I went out to California last week to celebrate my step-mom's 60th birthday. As part of said celebration, my brothers and I put our collective culinary brains together and made a delicious meal for her. We decided to do a take on Southern food - some real rib-sticking dishes with a bit of a continental flair.
My older brother, J, put himself in charge of marinating and making a sauce for some thick cut pork chops (he also completely forgot that we have five people in our family, and only bought four chops). Isn't it just like an older brother to put himself in charge of things? Maybe it's just like my older brother. Perhaps yours is the epitome of egalitarianism.
My younger brother, D, was relegated to being sous-chef. As you know from his guest posts, however, he is as skilled as I in the kitchen. Wow, doesn't that sound pompous? I just mean his food is yummy. He did eventually take over the actual cooking of the pork, however, as J flubbed up his sauce the first time round and needed an extra set of hands. Knowing how difficult it is to perfectly cook pork, and having absolutely no skill with a barbecue (seriously, I can't even light mine), I was very impressed by his results.
With the pork, J made sauteed spinach with garlic, and I made butternut-squash macaroni and cheese. So the menu was pork chops, mac 'n' cheese, and greens - southern enough, no?
For dessert, I put together a blackberry cobbler, which we served with vanilla ice cream and a blackberry-rum sauce. So delicious.
As I wasn't really involved in the pork-making, I can only say that J marinated the pork for about 4 hours. His marinade involved olive oil, molasses, soy sauce, shallots, garlic, and salt and pepper. He cooks sort of like I do, which was evidenced as he made the marinade. He put the pork in a large zip-top bag and wandered from the pantry to the fridge, bag in hand, pouring in little bits of this and that. Then he stuck it in the fridge.
He made a sauce for the pork which consisted of stone-ground mustard, honey, olive oil, sauteed shallots and garlic, and lemon juice. As a said above, he did it twice, as he felt the first go-round was too mustardy. That's the thing about this kind of cooking, you just keep tasting as you go along until you find something you like.
The spinach (two bags) was sauteed gently with garlic and shallots that had been softened in olive oil and butter. We love us some shallots.
On to my dishes! As has been my wont lately, they were not my recipes.
I made the cobbler ahead of time, meaning I put it all together in the morning, and popped it in the fridge until about two hours before we wanted to serve it. I got the recipe, once again, from The Pioneer Woman. You can find it here.
The only changes I made to the recipe are that I used about double the amount of lemon juice and lemon zest than is indicated in the recipe. Also, I used brown sugar for sprinkling over the top of the cobbler. I did this because J loves brown sugar. I mean, loves it. When he was deployed with the military for 8 months, I sent him 4 dozens cookies every week, none of them containing a speck of white sugar, as per his request.
Anyway, having never made this recipe before, nor having ever made a cobbler before, I was unsure about how many pints of blackberries would make up the six cups needed for the recipe (yes, you'd think it would be 3 pints to make six cups, but you would be wrong - luckily we erred in the other direction, buying 6 pints), and was unaware of just how much juice the blackberries would produce in the bottom of the cobbler pan. So, armed with about 2 cups too many blackberries and fearing that the cobbler would be dry, I made a sauce. Finally, something I can actually give you a recipe for!
Blackberry Sauce
Ingredients
2 cups fresh blackberries
1 tbs. water
2 tbs. sugar
1 tsp lemon zest
2 pinches cinnamon
2 oz rum
Put the blackberries and water into a saucepan. Turn on the heat to medium-high. Use a wooden spoon to crush the blackberries a little. Sprinkle in the sugar. Let it cook until the blackberries have let out their juices. Add the lemon, cinnamon, and one ounce of rum (dark rum is best). Stir it gently, then allow to boil until it reduces by about half. Take off the heat and allow to cool.
At this point, run the syrup through a sieve to remove the blackberry seeds. I didn't want the texture of the seeds messing with the texture of the cobbler - but if I was serving this sauce over something simpler (like just ice cream), I'd consider leaving the seeds in.
Right before you're ready to serve, put the extra ounce of rum into the sauce and either nuke it in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes (that's what I did, as I'd had it in the fridge all afternoon), or just reheat it in the saucepan. Pour over cobbler and enjoy the blackberry blissfulness.
On to the Macaroni and Cheese!!
Again, I used someone else's recipe. This one, from The Tasty Kitchen. Here's the recipe for it. I wanted to make it a little more sophisticated, so I used Cellentani. It's like elbow macaroni for grown ups.
As usual, I fooled with this recipe too. But not by much! I used all of the pulp from a roasted butternut squash. I wanted to kick up the squash flavor and the health aspect, since macaroni and cheese is so delightfully bad for us. You'll see the recipe says to use a food processor or blender to mash up the squash - trust me, you don't need to go to such great lengths. I cooked my squash for a little longer than recommended (just over an hour), covered tightly with aluminum foil. The squash becomes so very soft that you can actually mash it up with a whisk - so don't bother with the food processor! Who wants to clean it anyway?
So, I had about 1.5 cups of mashed squash (as opposed to the .5 cup in the recipe). I recommend just buying the smallest squash you can find, and using all of it. I also used more Monterey Jack cheese than recommended, increasing that to about 3 cups. What can I say? I love cheese.
When I make this recipe again, I will likely change up the cheese a bit. Something in me feels that a blue cheese or a havarti would be delicious. Should it be so, I will let y'all know.
Bonus: my father, who is not especially fond of squash, loved this macaroni and cheese. This indicates to me that it is a perfect way to hide vegetables for picky children. The squash provides that great orange color that the "blue box" macaroni and cheese has, while also adding all the health benefits of squash. Awesome!
I hope this post wasn't too rambly for y'all. Have a great week.
Oh, oh, PS: vote for D's essay! This bleg with continue for months, folks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment