apart pork. The dish is very easy to make – the most tedious part was pulling the pork apart, and waiting long enough for the pork to cool down so I could even PULL it.

This version of ragu is actually mild on the seasoning side (I might add a bit more spices next time). It does have some Italian sausage in it (next time I might try adding some sausage to the mixture in the last 15 minutes of cooking, just because sausage gives up its flavor to the juice around it, I think, when it’s been cooked that long  . . . just a thought). I really, really enjoyed this concoction. I liked it better the next day, so that’s another suggestion – make it ahead and refrigerate overnight. Cheryl over at 5 second rule called this “Pork Ragu for a Crowd.” Yes, indeed. Since I used nearly 6 pounds of pork (double the below recipe), there was ragu for everyone to take home.
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A year ago: Chocolate Grand Marnier Decadence Cake

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What you see in the photo above is leftover strips of pork from the roast with spicy apricot sauce & glaze I made last week. I don’t know about you, but I am perplexed with what to do with leftover pork roast. You have that trouble too? We are able to eat the leftover roast slices a time or two (we’ve had two dinners so far), but – then what? So my friend Cherrie said she makes a crockpot full of chile verde. Wow, what a good idea!

I made a chile verde from scratch last year sometime, and although it was good, I thought it was a lot of work and over-done with the anaheim and poblano chiles. So I wanted to try a different recipe. I went to the ‘net and found a Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken recipe from the Food Network. I just adapted it to the crockpot since Cherrie told me 8-10 hours would not dry out the meat. And indeed it didn’t.

All I did was pile in the fresh chopped vegetables to the crockpot (onion, anaheims, poblanos, tomatillos and garlic, and no, I didn’t skin or roast the chiles), then I added chicken broth (as always, I used Penzey’s chicken soup base concentrate and boiling water), cumin, oregano and a bit of salt. After it stewed for awhile at high temp (probably an hour), I added the pork (tossed with just a bit of flour to help thicken the broth) and cilantro. I stirred it a few times during the hours it crockpot-ted away, and in about 7 hours it was done. The savory aromas floating around the house were wonderful, making me go taste the soupy liquid in the pot. I did have to add some salt, but that was it. The chiles used are not fiery hot ones – poblanos have a wonderful deep flavor – I don’t eat them raw – but once cooked they’re quite mild. I actually forgot to add the jalapenos to the stew and didn’t miss it. It had enough heat without it.

Chile Verde is traditionally served over rice, but not wanting to eat the carbs, I merely served it in a wide soup bowl as a kind of stew/soup. I didn’t miss the rice at all. I scooped portions into freezer bags and they’re all ready to go into my frozen soup and stew library. The lean, very lean pork probably doesn’t have that much fat in it, so I think this qualifies as a healthier meal. I liked this version much better than the last one. My DH isn’t all that crazy about Mexican food, generally, so this wasn’t his favorite, but I enjoyed it a LOT. There wasn’t a speck of fat that congealed once it had chilled, and it was very filling, even without rice. If you’re sensitive to hot chiles, use less of all of them. When I served this meal the second time we ate it like soup, with some low-fat sour cream in a little blog in the middle, with some crumbled-up tortilla chips on top. My DH liked that much better – he thought the sour cream cut some of the pepper-ness of the mixture.
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Pork these days, as you probably know, is so lean you have to use some more extreme measures to make sure it’s tender and juicy. We had a group of friends for dinner recently and I decided to do a pork roast. Dave did the shopping for me and bought a Costco boneless roast. Having had these before I knew it might be dry and tough if I didn’t make it otherwise. He bought a really large roast (much larger than the recipe calls for) so it took longer to roast, and I have lots of leftovers of the very tender, juicy meat.

What did I do? (1) I brined the pork roast for 24 hours; (2) I made a spicy apricot glaze and sauce to give it some zip; and (3) I used a meat thermometerto make sure we didn’t overbake it. All successful, I’m glad to report.

The recipe came from Hugh Carpenter’s book, Hot Barbecue. This guy, Hugh, is one helluva-good recipe creator. I’ve made apricot sides and sauces for pork before, but never with the flavor and zip this one had. This likely will be my new go-to recipe for pork. Everybody raved about it and I did too. I actually forgot to add the sesame seeds, green onions and cilantro to the sauce. It was great without, but if I made it again, I’ll definitely do so. The sauce is zippy hot (from the ginger and the Asian chile sauce added). I think the sauce would go well with chicken too.

