Clement's Chow

Pork Chops with Adobo

clementchow — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:55:19 +0000

This is a good recipe with a BOLD flavor. I adapted this from various sources I looked at. I suspect that it can be good on chicken as well. I did this with pork chops, but I plan to try this on a smoked pork shoulder. Any of these ingredients can be increased or decreased to your liking.

Pork Chops with Adobo

4 very large pork chops

Dry ingredients:
2 T paprika (not hot)
1.5 T dried oregano
1.5 t ground cumin
1.5 t red pepper flakes
1.5 t kosher salt
1/4 t black pepper

Wet ingredients:
2.5 T olive oil
1 T garlic
1.5 t grated lime zest (about 1 lime’s worth)

Mix all dry ingredients. I also blended it in a coffee grinder to get a good consistency. Also, good idea to make 2 or 3 times more than this and store for future use.

Mix in all wet ingredients and mix well.

Rub on the pork chops and let marinate in the fridge for up to 4 hours. Grill. Enjoy.

Easy Flat Bread

clementchow — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:26:41 +0000

I make this flat bread often. It’s a nice addition to any meal – we recently had it with lamb. This is a variation on a NY Times recipe.

Easy Flat Bread
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
3 cups all-purpose flour
Extra virgin olive oil

In a large bowl, mix 1 cup warm water with the salt, sugar and yeast. Let this sit until frothy – sometimes immediately and up to 5 minutes. Mix in flour and incorporate into dough. Cover and let sit for 20-60 min (to rise). I usually let it rise on top of a warm stove – this will only take 20 min or so for it to double in size. Split the dough into 8 or so equal sizes. Flatten with your hands. brush olive oil on each side and put on grill.

This recipe is pretty flexible and you can incorporate different flavors into the bread – mixing herbs or scallions would be a good start.

My, what big bacon you have.

clementchow — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:52:44 +0000

This is big bacon from our CSA (The Piggery).

5 pieces = 1/2 lb = 3 meals for 2 people.

Jamaican Oxtail Stew

clementchow — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:56:58 +0000

This is an easy one. It’s also a good recipe to try ox tail, if you’ve never had it. I essentially used a NYT recipe, so I won’t rehash it here. I made a few minor changes. I added carrots. Rather than fresh thyme, I used dried. Rather than whole all spice berries, I used powder. Just note, be careful when cooking the brown sugar, it will burn. All this worked fine. This was quite good. Serve with white rice.

Chinese Crispy Pork

clementchow — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:07:23 +0000

This is an easy one – and probably not at all healthy, but is amazing. Those who have visited a Chinatown have seen the hanging roast pork in the windows of restaurants:

Photo from here

This is a close approximation of this classic chinese dish. There is probably a better way of doing this, but this is quick. I use a pre-mixed spice package that you can find at any asian store. You could probably put together the spices (and MSG!), but why bother?

This is the spice package that you need:

Photo from here

Chinese Crispy Pork
4 lb Pork belly with skin
1 tsp five spice
1 Package of spicy bake Mix
white pepper

This is easy but will take several days of prep. Three days before you intend to cook this, take out pork belly, rinse and dry. Combine all dry ingredients and spread over the entire piece of pork belly. Place in fridge, uncovered for 3 days. This is critical, as it dries out the skin and will allow it to get extra crispy.

Take out the pork about 20 minutes before baking. Preheat oven to 425. Place pork in a pan. It is best if it is elevated off the bottom so it doesn’t sit in the fat as it renders. Bake for an hour. If the skin is not crispy, it will crisp quickly if you broil it (but watch it carefully!). Take out and cool for 10 minutes before slicing into bite size pieces. Serve with hoisin sauce.

