Sunday, June 30, 2013

Roasted Okra

Okra is a wonderful veggie. If you've never had good fried okra, your life is less for the experience. In soups and stews, okra is a fantastic thickener that's still a veggie. Okra is a great, great summer veggie for the South, don't get me wrong.

There's only one problem: when cooked the wrong way, okra is slimy. REALLY slimy. I've read bits where it gets compared to cooked mucus. Which, let's face it is gross, but there is a key thing here that needs to be said: the South loves okra because it's tasty. As in, it's very easy to cook okra in a way that isn't slimy, and isn't gross, and tastes amazing and summer-y and really really good.

This is one way to do okra right.

Before the recipe, some criteria. When you buy okra, buy the shortest, smallest pods possible. Large okra are bad, because they get woody. So try to buy the smallest okra you can. Also, before you cook your okra, rinse it first. Not because it will affect the slime factor, but because it often is planted in fields that border cotton or corn or soy that get sprayed with other pesticides, so it never hurts to rinse those off. Remember: small okra, and rinse the okra. 


Roasted Okra

1 or 1 1/2 lbs okra (Smallest you can find, freshest you can find)
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 400F.

Rinse your okra, then cut the stem end off all okra. Slice the okra pods in half vertically down the middle to expose the seeds on both sides, and place okra in a medium mixing bowl. THIS IS KEY: if the okra pods are longer than 2 inches, slice the pods into shorter parts before slicing them down the middle. This helps the longer pods, which are potentially woody, roast more effectively.

Once you've got the okra sliced into no longer than 2 1/2 inch bits and chucked into a medium mixing bowl, pour the tbsp of olive oil over the whole thing. Mix until all the okra is oiled (trust me, a bit of oil goes a long way. Just stir it around a bit, and 1 tbsp will coat all that okra fine).

Cover a baking sheet with tin foil for easy cleanup, then spray the tinfoil with non-stick baking spray. Spread the okra on the tray evenly, doesn't matter whether it's the inner or the outer side facing up.. Sprinkle salt and pepper over okra to season gently. DO NO OVER-SALT, you don't want your salt to drown out the taste of the okra itself.

Place baking sheet in oven and roast okra for 15-20 minutes. Stir/turn the okra halfway through. Serve immediately.

Serves: 3

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Spicy Pulled Pork

Look, I live in the South. Pulled pork is a religion here. Family feuds have been started over barbeque recipes. And I'm not about to step into the BBQ wars, but I recently tried to do spicy pulled pork, and it was phenomenally successful. It was spicy, and tender, and tasty, and everything that good pork should be. This is that recipe.

Look: the pork is great. It will work with burger buns as an almost-sloppy-joe recipe, it will work with (mustard!) BBQ sauces, etc. But I made this for pulled pork tacos, and it works REALLY well for those. For tacos, serve it with a red bell pepper that's been julienned into thin strips of tasty, crunchy, sweet goodness. Add avocado for a bit of fat to cut the spice and add a creamy texture (seriously, the avocado is really good in this. Do not avoid the avocado, it takes the pork to a whole other level). Add sour cream to tie everything together, and wrap it all up in a tortilla to keep your hands clean while you devour the deliciousness.

Pulled pork tacos with this pulled pork are amazing. I'm not kidding. Totally worth it.



Spicy Pulled Pork


1 pork butt (I used a 4 lb pork butt, yours may be heavier or lighter and that's okay. Many grocery stores call this a Boston Butt. In reality, it's a part of the pork shoulder. All "pork butts" are actually shoulder, not butt. You could try this with other cuts, but the pork butt has enough fat to help keep everything moist, and is often on sale in my grocery and is therefore cheap to buy, so I recommend that one)
1/2 sweet onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14 oz) can diced tomatoes with chiles (don't drain the can, add the juice too)
1 cup apple juice
3 tbsp lime juice
3 tbsp diced chipotle peppers in ancho
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
1 1/2 tsp ancho chile powder
Salt
Pepper

For Tacos:
1 pkg flour tortillas
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 avocado, sliced into thin slices
Sour cream (This is almost essential. If you serve spicy pulled pork tacos without sour cream, you are a cruel and unusual cook.)


