food and cooking
In which I reinaugurate my journal with, of course, some blathering about cooking (mine) and Top Chef. Another post is coming after this one, but it'll take a while to write.
First off, I'm belatedly cooking my 4th-of-july non-barbecue. By the time the kitchen was clean and we'd thought about it, it was too late to start cooking what I wanted, so it got put off to today. It's non-barbecue because we're not allowed to have grills, so I'm doing this in the oven.
I wanted ribs -- they were on sale. But unfortunately they were out both times the boy went to check. So we ended up with pork loin -- quite a hefty one, about 4 lbs or so.
I cut this in half, and cut one of the halves into roughly largish-rib size (okay, as big as a large rib on the bone would be, but it's all meat, so even bigger), and used a dry rub on all of it. I can't give measurements here, because I did it by taste, but the dry rub consists of: salt, lemon pepper, chili powder, rosemary, and Splenda in lieu of sugar. It's slightly sweet to the taste but the base is definitely the chili powder.
I'm going to slow roast this at 275 for about 5 hours, or less if it starts seeming too done but at that temperature it should be good.
The "ribs" half is then going to be put into a separate pan and covered in home-made barbecue sauce, which consists of: ketchup, balsamic vinegar, a lot of garlic powder, Splenda in lieu of sugar, chili powder in lesser amount, just a few shakes of lemon pepper, and some tabasco. Trust me, it's yummy. Remind me to make my own more often; it only took a bit over 5 minutes to get it right. Anyhow, the plan is to cook it in the barbecue sauce for, say, an hour or so, and then maybe give the "ribs" a few minutes under the broiler depending on how I feel about it at that point.
This will be served with fresh corn on the cob. I wish I could grill it and I may oven-bake it. All meat and starch, yup; the veggies were breakfast and lunch.
The other half will probably go in the freezer and be brought out in a few days to make a meal out of, unless I decide I want pork two days in a row.
Speaking of which, a good filling lunch (or, if you're weird like us, breakfast) involves chopping green onions finely, cutting a handful of grape tomatoes in half and sprinkling salt on them, and mixing this in with 8 oz of cottage cheese. Serve as is or use celery stick to garnish and/or eat with (we did the latter). Also it's full of healthy stuff. Unfortunately for my dairy-free friends I don't think I've heard of anyone figuring out a good non-dairy cottage cheese, so, um, pretend I said something that didn't make you want to find one.
Though I'm going to blather more about Top Chef in the next post, just let me say that so far I like this season's crew overall more than last, and also I took one look at Dale, saw he was from Chicago, and made the guess he lived on the Gold Coast. :D
Also, no guarantee this will mean regular resumption of posting. I'm still feeling kinda odd about LJ in general, so I'm probably going to avoid personal posts for now, and I don't know if I'm going to ever re-unlock the old stuff, but we'll see.
First off, I'm belatedly cooking my 4th-of-july non-barbecue. By the time the kitchen was clean and we'd thought about it, it was too late to start cooking what I wanted, so it got put off to today. It's non-barbecue because we're not allowed to have grills, so I'm doing this in the oven.
I wanted ribs -- they were on sale. But unfortunately they were out both times the boy went to check. So we ended up with pork loin -- quite a hefty one, about 4 lbs or so.
I cut this in half, and cut one of the halves into roughly largish-rib size (okay, as big as a large rib on the bone would be, but it's all meat, so even bigger), and used a dry rub on all of it. I can't give measurements here, because I did it by taste, but the dry rub consists of: salt, lemon pepper, chili powder, rosemary, and Splenda in lieu of sugar. It's slightly sweet to the taste but the base is definitely the chili powder.
I'm going to slow roast this at 275 for about 5 hours, or less if it starts seeming too done but at that temperature it should be good.
The "ribs" half is then going to be put into a separate pan and covered in home-made barbecue sauce, which consists of: ketchup, balsamic vinegar, a lot of garlic powder, Splenda in lieu of sugar, chili powder in lesser amount, just a few shakes of lemon pepper, and some tabasco. Trust me, it's yummy. Remind me to make my own more often; it only took a bit over 5 minutes to get it right. Anyhow, the plan is to cook it in the barbecue sauce for, say, an hour or so, and then maybe give the "ribs" a few minutes under the broiler depending on how I feel about it at that point.
This will be served with fresh corn on the cob. I wish I could grill it and I may oven-bake it. All meat and starch, yup; the veggies were breakfast and lunch.
The other half will probably go in the freezer and be brought out in a few days to make a meal out of, unless I decide I want pork two days in a row.
Speaking of which, a good filling lunch (or, if you're weird like us, breakfast) involves chopping green onions finely, cutting a handful of grape tomatoes in half and sprinkling salt on them, and mixing this in with 8 oz of cottage cheese. Serve as is or use celery stick to garnish and/or eat with (we did the latter). Also it's full of healthy stuff. Unfortunately for my dairy-free friends I don't think I've heard of anyone figuring out a good non-dairy cottage cheese, so, um, pretend I said something that didn't make you want to find one.
Though I'm going to blather more about Top Chef in the next post, just let me say that so far I like this season's crew overall more than last, and also I took one look at Dale, saw he was from Chicago, and made the guess he lived on the Gold Coast. :D
Also, no guarantee this will mean regular resumption of posting. I'm still feeling kinda odd about LJ in general, so I'm probably going to avoid personal posts for now, and I don't know if I'm going to ever re-unlock the old stuff, but we'll see.