Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Do you have strong food memories?

I remember creating this dish when I discovered my husband and I were going to have a fourth child!

It was the straw that broke the camel's back . . . or the beer that keeps the cooler open.

I'm trying to go cross-cultural here!

The entrance of Nathanael in our lives convinced me that I needed to learn how to use my crock pot for something other than beans. So one of my first recipes that worked was this pork roast. So when I found out my neighbor had a BABY! I took advantage of the occasion and made them a meal. A meal with something hanging out in the freezer.

Of course I didn't make her 10 lbs of pork roast! My butcher cut up my 10 lb. roast into 4 nice little roasts. We've discussed the care and nurture of your butcher before haven't we?

Pork loins are wonderfully lean and have no bone. You can grill them, BBQ them, saute them, stew them, and pot roast them. We're going to pot roast ours in the pot of greatness!

The pot of greatness is your crock pot of course. This roast has a very thin layer of fat on it. You want to keep that on! It's got a little silverskin and other things that will cook down and make your gravy smooth and rich and delicious! I've actually got my crock pot preheating right now. I even sprayed a little oil in it to keep cleanup easy.

Now for some pot roasting liquid! Crock pots don't allow any liquid to steam off so we're going to be miserly with all the moisture we add to this. A little dry vermouth will be perfect! The wine will make the baby sleep really good . . .

Pour it in a quart size container. We're going to be doing a little mixing in here.

Now for some sliced garlic. This was only 2 large cloves . . . well and a little bitty one that fell off the head. What was I supposed to do with it? It wanted to be included! Garlic is good for your heart anyway. I'm trying to keep it toned down though.

It looks like an art print . . . Allium On Bamboo . . .

Throw it in the wine. It'll start to give up its garlic goodness right away!

My buddy thyme! I used dried thyme because I think the dry herbs hold up better in the crock pot. For the kiddos sake I probably should of used whole thyme stems and picked them out.

My kids are used to there being little specks and flakes in their food. I tell them it's pepper . . .

A little allspice joins the party because it belongs there! You thought it was only for cookies! Seriously, the first time I tasted allspice with pork I went WHOA! That is good. That is a secret ingredient that nobody will EVER be able to guess!

You'll keep my secret won't you? Good, thank you!

Now for some pepper! I always add pepper, it gives me plausible deniability with the children . . .

Now for my secret weapon . . . can't I have two secrets in my dish? This is the easiest way to add a little salt, thickening, and color to your liquid. Besides I'm worried that my hydrolyzed soy protein intake is too low. Listen I was getting ready to have my FOURTH child here. We're talking three boys and one extremely "active" girl . . . have mercy!

Throw it all in and give it a stir!

Now since we're cooking for others I'm just going to drip a little bit of this on my finger and see if it needs any salt.

Okay, just a little tad. It was the sixth ingredient on the gravy packet . . . and I have over two lbs of pork to season.

Now we slice up an onion and separate the rings. I want the kids to feel like they can pick it off.

Today I feel like stirring it all up together in the bowl. That way the salt gets all over the onion and starts to break it down a little. A great portion of our cooking liquid is going to come from that onion cooking!

Pour all parties over the roast.

Now I went ahead and moved the roast on top of the onions so it could pressure them into giving up their liquid. The heat will make the roast give up its liquid too. Cover and cook for 5 hours on high or 8 on low. Or be like me and have it on high when you're at home and turn it down to low when you leave!

We've discussed my need to meddle haven't we?

WAIT! I forgot the bay leaf!

Look! An hour later it's produced a whole bunch of water. I flipped the roast over because I have issues. It really doesn't need it.

Here it is ready to go to the neighbors! See all the lovely gravy you end up with? I didn't have the nerve to slice a piece off, take a picture of it and then put it back in. I don't know them THAT well. I mean, it's bad enough they have to live next to us! I sent over some cork screw pasta and green beans to go with. Oh and a bottle of Pinot Grigio because they just had a BABY!

You can't see but this roast will break right apart if you stick a fork in it. Hardly a speck of grease anywhere! The pork is mild and tender. The gravy has a lovely rich texture and a pleasing saltiness to it. The herbs and spices compliment the roast and gravy making them taste . . . well . . . more . . . porkalicious!

Pork Loin Pot Roast

2 lb pork loin roast
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 whole onion, sliced
1 pork gravy packet (the type you add 1 cup of water to)
2 cloves garlic, sliced or crushed
1 bay leaf
 1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp ground allspice
pepper and salt to taste

Mix all ingredients in crock pot and cook 5 hours on high or 8 on low.

