Pork Chops

Checking out restaurant menus online is a recently developed hobby of mine. One site which I like a lot is www.tkrg.com. It's the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, which includes a place called The French Laundry in Napa Valley. This guy is a culinary god according to chefs on Food Network and Wikipedia - and hopefully one day I'll have a chance to try out his $200 tasting menu which changes each day at the French Laundry.

Now on to my own cooking. After realizing that the cheese I like so much in the Pasta Bowl's spinach chicken salad is goat cheese - I decided to buy some at Costco, along with some pork loin chops. Here's what I did with it:


The pork loin chops I marinated for a couple hours in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, honey, and Coca Cola. I've read that aside from its sweetness, Coke works well in certain marinades because the carbamic acid in it tenderizes meat. The pork chops were cooked in a pan over the stove top four minutes on each side to brown and caramelize, and then the marinade was added and the chops simmered for 20 minutes until the marinade reduced by about half.

The salad is a mix of asparagus, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and apples tossed in olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, and garlic that was sauteed briefly.

The goat cheese I piled on top of a thick slice of apple, and baked in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes until it browned and was warmed all the way through. I also added honey, paprika, black pepper, and lemon zest to the cheese before baking.

This dish was probably the best one I've blogged about so far. Balsamic vinegar and honey work together beautifully, and the goat cheese on top of the apple was awesome. There was actually a very fluid progression of flavors when you had a piece of pork with some veggies and goat cheese. Every element in the dish worked together. I do wish though that the marinade had reduced in further to create a glaze, and that I hadn't cooked the apples for the same amount of time as the asparagus and tomatoes. I'm not sure the Coke added much to the tenderness of the meat, and its flavor was very subtle - taking a backseat to the sweet tartness of the vinegar and the richness of the honey.

The picture above isn't the greatest, but I love the color of cherry tomatoes. Kind of like I love the color of bright red hot chili peppers. I also love the color of yellow bell peppers. Hmm...

Glorified Sushi

Sorry guys for the hiatus. I haven't been able to find the USB cord that allows me to upload my camera pics. A couple of things to note:

1. Ghareeb Nawaz on Devon St. was amazing. Between us, Sean, Kali, and I shared some delicious chicken biryani, a lamb curry I forget the name of, chana masala with chicken, gyro parantha, and some authentic chai tea. I have to say this is easily some of the best Indian food I've had in Chicago. All the meat we ordered was cooked tender, and heavily spiced (my kind of approach to cooking). I have to say I never want to go back to a simple gyro in pita bread when I could have a spiced up version of it in parantha bread. It actually only took us a half-hour to get there (20 min on intercampus and five on the 155 west.) If you're in the Streeterville area this is an obligatory visit for anyone who loves spicy, authentic Indian food.

2. I recently made a "La Jiao Shiao Tsao" (Hot Pepper Stir Fry?) that turned out well. My mom cooks this for me when I go back home - and I thought it was about time to try cooking it for myself. The main ingredient is leeks and hot peppers (jalepenos work fine) - the combination is a fragrant, spicy flavor that I find irresistable. Pork strips and dried tofu strips are included in the stir fry. You can get this stuff plated in less than 20 minutes if you cut and wash quickly. I cut pork into little strips (a staple in Chinese stir-fry) and marinated it in white pepper, soy sauce, a bit of rice wine, and corn starch for a couple of hours. The corn starch keeps the meat tender during cooking. To cook, cut up one leek (you have to wash these well), three mild jalapenos (if you like milder spice remove all the seeds), and three cloves of garlic. Stir-fry these in a wok with a bit of vegetable oil for two minutes, then add the pork, dried tofu strips, a couple tablespoons of water, one tablespoon soy sauce, and white pepper to taste and cook for another three minutes. Keep the heat on high the entire time, and serve immediately with white rice. Tsingtao beer actually works amazingly with this dish - so if you've got it break out a couple of bottles. If you've got garlic chives and shrimp, these add even more complexity and flavor to the dish. Just clean the shrimp - cooking time shouldn't vary much.