Preheat the oven to 350F. Yes, I know it seems high. Yes, trust me, it works.

Combine the onion, garlic, tomatoes with chiles, apple juice, lime juice, and the diced chipotle in ancho in a bowl.

Take the pork butt and salt and pepper it thoroughly. Place the pork butt in a 4 1/2 qt pot with lid (or a 4 qt dutch oven, doesn't really matter which), then pour the mixture of tomatoes and stuff over it. Cover the pot (or dutch oven) and stick it in the oven for 3 hrs.

Remove the pot and roast from the oven. Take the pork roast out of the pot and leave it on a plate to cool. Strain the tomato/onion/pepper mix through a strainer into a medium bowl. Reserve the liquids in the bowl, and return the peppers/tomatoes/onions/etc to the pot or dutch oven.

Pull the pork. This will take at least 15 minutes. Plan for time to pull the pork when you plan your meal. Just like you returned the solids from the mix to the pot/dutch oven, return the pulled pork to the pot/dutch oven.

When you're finished pulling the pork, stir the pot to mix the tomatoes/onions/peppers with the pork, then add about 1/4 of the reserved liquid mixture back to the pork. You're looking here to make sure that the pork has enough liquid to reabsorb it and become really soft and tasty. Add the ancho chile powder. Stir. Taste. Add salt, pepper, and Tobasco as appropriate. Stir. Taste. Adjust the salt, pepper, or Tobasco until the pork is as spicy as you want it. Taste again to make sure the salt is right (and because pulled pork is damned tasty, why wouldn't you want to try it?). The pork will likely absorb all of the liquid and needs to be stirred a lot to distribute the spices, that's okay. After the tastings, add more liquid then repeat until you get to the point where you feel like the meat can't possibly absorb more. Usually I add more than 1/2, but less than 3/4 of the liquid back to the pulled pork. Err on the side of more liquid, since you can get pork that's too dry but you can't get pork that's too juicy.

Once you've got the pork to the point that you want it, cover the pot/dutch oven again, and stick it back in the oven for 20 minutes. During those minutes, you can julienne your red pepper, slice your avocado, pull out your sour cream, nuke your flour tortillas, and set the table. When the pot/dutch oven comes out of the oven, stir it to make sure all the juices are incorporated, then serve immediately. These are really tasty.

Serves: 10-14 tacos











Sunday, June 16, 2013

Pound Cake

My mother always told me that the pound cake got its name from the way that, way back when, the recipe involved a pound of all the ingredients. A pound of flour, pound of sugar, pound of butter. I don't know if that's true, but this is one of my favorite cakes. It doesn't come out oily like some pound cakes (ick), it has a heavenly crust on top that goes perfectly with summer ice creams or sherbets, it's not too sweet and it's not too heavy. It's sort of the perfect cake. (It also freezes well for future consumption, if you're like me and can't eat a whole cake in just a few days)


Pound Cake

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature or microwaved on low power until soft (for most of my recipes I use unsalted sweet cream butter, but go with the salted version for this)
3 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp baking soda
3 cups sifted flour
1 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 300F.

Begin by beating egg whites until stiff (reserve the yolks in another bowl). Transfer whites to another bowl to wait for a moment then rinse mixer bowl for the rest of the recipe. Beating the egg whites first just saves time and keeps you from having to wash the mixer bowl  and beaters later after you've mixed the other ingredients.

Next, cream together butter and sugar thoroughly. Add egg yolks one at a time. In a different bowl, add baking soda to flour. Alternately add flour mixture and sour cream to creamed mixture. Gently fold in egg whites. Do not stir or overfold, you want the egg whites to add volume and lightness to your mixture here.

Spray a tube pan (or a bundt pan if you don't have a tube pan. Bread pans will also work, this recipe is flexible) with non-stick baking spray. This is a non-stick spray that has flour in it, and is perfect for cakes. If you don't have non-stick baking spray, grease then flour your pan. Pour the batter into the pan, then bake for 1 1/2 hrs at 300F. The cake should have a nice brown crust on top, and a cake tester should come out clean when inserted to the center.

Remove cake from oven and sit it on a cooling rack for at least 15 minutes before attempting to remove it from the pan. The longer it can sit and cool, the moister it gets, so let it hang out for as long as you like before inverting the pan to turn it out. Flip it back over so that the crust is on top before serving.  Goes well with fresh fruit and whipped cream.

Serves: 10-12

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Fish Tacos With Corn Salsa

This is a perfect dish for summer: light, fresh and really flavorful. The corn salsa can be heated if you like your tacos warmer, or for those blistering days when the idea of putting more heat in your mouth is enough to make you think of swooning, it can be eaten chilled for a great contrast with the warm fish. Very, very tasty! The recipe looks like it calls for a lot of chili powder in the cornmeal batter for the fish, but it doesn't actually come out tasting extremely spicy.


Fish Tacos With Corn Salsa

For the fish tacos:
1 1/2 lbs tilapia, cut into 2-inch pieces (catfish, flounder, or salmon would also work)
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ancho chile powder
2 tbsp olive oil
10 medium-sized flour tortillas
Sour cream
2 limes, cut into quarters

For the salsa:
3 ears fresh corn, COOKED then chilled
1 small red bell pepper
3/4 pint cherry tomatoes
1/2 small red onion
OPTIONAL: 1 or 2 minced jalapeno peppers, minus the seeds
1 1/2 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp soy sauce


Start by making the salsa. Cut the corn off the cobs and toss it into a medium sized mixing bowl. Dice the red bell pepper into smallish pieces, cut the tomatoes into 1/4s, dice the onion, and mix all that with the corn. Pour the parsley and soy sauce over the veggies, and stir until everything is well mixed. Sit that in the fridge to let the flavors meld a little while you do the rest. You can do the salsa up to a day in advance, then just pull it out of the fridge again (and heat if desired) when you're ready to serve.

For the tacos, mix the cornmeal and the next four ingredients on the list in a small bowl. Heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat, and when it's hot dredge your fish in the cornmeal mixture to get it coated on all sides, then drop it in the pan. Each piece will only need about 2 minutes on each side, just enough to get the fish white and flaky, then remove the fish to a plate with a paper towel on it to soak up excess oil. Repeat until all of the fish pieces have been fried.

Heat the tortillas in a microwave, covered with a damp paper towel to keep them from drying out.

To serve, dip several spoonfuls of salsa onto a tortilla in a line, add several pieces of the fish, and finish it with a dollop of sour cream spread out evenly over your line of fillings and a squeeze of lime juice. Roll it up burrito style, and it's ready to eat!

Servings: 4-5 people at two tacos each (so 8-10 tacos total)

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Blackberry Sherbet

There are blackberries growing wild behind the house right now, and every few days they produce surprisingly large amounts of fruit. One has to be careful not to get scratched by the thorns or eaten alive by ants and mosquitos while picking, but it's mostly worth it for the amount of sherbets and cereal toppings and cobblers that get made during the summer. This fantastic sherbet recipe is pretty easy and tastes like heaven on a hot summer day. It can be adapted to use other kinds of berries or fruit too.


Blackberry Sherbet

4 cups blackberries, rinsed thoroughly
4 cups buttermilk
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract


Begin by mashing the berries through a wire mesh strainer to separate the juices from the pulp and seeds. If you use your fingers instead of a spatula to do this, it will stain your hands a lovely purple color.

To the blackberry juice, add the other three ingredients and stir until thoroughly mixed. Pour into your ice cream churn and follow the manufacturer instructions on how to get that set up and churning. Ice cream churn tip: always used crushed ice to layer with salt when churning, not ice cubes. The crushed ice yields better texture in the ice cream, because it gets colder (melts more quickly) and can do a better job of closely surrounding the churn.

Servings: 8-10, or less if you get tempted to eat it all in one sitting because it's so delicious.