Bombay Sliders

Can you tell I've been fascinated with east Asian flavors lately? I had difficulty coming up with a name that didn't involve the word "curry!"

I started off with a pound and a half of ground beef. It wasn't terribly lean just your average 80%. I've got a lot to feed!

Add a little salt.

Add some nice green curry paste! You can use my recipe or you can buy a can of it at your local Asian grocery.

Mix it in well! I used my hands. They're so good at mixing heavy things.

Make up some little patties! I was doing this earlier in the afternoon so after I made the patties I let them sit in the refrigerator for awhile. If you were working with something like ground turkey I'd think this step would be absolutely necessary.

Now for a sauce! Get yourself some GOOD plain yogurt. This type has a layer of hardened cream at the top. Mmm! Stir the cream back into the yogurt where it belongs.

We'll need about a cup of it.

Now give it a taste. Its so good I could faint. You can even paint it on your face for an at home acid exfoliation. My skin loves it. I had big plans for this yogurt. A lot of plain yogurts are gelatinous and have no flavor other than sour milkiness. Those yogurts need lots of "help" to form a good sauce. They need grated cucumber, salt, garlic etc. to give them flavor. This stuff, really needs nothing!

I want some mint. At this time of year this is the only mint I have around the house.

A little dried mint in the yogurt is all that's needed. It'll give the yogurt an extra hint of brightness. A little POW.

I'm heating up my griddle! My sliders are too tiny for the grill. They'd fall through! If I had to I guess I could try putting them on skewers.

Throw them on the griddle!

Flip! They're shrinking because I have the heat up a little high. But heck how would the family know to come to dinner if I didn't set the smoke alarms off? They're my own personal dinner bell!

The necessary accompaniments! A little raw purple onion would be delicious too. If your curry paste didn't have enough onion in it. It'd be tasty in the yogurt sauce.

My hubby doesn't like raw onion though . . . It's a flaw . . . I couldn't handle it if he was perfect though. There's only room for one perfect person in this house!

That would be the cat.

We added these to our sandwiches too! They're salty, spicy, rich, and have a texture not unlike a beautiful oil cured olive. It'll wake up your taste buds!

Slip it all in a pita pocket and sing!

This is darn close to the perfect sandwich! The meat is hot, tender, juicy, and full of herbs and garlic. The vegetables are cold and sweet. The sauce is creamy with an acidic bite that compliments the rich ground meat. The mango pickle adds a salty, spicy kick that surprises. The pita contains it all!

If you're not "into" messy sandwiches then slice everything up, including the pita, and make it a salad. Then you can be clean and lady like while you stuff your face with abandon.

Bombay Sliders

for the sliders
1.5 lbs of ground meat
1/2 cup green curry paste
1/2 teaspoon salt

for the sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon dried mint

for the sandwich
6 whole pita pockets, sliced in half
tomatoes, sliced
cilantro leaves
cucumber, sliced
mango pickle or other spicy pickle of your choice

Mix ground meat, curry paste, and salt together throughly. Form into pattie and allow to rest in refrigerator. Mix yogurt and mint together and adjust seasoning with salt as necessary. Refridgerate yogurt mixture.  Fry patties in a hot nonstick skillet about 3 minutes per side. Warm pitas and serve!

South Western Egg Casserole

We had a pancake dinner last night at church and it was suggested that people bring breakfast like sides to accompany the pancakes. So since I could remain relatively anonymous I decided to try something different.

 . . . if you can't experiment on your brothers and sisters in Christ who can you experiment on?

I wanted something relatively plain. Something a child could scrape the top off of and eat. Something without bread or cheese or meat. I've got friends and family members who don't eat any of these things and they all seem to want to come to dinner at once!

If there's no bread I want it filled out a little anyway so I chopped up some new potatoes I had leftover from another meal. They were raw so I threw them in a pot with some cold water and a generous amount of salt. By the time they came to a boil they only needed about 5 more minutes of cooking time.

While the taters were boiling I buttered a 9X13 dish. Do you save your butter wrappers for this? My grandma always did. Of course, butter in wrappers was a lovely new fangled invention to my grandmother! They had their own cow. Evidently you are the milkman in central South Dakota in the 30's.

