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Pork

Spaghetti & Meatballs

Mar 24th, 2010
by dave.
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Spaghetti & Meatballs

This past week has been some of the best weather I’ve seen (for March anyway) in Boston in the past 8 years. After 10-11 inches of rain in 3 days and massive flooding throughout the state, it hit 72 degrees on Saturday. From deluge to shorts weather…freaky. I won’t complain though, I got to dust off the golf clubs and hit up the driving range. And I guess a lot of others had the same idea, ended up waiting 30 minutes to get a booth, the line was 2 deep at one point!!!

I’ve also been on the hunt for a good tripod and head. Up until now, I’ve been shooting without a tripod and most of the time without flash. So it’s been tough to turn out good shots (can’t hold steady) and I’m getting a little tired of sifting through a dozen shots to find out none of them look any good! I’ve heard of a few brands, Manfrotto comes to mind, but I just started really looking this week. Pics to come once I get it though.

Anyway, onto the food. I’m a huge fan of Ree at The Pioneer Woman Cooks. She provides a step by step pictorial on almost all of her dishes as well as interesting tidbits and tips for each dish. But the thing I like the most is how homey the dishes feel, I’m an big admirer of homestyle cooking. There’s something to be said about the creativity home cooks have had over the years to feed their families, good times and bad.

Spaghetti and Meatballs is no exception. When I started cooking I never really paid any attention to staple dishes like this and Macaroni and Cheese. I guess my experience had been mostly cafeteria food and made from a box, so maybe that’s why I was blocking it out! But really, the stuff is classic for a reason, because it’s good AND it’s easy to make!

Recipe originally from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

Spaghetti & Meatballs

Time: 90 minutes
Serves 6-8

Ingredients:
– 1 lb ground beef (85 or 90% lean)
– 1 lb ground pork
– 2 eggs
– 4-5 cloves garlic, minced
– 3/4 cup plain bread crumbs
– 3/4-1 cup grated Romano cheese
– 1/4 cup Italian parsley, minced
– 1/4 tsp salt
– Fresh ground black pepper
– 1-2 tbsp skim milk
– 4 – 5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Sauce:
– 28oz can Italian plum tomatoes
– 28oz can crushed tomatoes
– 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
– 5 cloves garlic, minced
– 1/2 cup dry white wine
– 1/4 tsp salt
– 2 tsp sugar
– Fresh ground black pepper
– Red pepper flakes
– 1/4 cup Italian parsley, minced
– 1 – 2 lbs Spaghetti, cooked

Method:
1. Combine meat, garlic, breadcrumbs, romano, salt, pepper, parsley, eggs, and milk in a mixing bowl. Mix together well. Roll into meatballs (should be around 30).
2. Heat a dutch oven over medium heat. Add olive oil and cook meatballs, 8 at a time until browned, it’s ok if slightly undercooked, the meatballs will be returned to the sauce later. Remove meatballs and drain.
3. When finished with the meatballs, add onions and garlic, stirring for a couple minutes. Make sure to scrape up the brown bits that may have stuck to the bottom of the pot. Add in tomatoes, wine, salt, pepper, sugar, and parsley. Stir to combine and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Add meatballs back to the pot, reduce heat, and cook another 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Ma Po Tofu v2.0

Mar 17th, 2010
by dave.
2 comments

Ma Po Tofu

It’s been raining nonstop here since Friday afternoon, barring torrential the past couple days. Seems like every building in Boston has a leak too. The elevators in my building have been out since Sunday and the poor people on the top floor need to do it the old fashioned way, 7 flights of stairs. Can’t say I’m envious at all! At least it’s supposed to be sunny and 60 degrees today. It’ll be a welcome change…that’s for sure!

One thing I’d like to introduce to the site is a running list of the recipes that I’ve accumulated towards my “100 weeknight recipes” goal. It’ll be an ongoing project, thanks to my laziness, to keep it updated, but I’ll try my best! It’s about time I did something other than just post about food. Maybe I’ll even update some old posts too. Here’s the link but there’s also a tab at the top right corner of the blog, go click it!

I’ve also been ransacking the net for some ideas on how I can improve the site. Thinking about switching WordPress themes and even trying to learn a bit more about web development in general. I code for work, but it’s not really similar to web development at all, and it’s something I think I should be able to learn. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know, much appreciated!!!

