It's been a month since I last posted anything food relate to my old site. We've been busy. Trip to Scotland to plan a wedding, future in-laws in town for a week and then a great new gig to help PAY for the wedding this summer. Been a good month.
Sorry for the crappy photos - my camera is on the fritz....
I have cooked in that time - I just haven't had time to post anything. So let's get going again.
for a decent price and enough for two meals. Had to slice and dice to get the meat off that I wanted to use for this meal. I cut the chunk off the bone and then proceeded to further chop the pork into roughly 1/4"x1/2" slices. Pretty thin.
I should note that i cut the skin off the ham and threw it onto a very hot skillet. As I sliced the meat up I rendered the fat for use in the dish. I cooked it a bit longer and almost decided to make some pork rinds - but i digress. It's a good habit, in my book, to always get as much fat from pork as you can for recipies later down the road. I was raised in the South.
After cutting up the meat I turned my attention to the various veggies that would be accompanying the meal. First up was the red peppers. Long slices - pretty thin though. The pepper was so sweet! Picked it up at the market last Sunday at Place d'Italie.
Next I pulled off about six cloves of garlic and peeled them and then smashed them. No cutting, no slicing, no dicing. Just mashed with the edge of my kitchen knife. Just after that I sliced up my
onion and then tossed it and the garlic into my pan with the now sizzling pork rind.
Holy crap - did it start smelling wonderful. Lesson one today - and i've said it before - let your onions and garlic brown a second. Don't start stirring them around non-stop. Go read a couple of emails, come swish them, little tic-tac-toe, stir... whatever. Let them enjoy their time in the pan. Six or seven minutes, total.
What I actually did while the onions and garlic were getting happy was start in on the mushrooms. Wonderful mushrooms from the market also. Wash them well. Dirt in your meal sucks. I sliced these into big thick slices. Wanted to make sure they had some umph left after cooking.
With the onions and garlic about ready I then threw my diced and sliced pork into the mix. Let it brown with the rest. Cutting the meat this thin allows you to cook it pretty quick. No more than a couple of minutes passed by before it was time to toss in the red peppers and mushrooms. Normally I wouldn't cook these two for the same amount of time. This time though I wanted really crisp red peppers. Just before adding them I put in a bit of virgin olive oil into the pan. The mushrooms are like sponges.
Cooked the whole mix for about another minute and a half grabbed some cilantro that I had been chopping up addeded it to the pan, stirred once and emptied the goodies into a glass dishes for later.
Next up was the Bulgur. Never ever cooked with this stuff until coming here. I love it. Anyone who has never used it - go buy some. You may never use rice again. Unless your allergic to it and in that case, I'm sorry. The stuff cooks in about three minutes after you get your
water to boiling. I can't read Turkish or German so I just use a 2/1 ratio of water to bulgur and I add about a tablespoon of butter to the water - maybe a bit more. I'm a fan of butter. Seems to do the trick.
Now for the spinach and garlic.
Going to run through this quick. WASH you spinach GOOD. Rene does, and did, a great job at this. Heat your pan, add olive oil - two tablespoons? - add garlic, brown, add spinach and cook. The pan was four inches high with spinach and cooked down to a perfect amount for us. When you cook it this way - you have to flip the spinach. Get the cooked stuff up and the uncooked down. Don't overcook. I'd say no more than four minutes is about right.
Time to sit down and eat it now. This was a fantastic meal. No spices added (except for salt and pepper to taste).
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