In which we prep for tonight’s culinary tour of Quebec

Mike:

Me: We're going to die tonight, aren't we? Maybe I should pick up a defibrillator at Wal-Mart on my way home?

Mike: Should I buy some salad/veggies to help counter this caloric/meaty bombshell?

Me: bah - screw it. in for a penny in for a pound (it feels wrong to use a British idiom here, but I don't know the equivalent Québécois phrase)

Me: (Actually a spring mix might balance things out nicely.)

Prelude to a brisket

Hanukkah potluck tonight. Gonna make some knishes, someones bringing latkes. Very excited.

L’Chayim!

Next Tuesday, it's Chanukah!

Next week's Tuesday night dinner falls right in the middle of Chanukah. I feel some Jewish cookery is in order! Hello potato latkes! applesauce! chicken livers! Yes, we have some chutzpah!

Sonoran Pork Chili

Notes

This is based on a Pozole recipe I saw in Gourmet magazine last year. More or less the same recipe showed up recently in Cooking Light, so either it's a pretty classic pozole recipe or Cooking Light thinks it can rip off Gourmet now that the latter has shut down.

The Sonoran spice blend came from this guy. I don’t know where he got it, but if he came up with it himself he’s a genius. The fennel is key.

People ask if you should put beans in chili. The answer is yes – if you want your chili to suck. Beans are basically filler. They add nothing to the taste.

“...but the beans add texture” – bullshit. Kidney beans – especially canned kidney beans – have no texture worth mentioning let alone advocating. Add hominy if you want texture. And if you really wanna go for broke, roast the hominy first. This makes it a Pozole and not a chili? Fine. Call it whatever you want.

I think of chili as a winter dish – but this has one obvious disadvantage. Tomatoes. I end up using canned tomatoes – but tomatoes fresh from a local farmer’s market taste so much better. And don’t buy “fresh” tomatoes in a grocery store in the middle of winter. Just don’t. They’ve traveled 8,000 miles and were built to make the journey and they taste like ass. If you grew your own tomatoes and canned them yourself and have awesome tomatoes all winter long – I hate you. Give me some.

If you trim all the fat off the pork, the taste will suffer. I know, I know – you want to be healthy. So trim some of the fat off, but not all. Or don’t trim the fat off at all – and you will die happy.

What should you serve with the chili? Well, beer of course. But that’s so obvious I shouldn’t have to mention it. People in the Midwest seem to be fans of serving cinnamon rolls with their chili. Which is OK – I guess. Seems a little weird to me. I much prefer cornbread. Jalapeño cornbread. And what’s easier to make, cinnamon rolls or cornbread? Duh.

Ingredients
3 ½ Tbs Sonoran Spice Blend (that’s 1 ½ tsp of each of the seven ingredients. Easy!)
1 ½ lb pork loin
Olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
3 or 4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cans hominy, drained
1 can diced tomatoes, not drained
2 cans chicken broth, drained (kidding!)

Instructions
Put on some music. What are you an animal? I used Queen – Greatest Hits and that seemed to work out well.

If you’re gonna roast the hominy, do that first. Put the drained hominy into a pan of some sort and put under the broiler until the edges start turning brown. Don’t burn it! C’mon - seriously.

Cut the pork loin into ½” pieces and put in a bowl. Sprinkle a couple teaspoons of the spice blend onto the pork and stir to coat. Repeat until you’ve got 1 ½ or 2 tsp of the spice blend left and set it aside. Yeah – it’s gonna seem like you’re putting a lot on, but it’s all good. Each piece of pork should have a good coating on it.

Coat the bottom of a large dutch oven with olive oil and put over medium-high heat. Let the oil heat up. It should slosh around the pan a bit. If it’s still viscous, it’s not hot enough yet. Be patient.

Dump the pork into the dutch oven. Did it sizzle? No? The oil wasn’t hot enough, dumb ass. Jeez, what’d I just tell you? Well, it’s too late now. Carry on, I guess and hope you didn’t ruin it.

Cook the pork for 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. With the spice blend covering everything it might be hard to tell when the pork is starting to brown, so pay attention. It needs to brown a little bit to get good flavor, but you don’t wanna overcook it. Dry pork is the worst.

At this point you could start making the cornbread. Out of a box is fine. From scratch is better and really not that hard.

Take the pork out of the pan and set it aside. Put a little more olive oil in and add the onion, bell pepper and garlic. Sauté for 5 minutes or until the onion starts to get a little translucent.

Add the pork back in along with the remaining spice blend, broth, hominy and tomatoes. Bring the whole thing to a boil. Then turn down the heat and simmer for 25 minutes.

Ladle it out into big bowls and serve alongside cornbread. And of course cornbread needs butter – you’ve got that covered, right? And it’s not frozen solid is it? Get your shit together.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Upside Down Cake

Due to a total coincidence, I found that I could make one thing by myself tonight without a trip to the store! Whohoo! Thank goodness for over ripe bananas!

Totally easy and really nice warm right out of the oven (with our without a raging blizzard outside).

Too bad D isn't here to share--next Tuesday.

New blog, but where's the food?

Fittingly, now that I've gotten this idea up and running, we are in the midst of a messy snow storm. Here are some of the recipes we've tried so far, just as a recap.

• Garlic Soup

• Apple and Carrot Shortbread

• Maple-Mustard Pork Chops

• Creamy Mushroom Soup

• Julia Child's Chocolate Mousse

• Tassajara Warm Red Cabbage Salad