I’ve been making Ma Po Tofu about once every month to 2 months these days. I’ve been experimenting with some of the salty/spicyness of the dish and the last couple batches have been pretty good, I was surprised! But then again, I had a great recipe and pictorial to work with from hzrt8w (eGullet). The pictorials have been a huge help and there’s a wealth of information there.

A couple of the substitutions I’ve been making are thai bird chillies instead of dried chillies and some extra Sriracha for a little more kick.

Recipe adapted from hzrt8w of eGullet.

Ma Po Tofu v2.0

Time: 45 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
– 32oz silken tofu, sliced into columns
– 1 lb ground pork
– 2-3 stalks scallions, chopped
– 6 garlic cloves, minced
– 6 dried chillies, seeds removed
– 1 inch piece of ginger, grated
– 1 tsp roasted/ground sichuan peppercorns
– 2 tsp Corn starch
– 1-2 tbsp water

Marinade:
– 1 tsp white pepper
– 1 tsp sesame oil
– 1 tsp corn starch
– 1 tsp light soy sauce
– 1 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine

Sauce 1:
– 2 tsp Chili Bean sauce
– 5 tsp Hoisin sauce
– 2 tsp Brown Bean sauce
– 2 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine
– 1 tsp White vinegar / ChinKiang vinegar
– Sriracha

Sauce 2:
– 1/2 cup Chicken Broth
– 2 tsp sugar

Method:
1. Heat frying pan over high heat. Add some oil. Brown the pork for a few minutes until just cooked. Break the pork apart. Remove and set aside.
2. Add some more oil to the hot pan, and add the chillies for about 10-15 seconds. Then add ginger and garlic. Stir fry for another 30 seconds and add sauce #1 in for another 15 seconds.
3. Add sauce #2, bring to a boil. Mix the corn starch and water and add in.
4. Add the tofu in, bring the mixture to a boil undisturbed (the tofu will break apart easily and we’ll break it apart into cubes later).
5. Add the pork, scallions, and sichuan pepper and stir to combine. Break apart the bigger tofu bits as you see fit.

Chili Bean Pork

Dec 9th, 2009
by dave.
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Chili Bean Pork

I’ve been trying to expand the different cuts of meat that I usually buy so I’ve been using pork shoulder and pork butt much more lately. I usually end up using pork sirloin cutlets or center cut pork chops but I’ve found that pork shoulder/butt tastes pretty good after marinating and in some cases, I like it a whole lot more! And it’s cheaper. And you can make pulled pork, but that’s an experiment for another time.

I got this recipe out of Grace Young’s Breath of a Wok. I’ve also had variations on this dish at restaurants but since I’m terrible at figuring out ingredients (I’m too busy eating!), I needed a recipe. Well, the recipe originally calls for some vegetables served with it. But, like the complete novice that I am, I completely forgot the two vegetable ingredients I was supposed to add. Fantastic. So I ended up making a salad on the side.

And I didn’t mean to plan it this way, but I’ve been making a lot more spicy and salty dishes as of late, probably because of the colder weather. But maybe that’s what I’ve been craving lately, I tend to go through spurts where I eat many similar things.

Chili Bean Pork

Serves 3
Time : 30 minutes

Ingredients:
– 1 – 1.5 lb Pork butt or shoulder, trimmed and cut into matchsticks

Marinade:
– 2 tsp Corn Starch
– 2 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine
– 1 tsp Sesame oil
– 1 tsp Canola oil
– 1 tsp Soy Sauce
– 1/4 tsp kosher salt

Sauce:
– 1/4 cup Chicken Broth
– 2 tsp Chinkiang or Balsamic vinegar
– 1 tsp Sugar
– 2 tsp Sesame oil
– 2 tsp soy sauce
– 2 tbsp Chili bean sauce
– 2 tsp ShaoHsing rice wine
– 1 tsp Corn starch
– 4 cloves garlic, minced

Method:
1. Mix marinade and pork, set aside for 20 minutes.
2. Heat wok over high heat, add 1-2 tbsp canola oil. Add pork. Stir fry a couple minutes.
3. Add sauce. Stir a couple more minutes until pork is cooked through. Serve over rice.

