TTK Ciar's Journal: Pork of July

Fourth of July at Home

Well, cobalt and I had a quiet July 4th evening at home. After dinner we sat on our front lawn and watched the fireworks. The modern fireworks are nifty, but sometimes I miss the incredibly dangerous stuff they let kids run around with when I was a kid. But there's no point in dwelling on the past .. the candle things that shoot the magnesium-splodeys in the air and the smell of cobalt's hair made for a memorable evening.

For dinner, I wanted to make something special, but still familiar enough that I could cook it up with confidence and not screw it up. I started by cutting up some potatos and letting them boil in a salted pot while I pulled out the other ingredients, preheated the oven to 500degF, and arrayed them within easy reach. The main dish would be braised porkchops, which I laid out on foil and sprinkled liberally with the pepper grinder. The head of garlic was fresh, and I cut its buds lengthwise, arranging them cut-side-down on top of the chops. Over all of this I applied a light coating of olive oil, from a hand-pumped areosol can cobalt filled with some of the snooty "good stuff" from marin county. That went into a pan in the oven, after setting a 25 minute timer.

The side dish would be stir-fry. I put some canola oil and minced garlic into a wok, and chopped my onion while letting the oil heat up. I prefer canola oil over olive oil for sautee because it gets much hotter than olive oil without burning, and getting the oil hot enough is always a challenge on our wimpy stovetop. The wok was ready before the onions were, so I threw in my mushrooms to keep it from overheating. The onions soon followed. While those were sauteeing I chopped up two zucchini and some leftover chicken breast which had been sitting in the fridge with pepper all over it for the last few days. One great thing about leftovers is that the time they spend sitting gives the spices opportunity to seep deep into the food, something that cannot be duplicated in the kitchen .. some things just take time.

The chicken and zucchini would be the last to go into the wok -- I wanted my mushrooms and onions to singe nicely before dumping in all that extra mass. It was time to drain the potatos anyway. I mashed them with a fork, put the heat-spreader down, turned my heat to low, and let them sit for a while to steam off some of their excess moisture while I added the zucchini and stirred them up to make sure they got separated from each other and in contact with the hot oil. That done, I poured a fair amount of milk into the potatos and stirred it in. Now a real cook would let the potatos continue to steam on low heat, but I always end up either burning them or overstirring them (which will turn otherwise good mashed potato into a sticky paste, suitable for posting advertisements onto brick walls), so I took the easy way out: I piled them onto a plate (which maximizes exposed surface area, and thus rate of evaporation) and let them bask in the rays of our microwave oven for a good five minutes.

In went the chicken, into the wok, and it was time to check the porkchops. They looked pretty good, with just a hint of browning on the tops of the garlic buds, but they lacked the crispy edge I love so dearly. Sticking one with a thermometer indicated a core temperature of 155degF, just shy of "medium done" (which would show up as 160degF), so I figured I had a little room to play with them without drying out the meat. Heating and oiling a high-edged teflon frying pan, I seared the bottoms of the chops, trying to use the edge of the pan to get the edge of the pork a little brown, with limited success. The bottoms got nicely roasted, though, and I pulled them off the heat and onto our plates because I was afraid of overcooking them.

The stir-fry was about done, and just needed one more touch to pull it all together. I drizzled soy sauce lightly over everything, and the water steamed away almost instantly, leaving a dark stain pattern on the chicken and mushrooms. This would add taste (mostly from the salt) and visual depth, without drawing water out of the chicken or zucchini and drying it out. I had a bowl lined with paper towels standing by, and I dumped the wok's contents out into this, for the excess oil to drain while I arranged the rest of our food for serving. The potatos had a really good consistency when I pulled them out of the microwave, and those went into a bowl (which is better for serving than the plate). That and the porkchops and our utensils went onto a tray, and I dumped the stir-fry off the paper towels into the bowl, which also went on the tray. I found many things to fault about the end result (the lack of browning on the chops, the slightly overdone zucchini, and a lack of seasoning in the potatos beyond salt and milk), but cobalt seemed happy enough. We ate in bed, while the dogs sat by and begged their little hearts out. Sorry girls, there was no way in hell you were getting any of this. I made it up to them later, after the fireworks, with a plateful of Alpo sprinkled with chicken bouillon. They love that.

And for something completely different, an old friend has been on a multi-year trip to various countries across the pond. Read all about his adventures! One of the best things about his journal is that it provides an honest perspective into life in these people and places. Every other media source is shaped by some agenda to the point of complete untrustworthiness, but Adam writes it just as you or I would experience it, if we travelled to Africa and the Middle/Far East. He recently left Lebanon, and is now in Barcelona. At the time of this writing he hasn't chornicled his experiences in Lebanon, but I'm looking forward to it.

-- TTK

Some tips

[spun]

Depending on how large the cut of meat is, after resting for 5-20 minutes, the internal temperature will come up by 5-20 degrees. Whole poultry generally won't rise that much, because of the air cavity. For pork chops, it's usually on the order of 5 degrees. A brisket or large roast would rise 20 degrees. So take meat off early and let it rest. The rest is important, as the cells reabsorb some of the moisture released into the inter-cellular spaces.

In a stir fry, always cook the meat and veggies separately