Pulled Pork Sandwiches and a Failed Attempt at Fried Pickles

The homemade kaiser rolls took a long time, but if you used store bought rolls, this is something you could put in the crock pot in the morning and have ready for dinner. The pork was fall apart tender, and Puddleglum and all the boys kept sampling the pork while I got everything ready.

There are probably a ton of recipes on the internet. I rubbed a pork should blade roast with brown sugar, paprika, onion powder, sea salt, and fresh ground

pepper. I put onion slices, carrots, and celery on the bottom of a crock pot, and put the roast (fat side up) on the vegetables.

You can roast all day on low. After you take your finished roast out, save and freeze the juice in the crock pot for soup stock. We put pan drippings in freezer bags and freeze them flat for easy thawing.

I wanted to give kudos to my friend, Christina. A few years ago she gave me the recipe for roasting a chicken in a crock pot with forty cloves of garlic, and that got me used to roasting meat in a crock pot. We've made that recipe so many times, and it is good every time. The drippings from that recipe make the best soup stock.

The kaiser rolls were tricky. I enjoyed making these, and I felt like it was worth it. If you want to try making these, click HERE to go to an excellent website with instructions and pictures. Instead of poppy seeds, I used sesame seeds since we always have a bunch of those (the boys like rice with soy sauce and sesame oil with sesame seeds sprinkled in). For my oven, the temperature in the instructions was a little high. If you are wondering what those yellow discs are, they are a pickled radish called oshingo. I tried making fried pickles with them (in addition to dill pickles), and it was a complete disaster.

I made carrot salad with asian apple pear, pineapples, and dried cranberries. It sounds good, and it was good, but truthfully I didn't feel it was a ton better than the kind of carrot salad that everyone's mom makes with plain old raisins and apples. I asked Puddleglum to pick up some of the good dill pickles in the refrigerated section, and he brought back those long flat sandwich sliced pickles. This was great for the sandwiches, but I actually wanted to make fried pickles. I did try cutting some of the sandwich slices and frying them, but it didn't turn out right. Several people commented about missing fried pickles. If I ever perfect a recipe that tastes like what I remember from Pass the Biscuits, I'll post it. If anyone tries a recipe that is close, please let me know. These were edible, and the batter might have been right, but because they were cut from sandwich slices, they weren't the right texture.

I made homemade barbecue sauce using a recipe from Emeril. It is from this WEBPAGE where he makes pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw and fried pickles. I didn't use his fried pickle recipe because he fried them whole. I think sliced pickle slices have to work better. Anyway, the barbecue sauce turned out really well. We happened to use the very last bit of ketchup for the recipe, so when I finished mixing it, I just poured it back into the ketchup container so we could just squeeze it onto our sandwiches. We were out of apple cider vinegar, so I used 1/2 a cup of white vinegar and 1/2 a cup of peach flavored grape juice (I know, but this is actually a good substitution). I know it doesn't sound very culinary, but neither do fried pickles. I also didn't have dried crushed red pepper, so I used cayenne pepper instead. It was darn good barbecue sauce.

Emeril's Barbecue Sauce

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup ketchup
• 3 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients and whisk well to dissolve the sugar. Place in a squeeze bottle and dress the pulled pork sandwiches to taste. This recipe is great as a condiment, but for baking or grilling, it is too bland. Add some Worcestershire, onion powder, soy sauce, honey or whatever to taste.

DBSK Taste vs. Taste

This is 2 of 9 parts. You can watch the other eight by going to youtube.com. Skip ahead to 2:00 to see a neat fish dish being made. I don't get the entire game show. If someone understands the premise, please explain in a comment. I don't get it...