Thumper!

clementchow — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:13:44 +0000

I’ve been wanting to expand my cooking repertoire. Rabbit has been on my list of things to try. Rabbit is pretty easy to find around Ithaca and seems to be making a resurgence. I bought mine at the Ithaca Farmers Market, but you can also get it at Ludgate Farms. At about $6/lb, a rabbit will set you back a little – most of the rabbits we found were 4-6 lb. I bought a 4lb rabbit, which was actually a lot of food for two people. Don’t worry, no need to process the rabbit yourself, it comes preprocessed, vacuum sealed and frozen.

I decided to go for a classic roast – very similar to a roasted chicken. I read several recipes that warned about over cooking and drying out the meat. I decided to brine the rabbit before cooking. I used a classic poultry brine for 4 hours:

Brine
1 gallon water
1 cup kosher salt
1 cup brown sugar
herbs of choice
onions garlic
black pepper

Again, this was followed by a simple roast with veggies.

Roasted Rabbit with Roasted Vegetables
1 Rabbit (brined)
2 slices of good bacon
Olive Oil
Sea salt
Fresh cracked black pepper
Herbs of choice (Sage, parsley, taragon, thyme, rosmary)
Bay leaves
Onions
Garlic
Root vegetables (Carrots, Celery, Leeks)

Preheat oven to 425 F. The rabbit we bought included the kidneys and liver. Cut these out and set aside (before brine). Liberally rub olive oil, sea salt, pepper and herbs all over rabbit. Stuff onion, garlic and more herbs in the cavity – also season liberally. Tie up the rabbit – the back legs are long and should be tucked into the cavity, while the front legs should be tied tightly against the body. This will prevent drying out of the leg meat:

Chop and disperse the veggies throughout the pan, season with olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs. Finally, lay the 2 strips of bacon on top of the rabbit (bacon just helps keep the meat moist). Place in oven and turn oven to 325 F. I cooked for about 2 hours and this brought the meat to about 150, which was perfect. Take out and let rest for 10 min, losely covered with foil. Carve.

A word on carving a mammal – it’s different from carving a bird. i had to dig into my mouse genetics days to try to carve (dissect?) the rabbit. It was a bit difficult. But it doesn’t really matter how it’s carved, just how it tastes =) This tasted very similar to chicken, but richer and deeper in flavor. Not gamey at all.

You can get a good idea of what each part of the rabbit will taste like by following a simple guide of cuts of beef.

Liver and kidneys can be either incorporated into a gravy, but can also be sauteed – simply heat up some olive oil, lightly sautee and liberally season with salt and pepper – good stuff.

We served this with a simple stuffing:

I mentioned above that this rabbit, despite being only 4 lbs, was huge amount of meat, so after this meal, I removed the meat and made a rabbit pot pie (with the remaining roasted veggies) the next day. Make sure you save the bones for soup!

Bouillabaisse, Bouillabaisse, Bouillabaisse!!

clementchow — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:07:27 +0000

This past weekend I made bouillabaisse, which is turning out to be a once-a-year event. The reason I don’t make this more often is because I prefer to make it with a shrimp shell stock, and it takes a lot of shrimp eating to make enough. This, in my humble opinion is the best stock one can use for bouillabaisse. The minimum amount of shrimp shell needed is about 4 cups, which roughly equals 2 lbs of large shrimp.

One of my first posts was a bouillabaisse, so I won’t rehash that here. But i offer you some pictures.

The Shrimp Shell Stock:

12 cups of shrimp shells + a few fish bones

The veggies and herbs for the stock

Stock is cooking.

The Bouillabaisse!

Seafood I: Shrimp, sea scallops, monk fish, and calamari

Seafood II: mussels and little neck clams

Bouillabaisse cooking

The final product!

One word about cooking calamari: Calamari needs to be cooked either a very short time, or a very long time, otherwise, it can be tough. So to make sure the calamari is succulent, cut it into rings, and throw it in about 4 minutes before you are done cooking.

The order that I cooked the seafood and time before putting in the next ingredient: clams, 3 min, fish, scallops, 3 min, shrimp, 2 min, mussels and calamari, 3 min. Enjoy.

