Sweet and Sour Pork with Pork Fried Rice

I'm participating in a cooking event on Recipezaar called Zaar World Tour 4. We are trying recipes from or inspired by various regions from around the world. Apparently we don't visit all regions for each tour, this time we are doing Asia (huge region, I'm surprised it isn't broken down more since there is so much variation), Germany and Benelux, Italy, Canada, Central and South America, Africa (except for the northern part), Eastern Europe, and Greece.

This week we are working on Asia and Germany and Benelux. Italy is a Wild Card that we can do until the end of the game.

On Saturday night, I did my first recipe, we have until June 5th to complete it, but apparently starting on Saturday was a bit later than we were supposed to do. I wasn't happy about that, I figured that as long as it was done by the 5th it was no big deal. I digress....

I decided to start with an Asian dish. I had Pork defrosting, so decided to make pork fried rice and Lee said he wanted Sweet and Sour Pork Balls to go with it. I didn't feel like getting any ground pork, so I found a recipe for regular Sweet and Sour Pork and did that.

These recipes turned out pretty well. I would prefer the Sweet and Sour Pork without the pepper, but Lee loved it and I had to make extra for him to eat with some of the leftover rice. I added some extra soy sauce to the rice to give it a bit more flavour.

This recipe I used makes A LOT of rice!!! Apparently it wasn't too much for Lee because I realized today there isn't any more rice left. Lee ate it all!

I am so happy that I made Chinese food! I always think of this stuff as food I can never make myself, but apparently that's not true!

Pork Chops with Herby Cream Sauce

I decided to make a pork dish since we got a large tenderloin on sale and cut it into chops. I had found this recipe in the Taste of Home cookbook I had borrowed from the library. I'm not a big fan of pork chops, so I thought the sauce would help the flavor.

This was a really simple recipe to make. The only problem was that neither one of us felt that the cream sauce had enough flavour for our tastes. I'll try this recipe again, but try a full tablespoon of beef bullion (a whole cube instead of half) and either up the amount of herbs, or put in a bit of garlic...garlic would be nice...mmmmmmm!!

Anyway, we both liked it, just iddn't feel like it had as much flavor as we would have liked.

Pork Chops with Herby Cream Sauce

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 pork chops
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon beef bullion (½ cube)
1 tablespoon minced parsley
½ tablespoon basil, thyme, or tarragon
2/3 cup milk or half-and-half
2 tablespoons water
pepper

1. In large skillet, heat vegetable oil and cook pork chops until browned and 160°F internal temperature.
2. Drain and set pork chops aside.
3. Cook flour, parsley, and basil/thyme/tarragon for a minute or two.
4. Slowly add milk, water, pepper, and beef bullion. Whisk together.
   
5. Bring to a boil, cooking and whisking for about 2 minutes or until thickened.
   
6. Pour over pork chops.

Bangers and Mash

Tonight I had hoped to do a traditional Irish fare in honor of St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, I was sick and didn't get out to the store to get food and didn't have all the ingredients on hand. I'll do some Irish food tomorrow, a day late, but hopefully well worth the wait.

Tonight, we went with Bangers and mash. I left my boyfriend, the Brit, in charge of this meal. He said he always eats it with ketchup. I know the essentially, putting ketchup on mashed potatoes isn't very different from putting it on French fries, but it just didn't seem right to me. I thought it would taste better with some gravy on top. I was thinking a thick, sausage gravy like the one used in biscuits and gravy, but I did a search online and found that bangers and mash is traditionally served with an onion gravy. I'm not sure why my boyfriend didn't do that, but I would have much preferred it that way. I didn't have any gravy left over from last night, so I asked him to make some instant brown gravy for this and it helped a lot.

I just called him over to ask him about it and he said he has had the gravy on bangers and mash, but he didn't realize it was compulsory, he thought it was just an option.

I'm not sure how he made these, he just baked some plain breakfast sausage (thicker ones would be better, but not Italian sausages), and made some mashed potatoes.

I want to try this again with a proper onion gravy and see how it tastes.

Toad in the Hole

I heard that the UK is trying to get a National Yorkshire Pudding Day. Since my boyfriend moved over here this year and we both love Yorkshire Pudding so much, I thought it would be nice to be a little bit of history in the making. My beloved Patriots were playing in the Super Bowl and I knew I wouldn 't want to do a full roast dinner, so we decided that I would try to make some Toad in the Hole.

Despite the odd name, this is actually a simple and tasty dish that has sausages, not toads in it. I didn't have any meat drippings since I wasn't doing a roast, but I used some vegetable oil instead. Let me tell you, that vegetable oil gets smoky! We had guests over for the big game and we all had our eyes burning a bit. I think I put in a little too much oil though, so that could be part of it. I used plain breakfast sausages because my boyfriend feels those are the best for Toad in the Hole. Our friends and I loved this dish and they were amazed at how easy it seemed to be for me to make it and said they'd like to try it sometime.