Kimchi Jigae II

I loosely based this on the recipe by Maangchi. You can watch her video for kimchi jigae on Youtube. I changed some things. Kimchi jigae is one of those dishes that can be a little different every time. Greg saw some shitake mushrooms at the grocery store that looked good, so I had those on hand. We also had a red bell pepper that we wound up not using for the Christmas dinner, so I used that too. I bought a 5 pound pork shoulder blade roast that we are having tomorrow, so I cut about half a pound off of it for this soup. Really, I think there are only a few things that you have to have for kimchi jigae- kimchi, gochujang (Korean red pepper paste), water, and onion. You could make a basic soup with just that. It would be simple, but you could do it. Pork would really add to it as would the tofu, sesame oil, and garlic. Maangchi doesn't use egg in her recipe, but my other favorite Youtube Korean cook is aeriskitchen, and she puts egg in her Korean Kimchi Ramon. I tried it, and I liked it.

I don't think this dish photographs well. If I had been thinking about it, I would have sprinkled some green onion on the top to make it look prettier. Well, it is what it is. I must say the end product was delicious. I used firm tofu, but Maangchi likes soft tofu. Also, I've seen many Koreans who slice the tofu in large flat squares not in small cubes like I did. The kimchi that I buy from the Korean store here in town already is coarsely chopped. I did chop some of the larger sections of cabbage into bite sized pieces. In most cooking onion is finely chopped for soup and then sauteed in butter or some kind of oil (except onion soup where the onion is left in rings). Maangchi chops her onion in large strips. Korean cooking is different from what you typically think of. I remember thinking my mom was not very culinary when she boiled soup on the stove, but that is what you do with kimchi jigae. You don't bring it up to a boil, and then turn down the heat to a simmer which is how most cooking is done. You keep it on high heat at a good boil for ten minutes, and then turn it down to medium low, and you still pretty much keep it at a boil.

My mom had a refrigerator in the garage that was dedicated to Korean food. I remember being a little afraid of it. I seldom had to open the door, but when I did, it was always with a little trepidation. I remember always being revolted by a bag of dead, dried up little fish. Now I know what they are for, and I even have a bag of my own. They are boiled and dried anchovies. You use them to make dashi (fish stock). I bought them to make dukboki (see my previous note on that) which is a popular street food in Korea. Since I had some, I thought instead of just adding water to the kimchi jigae, that I would make dashi and use that. It did give a very subtle and enjoyable fish flavor to the soup, so if you have it, great. If not, just use water. If you have guests coming over, I would forgo the dashi. It really smells up the house.

Tae obviously didn't like it (haha!). Thumbs up or thumbs down? Big thumbs up! He really liked the tofu. Baby is a brave one. I told him it was very spicy, but he wanted to try it anyway. He said, "Here goes." He liked it! He drank quite a bit of our special family heavily watered down peach flavored white grape juice to cool his mouth, but he did pretty good with it eating about a third of his bowl before giving up. The pork was very tender. I seared the pork pieces before adding the liquid. Maangchi uses pork belly. One time I did not have any pork, but I did have some bacon drippings in the fridge, so I added some to the soup for flavoring.

Once you master kimchi jigae, you can use the concepts in all kinds of dishes. I made this "Asian Leek Soup" when Puddleglum decided to buy some leeks. He was going to make this one particular dish, but then he changed his mind, and then we had all these great leeks. I started the way you would most soups. I put a tablespoon (or two) of butter into a saute pan, then I added the leeks (which I had washed and chopped). I sauted them until they started to get soft. I think we had some store bought chicken broth in the refrigerator or maybe I just added water (I can't remember now- I took a picture to do a blog post, and then I forgot to type everything out). We had some leftover pan drippings from a roast and also some homemade chicken stock in the freezer, so I threw both bags in. I added a little bit of gochujang and some soy sauce, and I think I put in a little brown sugar for some sweetness. Then I broke a couple of eggs into it like aeriskitchen does. When I plated it, I sprinkled some green onion and cilantro on top, and I served it with lime wedges to squeeze over the soup. Puddleglum really liked it, and I made it completely on the fly with ingredients on hand and things that I learned from Maangchi and aeriskitchen.

