Carnitas (Mexican Braised Pork)

Today's adventure in cooking is brought to you by The Homesick Texan!

My oldest brother introduced this recipe to me when he made it for one of our family gatherings at Christmas. I have made it a couple of times since then, both with my family and on my own. This latest iteration was made while hiding from the insane cold the polar vortex brought this winter. Sounded like the perfect thing to make when it's absolutely frigid outside.

I like to keep it very neutrally flavored so that I can use it for a variety of things. You can put it in any Mexican or Tex-Mex dish that calls for carnitas. You can put barbecue sauce on it and eat it in a sandwich. I've put it in ramen (though I'm not sure everyone would like that).

RECIPE: Carnitas, Houston Style

Roast Pork Loin with Balsamic, Dijon, and Thyme

Today's adventure in cooking is brought to you by Kitchen Confidante! I tried out this recipe because I had fresh thyme to use up, and wanted to make something a little special to welcome my husband home from a trip but also not have to go to the store because the weather was supposed to be awful.

I think the marinade was supposed to turn out a little thicker than mine did. I think it was because I used jarred minced garlic instead of fresh and perhaps a little too much oil or vinegar (I eyeballed things rather than measuring exactly). The only thing I did differently was not sear it before roasting it in the oven. I thought searing it after marinating was kind of an odd choice, technically speaking. Plus, the last time I tried to sear a marinated pork loin, the marinade on it burned and I had a hell of a time cleaning the pan. (It had a significant amount of sugar in it which probably didn't help, and this recipe seems to have less but the searing after marinating idea still seems strange to me.)

I served it with oven roasted potatoes (with thyme and onion) and steamed broccoli, and we cooked and reduced the marinade to serve as a sauce, which was pretty salty and garlicky.

Personal verdict: It was good but not exceptional -- I wouldn't go out of my way to make it again. Still searching for a go-to pork loin preparation. Pork tenderloins seem to be far too easy to eat too much of but I think it's because they're inherently appealing, like you could put just about anything on it and it would taste good. My favorite so far was a garlic parmesan pork tenderloin I had at a Brazilian rodizio grill. If I could find a good recipe for that...

RECIPE: Roast Pork Loin with Balsamic, Dijon, and Thyme

Quiche, Infinitely Adaptable

My mother-in-law does not cook from scratch very often but even she has influenced my cooking. She got me into making quiche. She made one on a Sunday morning while she was visiting. My attempts up to the point I had hers were really time consuming and didn't taste all that great, so I was convinced I didn't like quiche. Turns out I was just making it a lot harder than it needed to be. While she used store bought pie crust, hers didn't have boatloads of cream as I assumed quiche needed to have (a pleasant surprise since I don't like adding milk or cream to my scrambled eggs), and it came together quickly and tasted great, especially for how little time was spent on it.

Sure enough, a few weeks after her visit, I got a hankering for quiche. I still wanted to make my own crust but didn't want to make my standard pie crust. I found this quick one with ingredients I already had that you press into the pan instead of rolling it out, and added some ham, vegetables, and cheese I had kicking around my fridge. Again, it was easy and tasty. I make these regularly now because they're so adaptable and great for a meal any time of the day, and they're a great meal to clean out the fridge (especially during CSA season, haha). My recipe is below.

The quiche pictured above contains (cooked) bacon, chopped spinach  (frozen, thawed and drained well), sauteed yellow onion, scallions, and goat cheese.

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RECIPE:

Quiche, Infinitely Adaptable

Crust:
1 cup (115g) all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup (50g) olive oil or canola oil
1/4 cup (53g) very cold water

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place flour and salt in a bowl and mix briefly with a fork to combine. Make a well in the center of the flour. Pour oil and water into the well. Mix the oil and the water briefly, then gradually incorporate the flour and salt. Press into a 9-inch (23 cm) diameter pie plate. Bake for about 5-7 minutes until the surface begins to dry out a bit. Let cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:
7-8 large eggs
A total of 4-5 cups fillings of your choice, chopped into bite size pieces*
Salt and black pepper to taste

*Suggested fillings: ham, cooked bacon, sausage, spinach, kale, broccoli, mushrooms, sauteed onions, scallions, bell peppers, tomatoes, grated/crumbled/cubed cheese that melts and isn't too strongly flavored (Swiss, cheddar, chevre, Gouda, feta), fresh herbs (parsley, chives), red pepper flakes. If you would usually cook the ingredient before adding it to your eggs, cook it before adding to the quiche filling mixture. If using frozen vegetables, thaw and squeeze as much water as you can out of them first (especially important with leafy vegetables like spinach). If the ingredients are especially salty (like feta cheese), you may not need to add any salt to the filling mixture. If using grated cheese, save some to sprinkle over the top of the filling so that it gets browned and crunchy, yum.