The recipe indicated to remove the roast at 160°, but I took it out at about 152° and let it sit for about 15 minutes tented lightly with foil. The center of the loin was still medium-pink, but it was ever-so-juicy. It was 157° when I removed the meat thermometer and we began slicing.
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It was a couple of years ago that our daughter-in-law, Karen, served this dish to us, and I liked it so much. She got it from Food & Wine magazine. In the few months after that, I made it several times, thought I’d entered it into my cooking software program, but somehow it dropped in the cracks. Recently Karen fixed it for us again with fresh Swiss chard from her garden, and I was reminded how good this dish is. And how EASY it is, too. How often can you make a dinner entrée (here it’s with pork chops) and NOT have to brown the chops? This baked casserole, if you can call it that, but not in the traditional casserole type meaning, is put together with relatively few ingredients. You might think it’s going to be blah. Au contraire.

Let me just tell you how easy it is: first you chop up a pound of (buy the pre-washed if you can) Swiss chard into ribbons and pieces. This is placed in a large Pyrex (or crockery) baking dish and you toss it with some olive oil and salt and pepper. You rub the pork chops (1-inch or thinner) with some oil too, season them and put them on top of the Swiss chard. Now, you know how much volume there is of the chard when you start – it will be mounding over the edge of the dish, but that’s normal. You drizzle the top of the chops with a bit more oil, then sprinkle on the two different cheeses. You bake it for exactly 18 minutes, remove it, cover the dish for 5 minutes and you’re DONE. Serve with a salad and some bread and you have a complete dinner. I sometimes add herb seasoning (like rosemary or thyme) to the pork chops, but that’s IT. I kid you not, this one is so simple and delicious.
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When I saw the photo and recipe in the November, 2008 Gourmet for this beef, pork and cabbage dish, it just sounded a resonating bell in my head. Years ago I used to make stuffed cabbage rolls, but always found it a lot of work, and . . . well, just not worth the effort. Hence I haven’t made them in decades. But I always liked the flavor. This particular recipe is a quick and easy version – most of the ingredients – but without the work of parboiling the cabbage leaves, stuffing, rolling (carefully) then stacking them in a pot, making a sauce to go over, etc. Then baking or simmering them for awhile.

This recipe is just so simple – it was in Gourmet‘s “Everyday Quick Kitchen” – you make the sauce – kind of like a soup or stew mixture (it sort of looks like tomato chili in a way), and then you simmer the cabbage wedges in broth (separately) and combine them briefly before serving them on a rimmed plate (or a wide soup bowl in my case). I thought this dish was just great – not something you’d serve to guests, perhaps, unless you share really casual meals together. It all could be made ahead and reheated. I doubt the cabbage would do all that well frozen, but I’ll probably freeze a portion or two of the meat mixture and just prepare fresh cabbage when I want to have it again. I cooked the sauce longer than indicated (because I had the time and thought the flavor would improve by longer simmering) and I added some fennel, caraway and thyme to the sauce. You could put this dinner together in less than an hour if you hustled the chopping and cooking of the sauce. The cabbage takes about 45 minutes – you could do that in the microwave or a pressure cooker to speed it up. The beef and ground pork sauce has a delicious tang (from the brown sugar and red wine vinegar) and the juices are so good you don’t want to miss a single slurp. So, try it!

What’s GOOD: this is such a great recipe – the umami of the sweet and sour, the dried cranberries, even, and mixed with the cabbage. Like eating a big bite of a juicy cabbage roll – but, without all the work. Make a double batch and have leftovers later.
What’s NOT: only that there is a bit of prep – plus 45 minutes cooking time for the cabbage (use Instant Pot if you have one).

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When I attended the cooking class last week with Phillis Carey, my friend Linda and I weren’t all that “wowed” by this recipe. But a few days later, at home, with a thawing pork tenderloin on hand, rather than go hunting for a different preparation, I made this anyway. At the class, Linda and I both liked the sauce (and Phillis said you could also serve it with turkey). The pork I was served at the class was a bit overdone. Pork tenderloin is a very finicky piece of meat. It has to be cooked “just right,” or it’s almost unpalatable. There’s so little fat in the meat, you can’t do much to retain moisture so it’s vitally important it be removed from the oven before it goes over the hill to dry.

