This is kind of old school. You don’t see people eating pork chops much anymore. They got pushed over in the corner next to the ham steaks. If you get a fat chop, brine it (½ cup sugar, ½ cup salt dissolved in a gallon of water) overnight in the refrigerator. It cooks up incredibly juicy. This one got a ride in the cast iron skillet. Just don’t over cook it. Trichinosis has been bred out of pork, so if the center is still a little pink, you’re fine.
Category Archives: Cooking At Home
Bubbles for Valentine’s Day
How was your Valentine’s Day? Hopefully some bubbly was involved (that wasn’t Topo Chico). It was good for me. Pictured above is the Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Sparkling Brut ($24 at Central Market) that went down surprisingly (quickly) easily.
This Should Be Every Night
You can’t not like this. Chips! Who knew they didn’t originally come in a bag? Hot, greasy, salty, crispy. I don’t even want to know you if you aren’t on board.
Spice Alone
If this is vegetarian food, count me in. The Quesadilla: butter (for the pan), cheese, sour cream, spice and tortillas. Wait a second. Can vegetarians eat dairy? If they can’t, we need to eliminate the first three items. So now we have spice and a tortilla. Humm. Not nearly as appetizing. I hope there isn’t a group that can’t eat tortillas. That would be crazy bad news. They say variety is the spice of life. But you can’t sustain life on spice alone.
Cooking By Subtraction
More doesn’t always mean better. A laundry list of ingredients, complicated preparation or heavy sauce doesn’t guarantee a winner. I guess that is why it is had to find sauce at most serious BBQ places (or forks for that matter). Sometimes, the fewer things on a plate, the better they shine through. I was thinking about this while I was making breakfast and pushed away some of the things that I was going to put in my dish. What didn’t it need? What did it just need: fresh corn tortilla from Central Market (still hot in it’s bag), two eggs scrambled from Vital, cilantro, shallot, salt and a splash of vinegar based hot sauce (Crystal is my brand). Fantastic. For me, it didn’t need anything else.
Bread Flour Test: White vs. Wheat
I need to read up more on this, but it appears that wheat flour doesn’t rise like white flour. I just ran a test to see the difference between using a standard white flour and whole wheat flour to make bread. I ran the test according to how I normally make my rustic white bread.