Potatoes are tender! Drain them and throw them in the bottom of the dish. Mine had some water clinging to them so I let them sit uncovered for a minute or two. Soggy potatoes are no good! The salt water should of soaked into them and flavored them nicely. As soon as they're dry looking you can cover them up with foil or a lid.


Chop up some red bell peppers too! They'll add a touch of sweetness to our dish.

I sliced up some mushrooms. I love a good meaty delicious mushroom! They're not very meaty at this point so we need to meatify them!

Heat some butter in a skillet. When butter browns it forms all sorts of lovely nutty flavors! You can make really delicious dishes based almost entirely on browned butter, lemon and salt.

Throw the mushrooms in and throw in a little salt. Just a tad to help them give up their moisture. At first it'll seem like they've soaked up all the butter and nothing else is happening but eventually . . .

They'll release their lovely mushroom juice and start to brown! I threw a touch of black pepper in these. Plus a really tiny minced clove of garlic and the smallest sprig of fresh thyme from the garden. After I threw the thyme in it occurred to me that a 1/4 tsp of cumin powder would of been more south westerny but heck I really like thyme in mushrooms.

When the mushrooms are all shrunken bites of meaty deliciousness take them out of the pan and put them in a bowl. Oh look! We have fond. We're going to have to do something with that later.

Throw the peppers in. I just want to wilt them a little. No salt for these babies. I only cooked them for a minute. I didn't want raw peppers on my casserole. If your pan is hot enough they might get a little char on them.

Take the peppers out and put them in a bowl like the mushrooms. Look at all that brown goodness in that pan! That is flavor! We've gotta retrieve that. Pour in half a cup of dry vermouth or any other dry white wine.

It should bubble and spit at you some! Scrape all the bits off the bottom and get them boiling in the wine. Go ahead and turn the heat off and set the pan of goodness aside. Mind you, if you taste this stuff it probably won't taste very good to you. It's sort of bitter and vinegary but acid is one of those tastes that balance out a dish!

Let's get crackin'

and pourin'

and saltin'

and seasonin', if you can't find dried ground chipotle peppers where you're at you could use some of the canned ones chopped up finely. This was convenient though.

Mix all of those things up really well . . .

. . . and pour it over your potatoes. Bake it for 30 minutes in a 375 deg F oven. Now if your potatoes were still pretty steamy hot this might be done in 25 minutes. If you were working with cold potatoes and had put this casserole in the refrigerator overnight I imagine it could take more than 60 minutes to get this cooked.

Go ahead and add your mushrooms and peppers to your egg dish while its hot and they'll warm right up! I also added some chopped fresh cilantro but for some weird reason neglected to take a picture of it! I personally think a little sliced green onion would be delicious on here or even inside with the potatoes!

The custard is firm with just enough salt to make the eggs a star. The chipotle pepper gave that hint of smokiness that us Midwesterners LOVE with eggs. The mushrooms were lovely rich chunks of umami flavor. The peppers were sweet, moist, and made the casserole stand out with pretty color. The cilantro added a vegetal bitterness and aroma that's usually only offered in classic french herb omelets.

I will admit my casserole was neglected a little because it didn't look like your average egg casserole but everybody who tasted it really liked it.

Or . . . at least . . . that's what they said to me.

I really liked it. I think I've finally found an egg casserole I can serve to my family!

South Western Egg Casserole

1 1/2 lbs red potatoes, 1/2 inch dice
1 red pepper, sliced into bite size pieces
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
1 Tbsp butter
pinch of fresh thyme or cumin powder
1 clove of garlic minced
1/2 cup dry vermouth (any dry white wine will do)
12 eggs
1 pt. half and half
1 tsp salt
1/8-1/4 tsp chipotle pepper
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 deg F.

Cover potatoes with cold salted water. Bring to a boil and cook till tender, drain. Place potatoes in a buttered 9X13 inch baking dish.

Heat butter in 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Add thyme or cumin and minced garlic. Saute until all moisture has disappeared from pan and mushrooms appear golden brown. Remove from pan and hold in a bowl. Add bell pepper to pan and saute until wilted, approximately 1 minute. Remove peppers from pan. Deglaze pan with wine, scraping up fond from bottom of the pan. Turn heat off and allow liquid to remain in pan.

Mix eggs, half and half, salt, and chipotle peppers until completely mixed. Whisk in wine. Pour over potatoes and bake around 30 minutes.

Garnish with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, and chopped cilantro.