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three menus in brief
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July 23, 2002
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« dinner for five | Main | saturday's non-incidents »
I know, I know. Don't I have other things I should be doing? Yes, it's true, I should be studying for the GRE, working on projects for my college applications, straightening up my finances, or any number of other things. Or at least doing something that would be interesting to write about. But instead, I'm cooking.
Sunday: Fish Tacos, Salsa Tropica, and Black Bean Stew
Sunday I just had to have fish tacos. Wierd how cravings just come upon you sometimes. The last time I had fish tacos I was in Mexico. That was nearly three years ago. Haven't thought about them since.
"Fish tacos? That doesn't sound good at all," Rebecca said. Rebecca is a food psychic. She has premonitions about foods she's never seen before, and most of them are bad.
But it's my job to make her try new things. She'd probably be happy eating the same five things over and over again. I enjoy broadening her food horizons, but really it's an issue of self-preservation. I don't want to wake from a nightmare one night and find myself throttling her, screaming "NO MORE TUNA SANDWICHES! AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, WE WILL HAVE NO MORE TUNA SANDWICHES!".
One problem Rebecca may have had with the fish taco concept may be that it sounds like Mexican food. Rebecca just doesn't like Mexican food. I don't consider it a personal failing, since the food served at "Mexican" restaurants is not typically my favorite kind of food either, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of great dishes that are Mexican in origin. Furthermore, there are a lot of other culinary traditions in Latin America that make interesting contributions, traditions I haven't even begun to explore.
In retrospect, however, I might have been better off if I'd bought pitas instead of tortillas and told her that they were "Greek Fishsteak Wraps" or something. Hmmm.
But since I'd already gone the Mexican food route, I figured I might as well try to chip away even further at Rebecca's Mexican food intolerance. I decided to make a pork and black bean stew infused with cloves.
To do this, I braised a pork shoulder for an hour and a half in the remnants of Eman's pork braising liquid from the dinner party, which I supplemented with some stock and honey. I'm all about reusing braising liquid these days. Eventually, it's like having the richest, most flavorful stock at your disposal, only you've amortized the work over many days and you never need to mess around with bones and parts you're never going to eat.
I then chopped that up and sauteed it with herbs, garlic, and a few other things I can't remember, added black beans, stock, red bell peppers, and a few other ingredients, and let it stew for 45 minutes or so. (If I'd been using dried beans, I would have just cooked the pork with the stew, but this was a last-minute decision, so I hardly had time to start with dried beans.)
The tropical salsa was very good this time. Mango-heavy and tomato-light this time. It also had papaya and pineapple and lots of cilantro. The fruit was hand-chopped this time; using a food processor is generally a mistake for fruit salsas, I think.
The fish tacos were made from a large catfish filet. I'd been going back and forth about whether to do the right think and saute the fish or do the delicious thing and fry them. In the end I did half and half. (You know me and my penchant for hedging my bets with recipies.)
I made a beer batter by putting flour, an egg, salt, and pepper into a bowl and whisking in beer until I got a viscous liquid. (I've never fried fish before, and I don't do much frying in general. I love it when things come together even when I'm totally clueless about how to go about it, which is a good percentage of the time.) I then soaked the catfish in the batter and shallow-fried them in about 3/4 in. of canola oil.
I served the strips with warm tortillas, lettuce, the salsa, and the stew, which I put on the tacos as an additional condiment.
"You know, I have to admit -- these aren't half bad," Rebecca said, which, given the circumstances, can be considered high praise. At least I took it that way.
Monday: New York Steak and Beet Orange Salad
I've been fascinated by the dishes that Eman made at our dinner party last week. This was my attempt at replicating his beet-orange salad. I was too cheap to buy Filet Mignon at Safeway prices and too lazy to make the trip to the butcher where I can get it cheap, so I "settled" on serving it with a New York cut.
This is a very easy dish to make. You roast the beets, peel them, and chop them. Peel and chop the oranges and mix them with the beets. Then add salt, pepper, and a touch of orange or lemon juice. Portion it out. Place sliced steak on top of the beet piles.
Eman also had a sauce that he made from bottled beet juice and some other stuff. I just combined the pan drippings from the roasted beets with the pan drippings from the steak, both of which I'd deglazed with a little wine, and poured it over each one. Seemed to work OK.
I liked the result nearly as well as Eman's salad, although there are a few things I haven't figured out yet, such as what temperature it's best served at. Also the beet consistency wasn't quite as exquisite; maybe I overcooked them a little. Rebecca didn't like it as much, though. I think I added too much pepper for her. I've been getting pretty liberal with adding pepper to stuff lately; maybe I need to hold back a little. Darrell also didn't say anything about it (although he ate all of it), so I can only assume that I have some work to do on this dish.
Tuesday: Braised Pork Shoulder with Apple-Olive Relish
Eman said his inspiration for this was the old "Pork chop and applesauce" warhorse. I aspire to this level of creativity. This could almost be a restaurant dish.
Last week, Eman braised this for nearly six hours. Since I don't have that kind of time after work, I'm trying this as a crockpot recipe. I'm braising it in the sauce that I used Sunday for the other half of the pork shoulder. I'm supplementing that with a little chicken stock, veal demi-glace, and honey. To the liquid I added three sweet potatoes, two carrots, and the pork shoulder. Turned the crockpot on when I left work, and I imagine it'll be done by the time I get home.
The relish is a work of genius and I hope that whatever I wind up with will even be a pale imitation of what he made. The gist of it, from what Eman says, is to chop the apples and saute them in lots of butter. When they get soft, add brown sugar, enough to make them taste like apple pie. Then add the olives (he used nicoise olives) and cook a little longer. Then add cognac and flambe. Season with salt, pepper, and rosemary.
I might try to play up the apple-pie angle and add a dash of cinnamon and/or nutmeg to the mix. We'll see.
He served it with truffled mashed potatoes, and although the dish could definitely use the starch to soak up the sauce, I think we'll have plenty to eat between the sweet potatoes and leftovers from the last few days; making something else would only generate more leftovers.
Tuesday: Epilogue
Mixed success. The pork was good, if not transcendent. The sweet potatoes and carrots that cooked along with it tasted strangely, as if they'd cooked all day with something that had burned, although I couldn't find any evidence of burning. I'd planned to make a mash from them and use that as the starch for the meal, but I was forced to make mashed potatoes instead. The relish was good, but not as good as Eman's. Perhaps I overcooked the apples?
I'll definitely come back to this menu. Next time I'll make it on a weekend, and I won't use a crockpot.
July 23, 2002 in menus, old_site | Permalink