Phillis’ recipe says to oil, herb coat the meat, marinate it for an hour or overnight, brown the tenderloin in a bit of oil, and finally roast at 400 F. Well, I’d just gotten through reading an article in Cooking Light about pork, and it said tenderloin should be roasted at 500 F. So I went with the higher temp. It took 20 minutes, and I didn’t even brown the meat first (too lazy). The sauce came together relatively quickly. FYI: I combined all the sauce liquids in the pan (the original recipe says you do it in two steps) and added the grapes partway through. Then added the Morello cherries at the end just to heat through. My sauce was a little thin, so I ended up adding a butter/flour roux (a tiny bit) to thicken it up a bit.

According to the Cooking Light story, pork tenderloin should be served at an internal temperature of 155 F. So, using a probe I removed the meat at 150 F. and let it sit for about 5 minutes before slicing and serving. It had reached 155 in the ensuing minutes. The meat was pink throughout – every inch of it was faintly tinged pink. Perfect. As moist as tenderloin can be. And the sauce was a really delicious complement to the pork. Not so overpowering that you couldn’t taste the meat, but tasty enough on its own that you wanted more of it with every bite. And the recipe still isn’t a “wow” recipe, but it was very good.

The grapes are cooked. I happened to have had some extremely large red seedless grapes (another reason why I wanted to make the recipe). I cut them in half and they were nicely cooked at about 25 minutes in the broth. They were removed while I finished up the sauce, then added them back in with the Morellos. Morellos are a very tart red cherry. Until Trader Joe’s started carrying them in a jar, I don’t think I’d ever heard of them. You probably could make a dessert with them, but the sauce was a great use for them. Trader Joe’s has had them on the shelves for several years, so I guess other people like them too.

My recipe below shows most of the changes I made to the recipe. Be sure to use a regular pan (not a nonstick) to brown the meat. Only a regular pan will create the little brown bits (called fond) on the bottom of the pan, that you want added to the sauce for extra flavor. Using a nonstick pan is much harder to get that meat caramelization anyway. I also didn’t have any rosemary, so used sage and thyme for the herb rub.
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So, I was browsing through some of the blogs I read, and I happened on Chez Loulou’s post (I so enjoy Loulou’s blog – she lives in France, and has THE most interesting photos in and around the area she lives in – always very entertaining – I even tried to make a watercolor of one of her photos) about a breakfast or brunch dish that she’d made recently. It actually came from another blog Loulou reads (ah yes, I’m going to need to add yet another blog to my growing numbers that I read every few days), called Stonesoup. That blog originates from Australia, although the author is multi-national, I think. She’s lived all over the world, but currently resides in Sydney.

Perhaps it was the chorizo in this dish that intrigued me. Or maybe it was just because I’m always on the lookout for some easy entrée dishes that can stand in for dinner. Don’t you have evenings when you just aren’t inspired, or just don’t have the time? That’s me once in awhile (yes, really, there are times when I just don’t feel up to cooking anything much). So, that got me to thinking about meals – like this egg and bean dish – that is called a brunch dish – but could certainly be served for another meal like dinner.

I well remember that my mother sometimes on Sunday nights after we’d had a large midday dinner, would serve us creamed tuna on toast. She managed to make one small can of tuna spread between three people. She made a simple cream sauce, always added some lemon juice to it, then at the last minute she added the drained contents of one 6-ounce can of tuna, and we’d eat that spooned over one slice of white toast. It was a light meal, and perfect for the day in question. But then, there were Sundays when my mother would serve waffles for dinner. Why or how it ever became a tradition in our family I don’t know, but probably once a month we’d have regular waffles with sausage patties for dinner, with the finale being one last waffle piled with strawberries and whipped cream. As a kid, I thought that meal was heaven on a bun. My parents used to entertain other families for Sunday waffle suppers. My mother and dad are both gone, so I can’t ask them how that tradition ever got started. As a young adult I did have some waffle suppers, but my recollection (this would have been back in the 1960’s and 70’s, they weren’t met with much glee as I thought. I always told guests what we were having, so it wasn’t a surprise, but still I could tell people didn’t love it as much as I did. My DH doesn’t think waffles should be eaten at any meal except breakfast. In years past I tried the waffle supper thing on him, but he ate it reluctantly.