Crack eggs into a bowl and beat lightly, until just mixed. Add fillings, salt, and pepper to the bowl and mix gently to combine. Pour filling mixture into the parbaked crust and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the center is no longer wobbly and almost no liquid comes out when a knife is inserted and removed from the center. Let cool for 10-15 minutes. Serve warm, with a shake or two of hot sauce if desired. Leftovers can be refrigerated.

Date and Fig Bars with Oatmeal Crust

After making goat cheese stuffed dates with my friend, I remembered a bag of dates in my cupboard that I needed to use up, and went looking for a recipe that sounded good. I landed on this Date Squares with Oat Crust recipe from The Spruce. I knew I didn't have enough dates for it, though, so I decided to cut the recipe in half and also use a package of dried golden figs that were in the cupboard to make up the difference. I baked it in an 8x8 square pan, which is slightly more than half the volume of a 13x9 pan, and reduced the cooking time by about 5 minutes. Other substitutions I made: salted butter and dark brown sugar (because it was what I had). I cooked the filling a bit longer than it asked for because my dates were VERY dried out. My bottle of vanilla ran out with this recipe so I fished out the vanilla bean from inside the bottle and cooked it with the dates and figs, then removed it before putting the filling in the pan.

The amount of crust was just barely enough to hold the bars together, but that was OK. it was nice and crumbly and buttery, and just sweet enough. I was a little worried when I read it was a Southern recipe because they seem to like their sweets *REALLY* sweet but this was perfect. I ended up eating them for breakfast...

Overall, I really liked these for a clean-out-the-cupboard experiment, and would consider making them on purpose in the future!

Update 4/15/19: I made these last week with only dates, and while they were really good, I think I like them a little better with figs mixed in. The contrast between the sweet filling and lightly salted oat crumbles is what really makes these special.

Update 3/14/23: I recently made these with only figs and still think a mix of dates and figs is ideal. I also converted the measurements into grams for ease of getting things together.

RECIPE: Date Squares with Oat Crust

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Crust:
3/4 cup (6 oz, 170 g) unsalted butter
1 cup (190 g) light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 3/4 cups (225 g) all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups (140 g) quick-cooking oats, uncooked

Filling:
1 1/2 pounds (680 g) dates, chopped
1/3 cup (70 g) sugar
1 1/2 cups (350 ml) water
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Chinese Five Spice Chicken

Sometimes you don't know how good you have it until things change. Our local grocery store has a pretty decent Chinese food hot bar, and one of my favorite things on it was Five Spice Chicken. It was not breaded and had a really tasty sweet-salty sauce with Chinese five spice (a savory warming blend of star anise, fennel, clove, cinnamon, and Sichuan peppercorns).

Then one day, it disappeared from the bar and we thought it was just temporary but after a month or so it was still not back. We finally asked why they don't have five spice chicken anymore, and they told us that the cooks that knew how to make it had stopped working at the store. Baffling that they don't have standard recipes since they often have the same things on the bar.

Chinese restaurants in my area don't seem to have it on the menu, so then I decided to see if I could figure out how to make it and came across Marc Matsumoto's recipe. The picture looked really close to what used to be served at the store, so I gave it a go. You marinate skin-on chicken thighs for about a day, then broil in the oven or grill.

Notes:

• I used honey instead of maltose.
• I marinated the chicken for 48 hours and it was quite flavorful.
• It says you can boil the remaining marinade but I had almost none to speak of. If you want an appreciable amount of sauce for your chicken, consider making extra marinade.
• I think this would taste even better grilled.
• I served it with rice and steamed broccoli.

Verdict: It was a lot of work because I only have a small cooking rack and had to cook it in small batches. It was surprisingly close to the stuff at the grocery store! If it had more sauce it would have been perfect. I want to try this again but maybe double the marinade/sauce and see how things go. Rasa Malaysia also has a five spice chicken recipe I might try to compare.

