Apple Season: Pork Roast and Home-Made Applesauce
This has been sitting in my drafts since September. The reason, I meant to upload more pictures. I will update this post when I do that.
During a few hour break from work (yes, I know it's Sunday), Christine and I went and ran some errands to the garden store and out to Bishop's Orchards to pick some apples and enjoy the wine tasting.
I picked up a center cut piece of pork that had a nice thick layer of fat still on it. It's dinner tonight and I expect to enjoy a pulled pork sandwich or two this week.
For the roast itself, you will need:
1 piece of pork (mine is just over 2lbs)
2 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil
1/2 onion
1/2 fresh pepper
1 apple
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup chili powder
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper
To make applesauce, you need:
8 apples (cored, peeled and sliced into eighths)
1 1/2 cup of water or apparently apple cider
1 Tbsp cinnamon powder
1 Tbsp honey
To make a sponge cake, you need:
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of butter
3 eggs
1 cup of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
splash of vanilla if desired
1 tsp of honey if desired
So let's cook this delicious meat dish. When slow cooking pork, I recommend beer even if you're not smoking the meat.
- Preheat the oven to 275F. I would use a slow cooker if I had one, but as I lack one I am just going to use low heat.
- Place the meat in a pan. Use a rack if you have one. Rub the meat with the sugar and spices. Ideally, do this the day before you are cooking and let it sit covered in the fridge with the rub overnight.
Ready to cook!
- Finely chop the vegetables and apple and cover the meat with it. I lined the pan with foil and greased with butter. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil to the top.
- I place into the oven and set my timer for 20 minutes. When the timer rings, cover the meat. If you have the time, lower the temperature down to 225F.
- Your cooking time will vary, but if you have the time to do it at 225F for 6+ hours... do it. I went with a 3 hour roast myself.
Let's make some applesauce or apple sauce if you don't like the look of it as one word.
- While the roast is in the oven, put the apples, water (or apple cider if you remember to buy it, unlike me), cinnamon, and honey into a pot. I'm by no means an exact chef unless baking, so I am guessing at the amount of cinnamon and honey. You can also put in other spices like nutmeg and brown sugar.
- Place over medium heat and cook for 20-30 minutes until soft. It will smell awesome.
- Pour most of the apple mix into a food processor if you have one. My blender has the attachment and I mix for 15 seconds until it's smooth enough.
- Pour from the mixer into a container to store in the fridge.
I then take some of the unblended apples and place them on top of the pork roast. Do it later in the cooking time, if you are rushing things for dinner then just toss it in whenever you have it.
Serve with baked potatoes or any side of your choice. Be sure to offer apple sauce too.
Next is the sponge cake.
- Put half a cup of butter into a microwave safe container and melt the butter.
- Pour the butter into a good sized mixing bowl (large for messy people like me) along with the sugar.
- Whisk it well... or use a mixer if you have one.
- Add the eggs. I sometimes count wrong and add an extra or less and get pleasant results. Three is generally good.
- In a separate bowl, I mix the flour, baking powder and salt.
- Pour a third of the flour into the mixing bowl. Do it slow. Mix the flour into the mixture.
- Add another third of the flour, repeat.
- And add the rest. The original recipe emphasized doing this slow, but frankly since I am mixing by hand I have no reason to rush things.
- In a sauce container, microwave two parts butter with one part honey when ready to serve.
Put into a cooking container and place into the oven. Thirty minutes is generally right, but check it with a fork or toothpick.
At other times, you might want to make sponge cake with fresh blueberries, nutella, or basically anything sweet you might stuff into a crepe. Even pineapple works if you prepare it well. I'll try to remember to write about this in the future.
Serve with applesauce and vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream. Top with honey butter if you can handle it.
Corn a la Michael Jordan’s
Tonight for dinner I grilled salmon, basic seasoning (salt, pepper, some cajun stuff, and olive oil). But for the side dish of corn, I wanted to try to get closer to a favourite restaurant side - Michael Jordan's Corn Off The Cob. This can be enjoyed at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut and I assume New York City (Michael Jordan's in Grand Central Terminal).
The Michael Jordan dish is served piping hot in a cast iron skillet. I don't have a cast iron skillet, but I have managed to make some really good corn-off-the-cob in the past.