Puddleglum's Kimchi Jigae

1 TBSP pure sesame oil
1/2 onion chopped into "strips"
3 cloves of garlic finely chopped or minced
1/2 pound pork (I used shoulder blade roast)
2 TBSP red bell pepper chopped
5 shitake mushrooms sliced
3 green onions sliced thin
2 cups kimchi coarsely chopped (pressed down to 2 cups)
1 TBSP sugar
5 cups dashi* (you can just use water)
1 heaping TBPS of gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)
1/2 pkg tofu cut into cubes
1-2 eggs
another drizzle of pure sesame oil (make sure it is brown and not the light colored stuff)

In a large saute pan or small stock pot add the 1 TBSP of sesame oil, onion, and garlic. Saute over high heat. After a couple of minutes add the pork. Stir to sear the outside of the pork for maybe a minute, but don't cook through. Add the red bell pepper, the mushrooms, and the green onion. Stir for a minute or two. Add the kimchi. Stir for another minute or so. Add the dashi (or water) and then the sugar *(to make dashi boil 5 cups of water with eight anchovies for several minutes. Remove and discard the anchovies). You may need to add a little more water to the kimchi jigae depending on how big your saute pan or stock pot is and how "liquidy" you want your soup. Boil on high heat covered for about ten minutes. Turn the heat down to medium/medium low and stir a couple of times. Cook for another ten minutes or so stirring occasionally. Add your eggs. You can beat them in a bowl and then slowly pour into the soup in a circle to form strings or you can break the eggs directly into the soup. If you do that, let the whites cook a little first, and then break your yolks and gently stir. Add your tofu. Cover and cook for another five minutes. Uncover and drizzle a little more sesame oil on top and gently stir. I felt like I wanted to add a little soy sauce at this point. Heck. It's my soup. Why not? I added a little soy sauce and gently stirred.

I made a pot of rice so that if the boys did not like it, they could have rice with soy sauce, sesame oil, and sesame seeds. Jax tasted it, and he liked it all right but not enough to have a whole bowl. He had the rice. I wanted to put a big spoonful of rice in my soup, but I chose to abstain to reduce my carb intake. Who am I trying to kid? I ate Pringles today with the boys. I should have had some rice...

One last note here. For kids who are not used to spice, you could reduce the gochujang to 1 tsp instead of 1 heaping TBSP. You could also "rinse" the kimchi in a strainer under the tap to reduce some of the spice before you add it to the pan. This would make it less spicy.

Huevos a la Flamenca

Some of my closest friends know that TJ Maxx is my favorite store. I found a beautiful casserole handmade in Poland for $14! I don't know why exactly, but it makes me happy to look at it. It is perfect for a dish from Spain called Huevos a la Flamenca. It is different from Huevos Rancheros in that the tomato mixture is smooth, the eggs are baked not poached or fried, and it is customarily made with peas and jamon and/or chorizo.

I have been wanting to try Jamon Iberica or Jamon Serrano. They are cured hams from Spain similar to Prociutto Ham from Italy. The Jamon Iberica is the most expensive. The pigs are a special breed called Iberian, and they are given a special diet that includes acorns. I couldn't find this kind of ham, and even if I could, I couldn't afford it. I did find the Jamon Serrano for about $20/pound! I asked for $4 worth which is actually a good amount. I have plenty leftover to make this for my sister when she comes to visit.

Some of the other ingredients include Manchego cheese which is made in the La Mancha region of Spain. It is fairly expensive here in our town. I asked for $4 worth which was plenty, and again, I have enough for my sister when she gets in town. It is a yummy cheese, and you could eat it with the jamon and some crackers for a nice snack.
I found a video on Youtube with a guy making Huevos a la Flamenca. He made it very simply using Tomate Frito which is made with fried tomatoes that have been strained. I couldn't find it, but I did find a product from Italy that is similar. You could make your own sauce with roasted tomatoes and a blender, or you can just use tomato paste or tomato sauce.