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RECIPE: Chinese Five Spice Chicken

Guava Swirl Cheesecake Bars

When my next door neighbors moved last year they gave us a whole bunch of food that they didn't want to take with them, and that included a jar of guava butter from Hawaii. Having lived in the Midwest US my entire life, I don't really have a good idea of what guava tastes like or should taste like, or what tastes good with it. I took a look in The Flavor Bible and it listed cream cheese as a particularly good flavor pairing, so I got the idea to swirl it into cheesecake. As it turns out I had a box of graham cracker crumbs too, so that made this pan of bars come together extra quickly.

I gave half to a friend that likes sweet fruity things as a birthday present. :)

This is a variation on the Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars from Sally's Baking Addiction. All I did differently was to swap out the Nutella for an equal amount of guava butter. I was surprised to find that the guava butter changes colors depending on the temperature! It turned from a dull pink when it was cold to the pretty bright red in the picture after coming out of the oven! It turned back to the dull pink after putting them in the fridge.

Verdict: The original recipe is solid and delicious, and I think it took well to replacing the chocolate part with jam/fruit butter. I think I would add more guava butter next time because I could barely taste it, but the swirls seemed to stay on top so maybe I didn't swirl it downward enough.

RECIPE: Nutella Swirl Cheesecake Bars

Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates with Hazelnut Pesto

When I first met my friend Andrea, she worked for a restaurant that made this as an appetizer. She told us about it, and how she liked them so much she would get the chef (her friend) to make them for her sometimes to eat whenever she could sneak back to the kitchen. This got me interested, and my husband and I went to the restaurant to have some for ourselves. This is the food that made me decide I like dates.

The restaurant is no longer open, but the chef gave her the recipe so that she could make them for herself if she felt like putting in the work. She loves food but not cooking...so she came to me to ask me if I'd help. Since I love them too, it didn't take much convincing. We made them for a tea party at my house a while back, but this time I helped her make them to bring to a murder mystery party because I had the proper equipment and it's always nice to not have to cook alone :)

The recipe as written when Andrea got it was for a much larger amount, and the amounts of the components as written weren't proportional to one another (for example, we ended up with LOTS of extra pesto the first time) but after making it twice I think I have it adjusted to a home setting reasonably well.

Notes:

• It is important to use medjool dates. They are larger and softer than dried dates. Making this was the first time I had a reason to shop for them. I found them pitted and packaged in the produce section of the grocery store, in the bulk section of a grocery store that sold bulk items by weight (also pitted), and sold by weight in the produce section of an Asian market (still contained pits). The Asian market was by far the cheapest option. We determined that there are about 32 dates in 1 pound.
• Since this recipe is from a restaurant, the weights are of fully prepared/peeled ingredients. When buying ingredients, you may want to get slightly larger amounts of things that have skins or things that need to be removed before use (like garlic and shallots).
• MAKE AHEAD TIPS: If making ahead, stuff but do not bake the dates or put the pesto on them, and keep in the refrigerator wrapped in saran wrap or in an airtight container in a single layer. Keep pesto separately in an airtight container in the refrigerator with plastic wrap over the surface to prevent browning. (I think these could be kept for up to 2 days before baking and serving.)
• Stuffing and pesto can also be frozen.

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RECIPE:

Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates with Hazelnut Pesto
from 43 North in Madison, WI
Makes 32; serves about 6-8

Dates
32 medjool dates (about 1 lb)

Goat Cheese Filling
11g (about 2 ½ tsp) garlic, minced
25g (about 1 ½ tbsp) shallot, minced
3g (about ½ tsp) fresh thyme, stems removed, chopped
25g (2 tbsp) unsalted butter
225g (8 oz, 1/2 lb) chevre/goat cheese
1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Spinach Hazelnut Pesto (yields about 1 cup)
75g (2.6 oz, a little over 1/8 lb) hazelnuts, toasted
7g (about ½ tbsp) fresh garlic, chopped
57g (2 oz) fresh baby spinach leaves
1 g (1/4 tsp) salt
113g (about 4 fl oz/ ½ cup) olive oil

Slice dates open lengthwise (do not cut in half) and gently squeeze out the pits if they still contain pits. Set aside.

To prepare goat cheese filling: Gently cook garlic, shallot, thyme, and butter together on medium-low heat until shallots are soft and translucent. Transfer to a stand mixer. Add goat cheese and pepper and whip in a stand mixer using paddle attachment until blended and fluffy.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Spoon about ½ tablespoon of filling into each date (or more to fill; swipe off excess with your finger) and squeeze (mostly) closed. Place stuffed dates on a baking sheet lined with foil and put in oven. Bake until dates are heated through and have softened slightly, about 8-10 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare hazelnut pesto.