So, maybe it was that background of waffles on Sunday nights that made me look at this recipe with more interest. We don’t eat hearty breakfasts – if we do it seems to mess up our eating for the whole day. We’re not hungry for lunch, but then we’re starving by about 3-4 in the afternoon. Therefore, when I read this recipe I didn’t even think about breakfast at all. I thought – great idea for a light dinner. It took me 2 days to decide I wanted to make it.

Loulou’s and Stonesoup’s recipe is straight forward – you cook up some chorizo (I made a special trip to Whole Foods to buy their very meaty and lean version), some onion and garlic, a bit of Mexican oregano, red wine vinegar, tomato paste, canned tomatoes and canned cannellini beans. Little indentations are made in this mixture and eggs are gently cracked into them, then you bake it in the oven until done to your liking. This dinner took about 40 minutes to make from start to finish. My DH didn’t know what to think when I presented this dish at his place mat – for dinner. I had asked him first if this dish sounded good to him. I won’t say that he was over the top about it from reading the ingredient list, but generally he’s very willing to eat anything I put in front of him. So I made it the next night.

Truly, I enjoyed it a lot and Dave did too. I liked the flavor combination. It was hearty (beans). Very tasty. Easy and quick. I learned a couple of things, however. I revised the recipe to serve 2, since I didn’t know whether we’d eat leftover fried eggs on this chorizo bean bed. So I halved the recipe and tried to adapt it. I used a very large frying pan that can go in a hot oven, but the bean mixture then was quite thin. You must make this in a dish or pan that has enough depth to make the indentations for the eggs. And 15 minutes in MY oven was way too long at 400, so I revised the temp to 375. The eggs were almost rubbery, but not so overdone that we couldn’t eat it. My DH actually liked them that way since he doesn’t like runny eggs. So I’ve revised the cooking time to 10-15 minutes also. You need to determine your own preference. Definitely don’t use convection, either, as you don’t want hot air fanning the eggs! I also want this dish to have a bit more fluid – so use your own judgment about how much of the liquid to cook off. Ours was almost too dry, probably from being in the flatter pan. But it still tasted great.

Then you need to know about the leftovers – there was definitely enough to serve 3 adults using my recipe below. Dave and I both had a small portion of seconds, and there was still some leftover. So, what to do with those, you ask? Easy – I made soup. To the about 1 ½ cups of leftover beans I added some more tomatoes (I still had half a can of tomatoes), a small can of corn, some broth, chile powder, some ancho chile powder, heated it up and sprinkled shredded Cheddar on top. It was scrumptious!
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Probably like many of you, we had lots of family around over the Labor Day Weekend. Our kids & grandkids drove down from Northern California, and our kids and grandson who live near us were around too. On one night I made (with help from lots of family, thank you, thank you) a big California Asian dinner. We had some Asian salsa that I’ll blog about. We had Asian Baby Back Ribs (this recipe), a Jade Noodle salad that’s sauced with pureed spinach and a bunch of other Asian ingredients. We had a big green salad that wasn’t all that Asian – just added some Cara Cara orange segments to it and sugar snap peas. And then I made Ginger Ice Cream to round off the meal. In coming days you’ll read about all but the salad.

The star of the meal was the ribs. Since we’d done American BBQ style food recently for all these family members, I wanted to do something different. Hugh Carpenter has never failed me with his Asian-inspired items. So I went to his book titled Hot Barbecue and found these ribs with an Asian barbecue sauce. That does not mean teriyaki. Not one bit teriyaki. You could buy that at the grocery store. Not for me. All of our ribs weren’t baby backs (more tender), so we had ribs of all sizes.

The sauce was quite simple – providing you have the ingredients. I did – but, didn’t realize I was short on hoisin sauce. So, I added some bottled chili sauce instead. Maybe not quite the same, but good enough. This is very garlicky. I suppose if you don’t like garlic you could eliminate it, but it would lose a lot of its character depth by doing so. To feed four people, it calls for 10 cloves of garlic. I tried to about 1 ½ times the recipe, and I used about 12 cloves.