Ok now here's what I wanted to show you guys:



This crazy idea started with the need to use up some avocados. I also wanted to do something artsy - which I kind of failed at...but anyways you could call the above dish chicken on a raft, floating down a river dwarfed by mountain. I know, its crazy but I was listening to Incubus - Aqueous Transmission and so I had to make a river.

The raft is made out of some asparagus cooked with a bit of garlic and sea salt. The chicken was marinated and baked in teriyaki sauce (equal parts of soy sauce, mirin, and sake) and a bit of sriracha for spice. The river was made of avocadoes pureed with some sea salt, milk, olive oil, and wasabi (basically I was trying to make avocado wasabi mayo without using raw egg).

The mountain is white rice topped with honeyed walnuts and goji berries (my healthier take on a Chinese desert called eight-treasure sticky rice). The walnuts I toasted for a bit to bring out the natural oils, coated with honey diluted with a bit of water and lemon juice, and baked. I put these walnuts on top of the chicken as well.

Everything was put on top of two sheets of salted sea weed - so the remaining bits could be wrapped up and eaten...kind of a glorified sushi.

All in all, I would judge the dish as a bit chaotic - the "mountain" tasted very good, but didn't really have any relation to the other components of the dish in terms of flavor - though wasabi-tinged avocado with the teriyaki chicken worked very well in my opinion. I also think I succeeded in preserving the natural flavors of my ingredients (ie I didn't add too many spices) which I appreciate about Japanese food. I have to try to keep my flavors a bit more focused. I had a lot of fun making this though.

Battle Fennel

One of the things I love about Tuesdays is the Farmer's Market, in front of the MCA. Today I picked up fennel - which I've never cooked with before or eaten. It's basically the baby of leek and aniseed (in my tastebud's opinion). Here's what I ended up making with it.

The chicken was seasoned with sea salt, black pepper, rosemary, garlic, and chopped up fennel stalk - and saute-ed for just a couple minutes on each side to brown the outside. I then stuck it in the oven to bake with some bigger pieces of saute-ed fennel, yellow onion, and garlic. Everything was covered with a light coat of olive oil while baking.

The hummus that the chicken and fennel were plated over was made by blending chickpeas, a very little bit of lemon juice, olive oil, and sea salt at first. After this, I added some concentrated tea (South African rooibos), a drop of vanilla extract, honey, and cinnamon. The rooibos tea has a very subtle sweet, aromatic flavor.

The couscous was infused with the rooibos tea, and also mixed with some toasted pistachios and dried cranberries and a bit of butter.

Basically, I wanted to complement the liqourice flavor of the fennel with the aromatic sweetness of the rooibos. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the way the flavors worked together - especially when the chicken was dipped in hummus and eaten with a small piece of fennel and a spoonful of couscous. I was also happy with the way the natural oils of the pistachio complemented the flavor of the tea.

However, I need to figure out how to make couscous fluffy - I'm still not a big fan of it. After a grueling exam though, it was nice to sit down to a nice meal with a couple of my favorite people =)

Here's to great eating

I have to credit my trip to China a couple summers ago for both reinforcing and expanding my appreciation for food.

Chinese people approach eating seriously. When you eat a real meal, you commit time to it - sometimes a few hours. You sit down with your family or friends or both, and share each dish at the center of the table. You encourage each other to eat some more, and to have another drink. Most Westerners get the feeling after the fifth 'gan bei' or their third bowl of rice that they're part of an intimate celebration.

For those who love cooking, the passion, creativity, and respect for the history and natural character of an ingredient is easily apparent in Chinese food - but this also goes hand in hand with the daring to totally manipulate ingredients and make them taste like something that could never be found in nature. Artwork is created atop every plate served - from the simplest long-life noodles to very intricate phoenix nests.

I've created this blog for a few reasons. One is to make sure that when I eat out - the experience stays with me for longer than however long it takes to digest. I'm doing this for the sake of culinary inspiration, and for the sake of forcing myself to use my digital camera. I also want to share my food and ideas with others, and most importantly - bring my friends and whoever else wanders upon this blog to my proverbial table...in a celebration of food!