To prepare hazelnut pesto: Place half of the toasted hazelnuts, garlic, and salt in a food processor and process until finely ground and sandy looking. Add spinach and oil and process until smooth. Add remaining hazelnuts and pulse until nuts are chopped but still slightly chunky (about 10-12 pulses).

Spoon pesto over warm dates. Serve immediately.

Kitsune Udon (Udon Noodle Soup with Fried Seasoned Tofu)

I made this kitsune udon recipe to use up some of the inariage I made a few days prior. Both the inariage recipe and kitsune udon recipe are from Just One Cookbook.

I first had inariage (fried seasoned tofu pockets, they have a nice salty and lightly sweet flavor) from a can when I was in high school. I made a friend my senior year who found out I liked Japanese culture and cooking, so she came over one day and thought it would be fun to make Japanese food. She taught me to make inarizushi, which stuffs these fried seasoned tofu pouches with sushi rice. It was all very strange and new to me but I liked the sweet-salty soy sauce flavor. I first had home cooked ones at my host family's house several years later, and that's when I knew for sure I loved them. It turns out freshly cooked inariage taste way better than canned ones (who knew? lol). In Japan, most people buy the tofu already fried and season it themselves. I have been able to find it where I live at Asian markets, and I have tried other recipes for seasoning them before that were just OK, but this one from JOC tastes just like I remember my host mom's.

The initial step of dousing the inariage with boiling water to remove some oil is absolutely essential. I skipped this one time I made them because I was lazy, and I regretted it. However, when you're draining them, don't squeeze them completely dry or they end up kind of bland.

For the kitsune udon, I couldn't find narutomaki so I used red kamaboko instead (they're basically made out of the same thing and taste the same, they're just shaped and colored differently) and I think this worked well.

Verdict: I thought both of the recipes were delicious, and would definitely make them again!

RECIPE: Inariage (Seasoned Fried Tofu Pockets)
RECIPE: Kitsune Udon (Udon Noodle Soup with Fried Seasoned Tofu)

Pork and Napa Cabbage Millefeuille Hot Pot

I tried Just One Cookbook's millefeuille nabe (hot pot) for dinner tonight. Nabe/hot pot dinners were some of my favorite winter meals at my Japanese host family's house and I miss them every winter. Single tabletop burners are common in Asian households but I do not have one, which makes it particularly hard to eat in the traditional style, where everyone sits around the table and cooks ingredients in the pot on this burner as they eat. I was particularly drawn to this recipe because you can cook all the hot pot ingredients at one time on the stove and then serve it.

Probably the hardest part was standing all the layers up into the pot. For reference, the pot I used was about 10" in diameter and I think it was the perfect size, possibly even a little small. I stuffed those enoki mushrooms in there because we desperately wanted to eat them, and not because there was extra room.

I was really happy with the result. We served it with ponzu and shichimi togarashi. It was light but filling, and warming (it was a cold night). I would absolutely make this again!

RECIPE: Millefeuille Nabe (Hot Pot)

Linzer Torte

 
We made Linzer Torte (Smitten Kitchen's recipe, via Maida Heatter) for our Holiday Bakeathon in December. The first time I tasted it, it was so good I almost started crying, which is really saying something after an entire day of tasting sweets! It tasted like everything I love about my grandma's Christmas cutout cookies (warming spices + lemon) plus I also love walnuts and raspberry. I got a quarter of the 9x13 pan and ran out of it on Christmas Eve. I missed it a lot after it was gone.

So what did I do? On New Year's Day, I got up early and made another pan of it, and brought it to our friends' house for their lazy pajamas video game and board game day. :) It is time consuming but worth it, and was every bit as good as the first time. It loses a tiny bit of its perfection after a few days but it is still magical.

VARIATION: I am considering trying it with cherry jam and almonds for a variation next time. Not that the recipe needs to be messed with. I just had the idea as I was falling asleep one night and now I want to taste that too.

• Edit 1/1/2021: I did try this with a mix of sour and black cherry jams and almond. The almonds didn't really taste like much, so I would add ~1 tsp almond extract to the crust part if I made it again. Overall I think I prefer the walnut/raspberry combination, but I'm glad I tried the variation.
  

With certain foods, I almost feel as though my genes compel me to love them that much more. This is one of those things.

RECIPE: Linzer Torte