Grilled Pizza

clementchow — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 02:02:12 +0000

This is an easy one. It took me a few tries to get this right, but now, it’s a breeze. I decided that I wanted to make more homemade pizza, but didn’t want to fire up the oven. I tried several times to make pizza using the charcoal grill, but I couldn’t get the coals cool enough to simultaneously cook the dough and not burn it.

So, I resorted to the gas grill. Here is how I make my pizzas and they usually end up like grilled flat breads:

1) pre heat grill to about 500-600 F

2) roll out pizza dough (here’s a good recipe) and brush olive oil on one side of dough.

3) place dough on grill for ~1 minute. Meanwhile, brush olive oil on top side of dough.

4) flip dough

5) place on toppings

6) turn off grill and close grill- allow residual heat to cook pizza

This works well. Have the toppings ready for rapid application. If you are making multiple pizzas at once and opening the grill several times, you may have to turn on the grill once in a while to keep the temp up.

Here are three pizzas I made the other night, all with ingredients from our various CSAs:

Spinach, pepperoni, and blue cheese

2 types of tomatoes, basil and mozzerella

Leeks, pepperoni, and mozzarella

Hot!

clementchow — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:24:30 +0000

I have had a glut of hot peppers and I have a wife who won’t touch them. This means that there are way too many leftover. Usually, I freeze them for the winter (sometimes I dry them), but wanted to do something more creative. I was inspired to make hot sauce by this NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/dining/25appe.html?ref=dining

I essentially followed the recipe linked, so I won’t replicate it here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/dining/25apperex2.html?ref=dining).

The sauce – post boil, pre-blending.

The final product.

I just made a few changes. Instead of habañeros, I used what I had on hand:

2 cherry bomb hot peppers, 2 Serranos, and 2 jalepenos.

Turns out these are not hot enough. Next time, hotter!

Also, I think I will use less vinegar, maybe 1/2 cup instead of 3/4 cup.

Finally, I really liked the addition of the bell pepper – I added half a large yellow pepper.

Smoking with an asian zing!

clementchow — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:13:50 +0000

In the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with my smoking repertoire. I’ve been experimenting with different hard woods for the smoke and different seasonings for the meat. Here is something I conjured up that seems to work well with several cuts of meat. Smoking and asian flavors don’t always work together, but this was pretty good. It starts with a dry rub based on five-spice, followed by a couple hours of smoking with maple wood, and finished with a glaze. I did this with beef short ribs and pork belly.

Beef short ribs with smoked carrots and grilled scallions

Beef short ribs or Pork belly

Dry rub:

3 parts Five-spice

2 part White pepper

1 part Ginger powder

Black pepper

Glaze:

Korean BBQ sauce

Garlic

Ginger

Cilantro

Chinese cooking wine

Sesame oil

Hard wood for smoking (soak in water)

In the morning, combine dry rub ingredients and cover meat. Place in fridge until cooking time. At this time, also place your hard wood into water to soak until ready for smoking.

Prep grill or smoker for smoking. I use a grill. Since this requires at least 2 hrs of smoking, I try to keep the heat low and slow and I use 2 rounds of charcoal. I first use half a chimney of charcoal and use a large handful of wood that I soaked all day. Charcoal goes on the far end of the grill.

Place the meat on the cold side of grill. Close cover and don’t open. After a half hour, turn the meat so the other side faces heat and close grill for another half hour.

After an hour of smoking, carefully remove meat and grill grate and place another half portion of charcoals in the grill and another handful of wood chips. At this time, also place in any veggies you want to smoke. I like carrots. Close grill and don’t open for an hour.

While smoking, combine all glaze ingredients and reduce on stove to a thick glaze. Once the meat is done, dip the meat into the glaze and fully coat. Sear and finish off the meat on the hot side of grill. Carrots are also good in this gaze.

Done. The beef ribs are perfect after 2 hours. I smoked the pork belly for 2 hours, but could probably use 3 hrs.

Beef short ribs! Look at that smoke ring.

Pork belly!