The trick to ribs, I think, is to have the heat high enough to cook, but not so high it burns. The Asian ingredients in this sauce do have some sugar in them, so put that with heat and you’ll get caramelization – or burn if it’s overdone. A word to the wise, that’s all. Grill the ribs until the meat starts to pull away from the bone. If it’s not doing that, continue grilling/baking/smoking. The recipe below includes directions for all three methods.
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There are still these few recipes to post from the luncheon tea my friend Cherrie and I did a couple of weeks ago. All of these fillings are delicious – I can personally attest. I’m including three recipes, although we only prepared two of them (actually Cherrie made these). But I’m not likely to be posting recipes from another tea anytime soon, so I’ll give you the additional recipe now. Two are for chicken salad, and the other is a buttery ham mousse. Both chicken ones can be made the day before – the ham must be made within an hour or so of your tea, but it’s not difficult in the least.

HAM MOUSSE: this recipe came from Sarah at Our House South County Cooking School (now closed). The class was all about serving a tea, and this recipe was a standout. I must admit, though, that when I first saw the list of ingredients I thought – oh no, we’re not going to like this – it has butter and whipped cream in it. But, I’m here to tell you, it’s fabulous. You won’t eat many of these, of course, as they’re quite rich, but the flavor is delicious, and the texture goes down smooth! PDFs are down at the bottom of the post.

CHICKEN SALAD WITH SMOKED ALMONDS: Cherrie found this recipe on the net, but it’s from a Gourmet article in 1994. What’s different about these are the chopped smoked almonds on the outside of each sandwich. The actual recipe calls for you to cut each sandwich into two 2-inch rounds (discarding what’s left of each square sandwich) but we thought that was such a huge waste, so just made them in traditional triangles. After filling the sandwiches, you carefully smear a bit of mayo on the outside of the crustless sandwiches, then press them into a small mound of minced smoked almonds. The nuts add a really nice touch and a delicious crunch as we ate them.

CURRIED CHICKEN SALAD: About 10 years ago I threw myself a luncheon tea on a milestone birthday. Since my birthday is in August, it was a very hot day, and not one where we really wanted to be all gussied up with gauzy dresses and floppy hats, but we did it anyway and I merely cranked down the A/C to about 70 degrees. It was fun, as these kinds of events always are. I tested several recipes for a curried chicken salad filling, and this one was, by far, the best of the bunch. I don’t think I’ve made it since, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be served as a dinner salad atop a bed of lettuce on a hot summer’s evening. The recipe started out from an old Palo Alto (California) Junior League cookbook.

Separate PDF printer friendly recipes: ham mousse,   chicken salad w/almonds, curry chicken salad

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I’m still trying to empty out the garage freezer in preparation for the quarter of a pig coming soon from the 4-H auction. So, what did I find but a pork tenderloin in there. And oh, was this preparation ever delicious. It’s from Cooking Light, but I don’t know when. I followed the recipe to the letter. I’ve never really met any mango salsa (or sambal) that I didn’t like, and this was no exception. I had some frozen mango chunks in the freezer (Trader Joe’s has them). Fortunately I looked at the recipe before I left for the market and bought the serrano chile. Otherwise I didn’t need anything else for this dish.

Here’s what the creators of the dish described: Sambal is a generic name for any paste-like condiment made with chiles. Authentic versions tend to be extremely hot. This Malaysian-influenced mango sambal works well with the Southern-style barbeque spice rub. The vinegar gives the condiment a flavor that’s reminiscent of a North Carolina mop sauce.

It’s so terrifically easy. You make a dry rub which took about 2 minutes to round up and combine; you rub it all over the meat, roast it in a 425 degree oven until it reaches 155 degrees internal temp (remember, use the meat probe). The recipe says 160, but it will not have any hint of pink if you wait that long. At 155 degrees, it was done to perfection with just a bit of pink in the middle. Meanwhile I tossed together the mango mixture, prepared a zucchini side and a mixed green salad, and dinner was done. This pork would be lovely for a company meal, but it was great just for a dinner for two.
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