Cooking for the Week of April 25, 2011
As I attempt to locate my brain again (give ME the brain) I keep meaning to at least post our meal planning but every week has been full of the tireds so I haven't for ages.
Anyhow here is this week's meal plan:
- Lechón Asado (Cuban-Style Roast Pork)
- Leek, Mushroom, and Potato Soup
- Red and yellow chard sauteed with garlic
- Strawberries
- Green salad with romaine, cucumber, mustard greens, pepper cress and citrus vinaigrette*
I think this is the last of our TLC pork stash, and I'm grateful that this new recipe came out well, because the pork is meltingly delicious and flavorful as all TLC pork was. I'm sad that it wasn't feasible for them to continue in California, but their cross-country adventures are making good reading and I hope they fetch up somewhere better for them in the long run. They helped me figure out that it wasn't pork that I react to, but bad supermarket pork, so that was good to learn, along with the pleasures of eating cuts of meat that I've never used before. (I never met a braise I didn't like, so it hasn't been hard to talk me into the weirder, tougher, braising cuts. Not that shoulder is a weird cut.)
The pork shoulder was boneless and skinless so we used a slow cooker method instead of roasting it, since we weren't looking for a crispy skin. There was a lot of extra marinade so we put that into another pot with some lentils we had around to soak it up. If we make this again (and we probably will; it's delicious), then we will split the pork between two pots and use black beans rather than lentils; they'd stand up better to the long cooking time, and cooked in with the pork they'd absorb all the delicious pork juices as well. Not that what we made isn't good, just I think black beans would take it up a notch.
This is a weird season for the leek and mushroom soup, but leeks looked really good this week and it's been cold and foggy, so I felt like a comfort food and this recipe is definitely a comfort recipe for me. I added a big knob of celeriac to the mix and I think it was very nice in it. Also we pureed the soup, which it doesn't specifically need but it will freeze better this way. We're leaving out the cream until it's reheated, which will also help it freeze better. We got lots of extra for later. This is going surprisingly well with the citrus, though it's kind of a surprising combination.
I cut into a big rangpur lime thinking it was a tangerine, and immediately discovered it wasn't! So I squeezed the juice out and used it for the vinaigrette, adding a bit of tangelo zest preserved with sugar that I had around. The juice is refreshingly sour even with the added sugar, and harmonized well with all the citrus in the pork/lentil sauce.
Strawberries have been (locally) back for a few weeks and we're happy to see them again, though since we froze a lot of fruit last summer we aren't dying for them like we were last spring. We've been getting Swanton Berry Farms because they treat their workers the best and are organic and their berries are simply delicious. Later in the year we'll freeze up some jars of strawberry compote for the 2011-2012 winter blahs.
Edit: I just realized that with the definite exception of the lentils (Washington-grown, I believe), and the possible exception of the parsnips (not sure where they were grown, but they could have been local) this was a locally-grown meal. It really isn't that hard... when you live in a salad bowl.
Also, today when I was making the rest of the salad dressing, I contemplated the state of my wrists (not very happy) and decided I would have nothing to do with juicing enough citrus for the rest of the week, so instead I used some lovely muscat vinegar from Spain that we picked up from that Spanish store in Santa Fe. It still counts as 'citrus' because I used a generous helping of tangelo zest that I'd preserved in salt. I added toasted almond oil to give it a little something, too.