I found some pork chorizo. If you decide to use chorizo, don't read the ingredients. Just don't.
Whenever I hear the word chorizo, I think of a play I was in. I think it was called the Marvelous Playbill. David Velasco, who was actually from Spain, was the lead. I can hardly remember the storyline (early Alzheimers?), but the setting was in Spain a couple of centuries ago. One of the characters had a one liner where he said "chorizo", and it got a few laughs from the audience.
The Jamon Serrano is much tastier after it has been fried kind of like bacon. I thought I would like it raw, but I couldn't palate the flavor. Maybe I just haven't developed a taste for it. I would like to try Jamon Iberica someday. When the Jamon Serrano is nice a crispy, it is like a sophisticated bacon. It is smoother and has a different flavor. I recommend cooking the chorizo very, very well. Very well. When you first start frying it, it doesn't smell very good. Just give it a chance. It really adds to the flavor of the dish.
Be very careful not to overcook the eggs. You want the yolks to be runny. About 12 minutes in a 375 degree oven is about all you'll need. I overcooked this batch a little. It was still good though. When you plate it, make sure you put a little bit of everything on the plate. I grated the manchego over the entire casserole when it came out of the oven, and then I added even more after I plated it. Serve with bread. I used a French baguette. Your kitchen will smell like a gourmet restaurant if you make this. It is totally worth it.

I love nice hot coffee when I have eggs. If you had this as a dinner entree, you could serve it with a white wine or even a red wine. My favorite coffee is Ruta Maya from Chiapas, Mexico. My sister used to live in Hyde Park in Austin right next to an organic supermarket. They carried this coffee, and the first time I tried it, I thought,"this is the best coffee ever!" I was excited when Puddleglum found it at our local grocery store. It is distributed out of Austin.

Puddleglum's Huevos a la Flameca

several strips Jamon Serrano (can substitute 2-3 strips bacon)
5 TBSP chorizo (can substitute sausage)
1 TBSP olive oil
1/4 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp oregano
1 cup Tomate Frito (or strained tomatoes, pureed tomatoes, sauce, or thinned paste)
1 TBSP Alessi roasted red pepper, chopped
3-4 eggs
2 TBSP peas
manchego cheese

Preheat oven to 400deg F. Cook the Jamon Serrano and the chorizo in their own saute pans until the jamon is crispy and the chorizo is very well done. Place the oil, onion, garlic, and spices in a large saute pan. Saute until the onions just start to soften. Pour in the Tomate Frito or whatever tomato mixture you have (in my case the Pomi Strained Tomatoes). Cook until the mixture has been bubbly for several minutes stirring constantly. Add your roated red peppers at the end. Pour the tomato mixture into a shallow baking dish. Break your eggs carefully on top of the tomato mixture. Place your cooked jamon, chorizo, and peas in any way you like. Bake for about 14 minutes until the whites are cooked but the yolks are runny. Generously sprinkle with manchego cheese. Serve with good bread and nice hot coffee.

¡Buen provecho!

*

Green Tea and Red Rice Swirl Bread

Apple Pie, Patis, & Pate made an imaginative loaf of bread. He used ground green tea leaves and ground red rice. I like the idea, plus red rice has cholesterol lowering properties and green tea contains antioxidants. I think I may try this one.

Huevos Divorciados

I decided to cook a dish for myself that I've been wanting to make for a while now. I love egg dishes- mainly anything with poached eggs (like Eggs Benedict), or fried eggs (sunnyside up or over easy). I've always liked Huevos Rancheros, but apparently what I thought was Huevos Rancheros isn't really Huevos Rancheros. At any restaurant that I've ever ordered it at, it is usually a fried egg with salsa on top and corn tortillas somewhere. I had a patient who was into Mexico cooking, and he told me how to make it properly. He said the only correct way to make Huevos Rancheros was to make a tomato concoction and poach the eggs in that. He said corn tortillas have nothing to do with it, and he usually served it with refried beans or chicharrones (fried pork rinds).

Last week the grocery store had some good looking poblano peppers, so I bought some. I can't ever find canned poblanos. One of my friends has found them, but I don't ever see them. We made Spanish Rice last night, so I roasted them to use a little in the rice. I roasted them and then nuked them for a few minutes. Then I put them in this glass casserole to "sweat" a little so I could peel off the shiny, "plasticy" skin.

It's always a pain to do that, and I never can get all that skin off. I know cooking fresh and by scratch is supposed to be best, but I wish I could find them in a can! This makes me think of how Puddleglum and I used to make mole from scratch. It is a long process and takes forever. When I was talking to my friend, Juana (who was born and raised in Mexico), about it, she asked me why we didn't just buy it in a jar and add peanut butter because that's what most of the people in Mexico do.