My previous attempts have varied. Typically I take spices that I find in the cupboard and canned corn (frozen works in a pinch too), add butter and nuke it. I am a microwave newbie really, so I've cooked my corn in the frying pan too. The pan makes the flavour a lot better, sort of like grilled corn. It has a hint of that popcorn taste from the higher temperatures.
But the Michael Jordan corn has the extra bit of flavour from chili and onion. I think the restaurant also cooks theirs ON-THE-COB and cuts it off. I didn't have time to grill corn on the cob outside (despite grilling my fish for dinner), so I improvised with good results.
You will need:
- 1 can of corn
1/4 cup of chili powder (I prefer the Mexican style stuff)
3-4 fresh chilis
1x of onion powder
1x of paprika
1x of garlic powder
1x of cumin
1x of oregano
4T of butter
salt and pepper
** 1x = Unknown quantity, more than 1tsp.
First, I tore the chilies up with my fingers and heated them over medium-high heat in the 8" pan. I poured myself a cocktail and put the spices in a blender (I don't have a mixer). Don't blend yet.
When my cocktail was half way, I dumped the cooked chilies into the blender and flipped the switch. While the spices were blending with the chilies, I melted butter in a Pyrex 1-cup measuring cup. I also cleaned my frying pan to use for the corn. Mix the dried spices into the measuring cup. I didn't bother to try to get everything from the mixer into the butter. Stir the butter and put aside. Don't rub your eyes like I did tonight, chili burns!
I took a chunk of butter and the strained can of corn, and cooked it in the pan on medium heat.
After about 10 minutes of cooking, I poured the chili butter sauce into the cooking corn and cranked the heat up a bit. You know you're doing it right because it should already smell good.
At this point I was also chatting with a friend that stopped by and was cooking the salmon on the grill outside. It's hard to overcook the corn, but it is possible so take it off the heat if you need to delay.
Serve with a glass of gewürztraminer.
Aerobie Coffee? Does It Fly?
I was recently made aware of a great invention from the makes of the Aerobie flying disc. While this product is less fun at the beach, it's definitely something that is worth trying out. It's an espresso maker that's around $30 called the Aeropress.
You can read about it on their site for how it works, but basically it uses air pressure to make espresso in under 30 seconds.
Years ago my mom gave me a home espresso machine, which I setup in my office kitchen in Korea-town. I spent several hours thereafter attempting to brew espresso with no success. The device was complicated, I didn't know how to load the darn thing correctly, never-mind operate it. At one point a few weeks later, a friend of mine who was also a former Starbucks barista tried to use the thing. The final consensus before the unit was shelved permanently was that it couldn't generate enough pressure to brew good espresso.
Well, this simple plastic Aeropress does what that thing could not, for a fraction of the cost. My first use was more to see what it was like, I didn't really want any coffee and didn't have good beans (just a tin of cheap drip coffee), but damn this thing works well.
Shaving Like Grandpa, Without Bleeding to Death.
A few months ago, I came across a posting on Reddit linking to a web site that outlines how to shave like your grandpa (http://artofmanliness.com/2008/01/04/how-to-shave-like-your-grandpa/). At the time, I was 27 years old and only recently began shaving regularly. Since dorm days, I have been using a Gillette razor. I've gone through the regular upgrades from Sensor XL to Mach 3 and last year to the Fusion. Typically I upgrade because typically the local Ralph's supermarket ran out of refills (or they got stolen). Occasionally I upgrade due to price (even though the starter kit comes with only one or two cartridges, it can be cheaper than a 4 or 5 pack of blades).
But beyond that, I also suffer from razor burns and irritation... so when I read the article saying that my suffering could be a thing of the past, I had to try it. I bought myself a 'Merkur HD Classic "Barber Pole" Long Safety Razor-#38C' from Amazon.com along with the shaving soap and authentic badger brush. From what I read, folks with big hands should get the long version of the razor. Upon arrival, I was surprised at the size of the razor because it didn't seem that long. It's not longer than my Gillette razor handles.
I was slightly apprehensive using the razor considering the comments I had read on various web sites saying how bad the safety razors really are... but those people must have been doing something wrong. My only complaint is the slight odor of wet badger. Hopefully the badger odor will fade, but the excellent odor from the shaving soap makes it worth it.
My first attempt was a great success. I had no cuts. Except for missing a few spots around the jaw line, I had the best at-home shave I've ever had in my short number of years shaving without a drop of blood drawn.