Stir-fried Rice Cakes

Dec 2nd, 2009
by dave.
3 comments

Stir Fried Rice Cake

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Spent a few days back in NJ with the family and had a nice relaxing weekend, caught up on a ton of sleep, just what I needed. We had a pretty traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey, roasted root veggies, salad, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and my mom’s special string beans. Not to mention what you can do with leftovers, day after Turkey Congee is always a huge hit!

I’d like to try my hand at cooking a Thanksgiving dinner sometime, maybe that’s a project for next year. But it’s enough work for me to just cook for a couple people, I couldn’t imagine trying to cook for 10+!

But anyway, back to what I’m posting about today =P

Being that noodles are one of my favorite dishes to eat (any kind of noodle really), I couldn’t believe that I haven’t had rice cakes until just a couple years ago! Rice cakes (Nian gao) are thicker slices of pressed rice noodle, almost like diagonally sliced carrots (best analogy I could come up with…really!). But anyway, they’ve got a more chewy texture to them and they soak up sauce very nicely, and are ridiculously easy to cook with.

You can buy rice cakes in packages from your local Asian food market. This time, I had rice cakes from H-mart, a Korean grocery store up in Burlington, MA.

One of the local restaurants in the Boston area, Shanghai Gate, prepares rice cakes a couple different ways, both of which are excellent. I’ve been trying to figure out one of their versions, the sliced rice cake with pork, and sauce, and some green vegetable I couldn’t figure out. So I wanted to go back and pay closer attention next time =)

But for today, I scoured online to find a good recipe to use and came up with this one from use real butter. It looked really good (and I’d been looking for an excuse to use some napa cabbage I picked up at Russo’s) so off I went.

Stir-fried Rice Cakes

20 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
2 pounds rice cakes (prepared according to package)
1 pound pork sirloin, cut into matchsticks
1/2 head of napa cabbage, chopped thinly
5 scallions, julienned
1 1/2 inch piece ginger, julienned
5 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
5 tbsp canola oil
Salt and white pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
2 cups chicken broth (About 1 can)

Method:
1. Mix the pork, soy sauce, sesame oil, and cornstarch together until the pork is evenly coated. Set aside.
2. Heat 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, half of the ginger and half of the scallions over high heat. After about 30 seconds to a minute, add the cabbage and stir fry. Add some salt and white pepper.
3. When the cabbage is almost cooked, remove from wok and set aside.
4. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil to the wok and add the rest of the ginger and scallions.
5. When the ginger and onions sizzle, add the pork and stir fry until the meat is nearly cooked through.
6. Add the cabbage back into the pot and stir to mix.
7. Add the rice cakes and along with a cup of chicken broth. Add more broth as needed or desired.
8. Continue to stir fry to keep the rice cakes from sticking. Add more salt or white pepper as necessary.

Note : The rice cakes are done when they’re slightly chewy but with no crunch and are firm but not quite mushy.

Vietnamese Pork (Thit Heo Nuong)

Sep 23rd, 2009
by dave.
No comments yet

Vietnamese Pork

I haven’t been cooking anything new lately (cooked a couple staple dishes I’ve already posted about) and I was away for a weekend in the Midwest but with Fall starting, I’m excited to try some new “colder weather” recipes. I’ve made a decent dent in the list of 100 recipes, coming up with about 15 so far. A new page for the project is in the works and hopefully I’ll have that done in the next couple weeks.

Here’s another dish that I can’t seem to ever get enough of. I order this about 60% of the time when I go to Pho Viet at Super 88, the grilled pork combined with the broken rice and a side salad…yum! I remember trying to make this a while back but completely forgot the recipe (Maybe it’s posted here somewhere, I’m a little too lazy to look =P) but I consulted some notes I had from a friend along with a recipe from Wandering Chopsticks, another fantastic food blog, and went to work!

Update : Found the notes from my friend!

Vietnamese Pork (Thit Heo Nuong)

Time : 45 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 lb of pork shoulder or butt, sliced thinly
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
4 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp Light Soy sauce
4 tsp sugar
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp Honey (optional)
3-4 stalks scallions (white and green parts separated)
1 tbsp canola oil

Method:
1. Mix pork through pepper (with white parts scallions) and marinate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Cook in sauté pan or on grill. Cook green part scallions with oil in a separate pan and use as garnish over rice.

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