The smell of roasting peppers always reminds me of my first job. I was a Pinkerton security guard in the Summer of '87. My first gigs were at the Coliseum. I worked the Barnum and Bailey circus (clowns really are scary), a monster truck show, a Menudo concert, and the Motley Crue/Whitesnake concert (not as much fun as it sounds). I finally got a permanent gig at the Old El Paso Mexican Food plant. This was during the summer time in El Paso in a polyester uniform outside in the parking lot during the day without air conditioning. I stood in the security guard tower watching the employees' cars. Sometimes the smell of roasting chiles was so strong it made my eyes water.

For the green side, I diced one of the poblanos and put it into a saute pan over medium heat with some oil. After a couple of minutes I put two of the roasted poblanos that I had left into a food processor with about 1/4 of a jar of La Costena Green Mexican Salsa.

After I pulsed that a few times, I poured it into the saute pan with the diced poblanos. In another saute pan I put one jar of Muir Glen Diced Fire Roasted Tomatoes and about 1/4 of a jar of red salsa. When the contents of both pans were bubbling, I cracked an egg in each. You'll want to cook until the white is just barely cooked and the yolks are still runny. Do not overcook!

It's not too hard to plate it. You just have to be careful when you put each side in the bowl. I sprinkled some white cheese on top, and I put some cilantro in the center. We had leftover Pedros tamales and some leftover refried beans. I plated that with some of the rice that we made. The chicharrones were yummy crumbled on top. They made a crackling noise like Rice Crispies. The crunch went really well with the dish. One word of warning; the green side has a kick.

Puddleglum's Huevos Divorciados

3 Roasted Poblanos (dice one, puree two with the green salsa)
1/3 jar La Costena Green Mexican Salsa
1 can Muir Glen Diced Fire Roasted Tomatoes
1/3 jar red salsa
2 large eggs
2 TBSP grated white cheese
2-3 sprigs cilantro
1 handful of crumbled chicharrones

To stay traditional you can separate both sides with a strip of chilaquiles.

See instructions above and serve very hot with fresh, hot coffee.

Hobakjuk

I made Korean Pumpkin Porridge (hobakjuk) last weekend. It was good. I made it more like pumpkin soup rather than porridge, and that was a mistake. I'll know for next time. I used this video by maangchi. She used butternut squash for her video. The boys helped me make the mochi balls. It takes a long time to make those. Maangchi says that when you see larger rice cake balls, that means they were made by lazy people. Not wanting to be lazy, I tried to keep them small. It takes a long time.

Each of the boys came by to see what I was doing, and since it looks like playdough, they all were interested in making some. They'd make about half a dozen until they realized it wasn't as much fun as it looked. Those little hands made nice small, round rice cakes though. I followed the directions on Maangchi's video. She takes two cups of water and 1/4 teaspoon salt and puts it in a big mixing bowl. Then she adds 3/4 cups of boiling water. She mixes it for quite a while with a big rice spoon. Then she uses her hands to "knead" it. She's so cute. She says that the "dough" should feel like an earlobe. Then wrap it up in some plastic wrap and set aside while you put together the hobakjuk.

So, here's how I made my hobakjuk. I took one of the pumpkins that we bought at the pumpkin patch and baked it on the oven until it the flesh was soft. I let it cool and then just peeled off the skin (rind?). It mashed easily with a hand blender in a soup pot. At that point I should have left it simple and added some sugar, and salt and pepper (and maybe some ginger), and a little water to thin it a little. Instead I added too much organic chicken broth, brown sugar, nutmeg, ginger, a little maple syrup, and white pepper, and then I added the mochi balls. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't hobakjuk. It was pumpkin soup. Greg made curry pumpkin soup a couple weeks ago, and it was good, but I wasn't really wanting that kind of thing again. We still have some pumpkin left, so I might try again. Sometimes hobakjuk is served with sweet red beans on top. It sounds weird, but trust me, it's good.