The recipe is posted on Recipezaar. The only change I made was to refrigerate the batter for a little while. It's supposed to help the pudding rise, but I didn't notice much of a difference. It did help with the timing though.

I Can't Believe It's Not Chicken!

A couple of months ago, I found a recipe on Recipezaar called "City Chicken, but It's Not Chicken!" We both loved it, but I didn't make it how the recipe said because I didn't have garlic salt, chicken broth, or onion soup mix. I used garlic powder, chicken bullion cubes, and onion powder as substitutes. I wanted to see if following the recipe to the letter (well, aside from the wooden skewers, I still didn't have those and it isn't a big deal to fish out the pieces of pork)would make it taste even better.

Let me just say, this recipe is heaven and I don't usually like pork! I first tried this recipe because my boyfriend likes pork and we had bought a huge pork tenderloin that he had cut up into smaller pieces. I'm becoming a big fan of using onion soup mix in my cooking. I'm really trying to use fresh ingredients whenever possible, but I found out this year that my family recipe for stuffing uses it (and this is one of the best stuffings I've ever had), and now this recipe uses it too.

I did veer off the recipe in the method: I put the flour, garlic salt, and pepper in a zip-lock bag so I could just shake it up. I used some tongs to take the pork out of the bag and place it in the skillet. I realize now that I should probably have saved some of that flour for the gravy instead of using plain flour from a bag. The gravy is by far the best part of that dish and there is loads to smother over the pork and mashed potatoes. We both ate until we couldn't eat another bite.

It is very important to just use plain mashed potatoes as a side dish for this recipe. The gravy has such a strong, fabulous flavor that any herbed mashed potatoes would be too much and take away from the delicious gravy.

We were both so excited to eat, that I forgot to take pictures, but there are pictures on the Recipezaar site.

A Feast to Die For

A couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was just last week...my boyfriend suggested getting new knives because ours are horrible. We then happened to see Alton Brown's Good Eats episode American Slicer where he talked about the types of knives and knife skills. I heard about knife skills classes and decided I wanted to try one. My birthday isn't until May, but he said I could take one as an early birthday present. I was excited to see a class at Johnson and Wales for this Saturday and quickly signed up.

Well, the class wasn't what I expected. We were taught some skills, but then we cooked for half the class and we needed more help with the recipes and finding ingredients and didn't get the attention on knife handling skills that I hoped to get. It was still a fun class and I got to try some FABULOUS new recipes!

I don't have pictures because I was at the class, but here is what we had:

Corn Chowder
Bruschetta
Stuffed Mushrooms
Chicken and Herbs in White Wine
Tomato Basil Pork Chops
Baked Salmon with Pecan Crunch
Sun-Dried Tomatoes Risotto with Mozzarella
Sweet Peas and Spinach

My favorite out of everything was the risotto. it was INCREDIBLE!!! I'll definitely make it at home sometime.

The stuffed mushrooms were marinated in some balsamic vinegar in class, but it's not in the recipe. I don't really like balsamic vinegar and that was what put me off of the mushrooms, so I think I'll try it at home and follow the recipe they gave us.

So...while it wasn't what I was expecting, I did enjoy the class and was able to taste some amazing food.

In the end, I bought a set of Calphalon Contemporary knives. The Shun knives were my favorite, but way out of our price range. I liked the Calphalon Katana knives, but didn't like the handle. I much preferred the handle of the Calphalon Contemporary, and my boyfriend felt the same, so we went with the 17 piece set and I immediately had to try slicing some vegetables to try them out. I used to be unable to cut parsnips, and even my father and boyfriend had trouble cutting them with the old knives. With the new chef's knife I was easily able to slice through a parsnip! I love my new knives!!!

Baked Ziti

I know, I know, I've been horrible about posting still...but oh, well. I'm still doing the challenge. :-)

Wednesday night I made baked ziti. Usually I make baked ziti with no meat in it. I decided to do it a little different this time, I used some hot Italian sausage in it. I first tried to cut up the sausage before cooking it, but it only took a bit of a slice before I realized that wouldn't work. So...out comes the skillet to fry up a couple of sausages. I'm not usually a fan of spicy foods, but DB likes them and I must admit, I'm beginning to have an easier time with the heat. The sausages didn't taste too hot for me.

I also was able to use up more of the pasta sauce I made last week.

Baked Ziti
1 package ziti with ridges
3 hot Italian sausages
3-4 cups pasta sauce (to taste)
1 bag mozzarella cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
   
2. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil.
   
3. While the water is heating up, cook the sausages in a skillet, turning occasionally.
   
4. When water is boiling, add pasta and cook until softer, but still firm.
   
5. Cut the sausages into bite-sized pieces.
   
6. Strain the pasta and mix in sausage.
7. Pour pasta, sausage, and sauce into a baking dish (I used a 9"x13" pan), making sure the sauce is over all the pasta.
8. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over pasta until covered.
   
9. Spray aluminum foil with non-stick spray and cover dish. Put in oven for approximately 30 minutes or until cheese is melted. Foil may be removed for final minutes to brown the cheese.