Pork with Fennel Three Ways

Saturday October 27

Right next to the broccoli, there was also a big bulb of fennel hiding in the vedge bin. And out in the garden, Barbara is trying to grow Florentine fennel, though the plants haven't formed any bulbs yet and look like multi-stalked botanical scarecrows. So Holt came up with this ingenious recipe for tender, thick pork medallions using three types of fennel: dried and ground, bulb, and fresh sprigs.
The pig was frozen, so a good excuse to brine the thick slices while bringing them up to speed. Yes, that's right, we soaked pork in kosher salt.
Coat the pig pieces with ground fennel seed.* Sear in oil until nicely browned. Set aside. Add a sliced bulb of fennel to some olive oil, turn to coat and soften, then add wine and salt, cover and braise, until getting soft. Add the pig back to the pan, cover, and cook, until most of the liquid is absorbed. The fennel should be still slightly crisp and the pork is at 140º and climbing a bit. Top with pepper and the feathery fennel fronds. So it ain't kosher, it's still tasty.

*Many years ago we bought a little plastic spice grinder at IKEA. I don't know how exactly the little cog manages to crush everything from pepper corns to diamonds, but it's a piece of first rate design: adaptable and easy to clean. We don't normally plug equipment, but I'm glad to see it's still in stock. Only problem is that's named the IKEA 365+ and not something more IKEA-oid, like Blørt or Üßlîng.

Beef with Broccoli

Friday October 26

Since we buy things at Findlay Market according to freshness and seasonality rather than off a shopping list, we sometimes forget what we've got in the fridge to cook. This time, it was a broccoli hiding in the vedge bins, but we managed to catch it before it became a science experiment. A quick paw through the freezer came up with a pound block of London broil, which is perfect for slicing into strips for a Chinese stir-fry, i.e. the classic Chinese beef with broccoli (actually, broccoli with beef).

We've already discussed Barbara's Philosophy of Stir-Frying.

While Holt cut up the broccoli into small flowerets, skinned the stems, and cut them into half-inch strips, and also minced a couple-three cloves of garlic, Barbara sliced the beef into quarter-inch-thick, two-inch-long strips, and marinated it in a Tbsp. of oyster sauce, a Tbsp. of soy sauce, two teaspoons of Shao Xing wine, a teaspoon of sesame oil, a quarter teaspoon of sugar, and a dusting of black pepper. Oyster sauce isn't really traditional in this dish, but it needs something to keep from being bland.

Once everything was chopped and standing by, we heated the wok to medium, poured in a good dose of oil, and stir-fried the broccoli florets with a little salt for about five minutes, adding the garlic halfway along and the broccoli stems a minute after; you'd be surprised how tender the stems are once they're skinned and sliced. When the florets looked dark green, we added a couple of cubes of frozen veal stock, lowered the heat, and covered the wok, letting it steam until the broccoli florets were tender and the liquid was absorbed. We then put the vegetables aside and reheated the wok, this time on high. We then stir-fried the beef strips very quickly in oil, only to the point where they were not red-raw on either side. Then we threw the broccoli back in, tasted it for balance (it needed a little more soy and oyster sauce), stir-fried until the whole thing was hot, anointed with a little sesame oil, and served.

With the good-quality beef available in America, we don't need to slice it paper-thin as Chinese chefs usually do. Instead, keep it tender by stir-frying it only to very rare initially; that way it will reach medium-rare when you're reheating the vegetables with it.

Linguine al Salmone

Thursday October 25

The classic, made whenever we get a package of lox pieces from Trader Joe's.
Sooner or later, we'll have to figure out which pasta we have more often, this or Penne alla Saffi.

Leftover Chicken with Yuppie Salad

Wednesday October 24

We try not to eat the same thing two days in a row, but leftover roast chicken legs, just cold with salt, are so appetizing and easy that it's hard to think of anything better to do. We also had some leftover roasted beets from Saturday, and figured that if the protein was so simple, the vegetable could be complicated. We decided on a salad using the quintessential eighties ingredients: the roasted beets, arugula, and goat cheese (we couldn't work pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes into it, somehow).

Here's the recipe we worked from, substituting arugula for the watercress. Having already-roasted beets saved us a step, and Holt had the ingenious idea of using fresh tarragon in the salad dressing and dried only for the coating for the goat-cheese rounds, which really added to the flavor. The cheese rounds were a bit crumbly, but he patted them together (at room, not "toom," temperature); once rolled in the crumbs and briefly broiled, they made not just the salad, but the whole meal.

Chicken with about Forty Cloves of Garlic (but who's counting?)

Tuesday October 23

We were home trying to clean out the attic for Christmas visitors, and it was a drizzly, chilly, charmless day. So we needed a warm oven-roasted dish that wouldn't take too much to prepare, and we happened to have an abundance of garlic.

Roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic was the obvious answer.

This is a famous recipe that appeared in Gourmet in 1967, and everybody does their own adaptation of it. Our version is considerably simpler than the original, as you don't have to brown or truss the bird - it browns itself in the oven, and trussing only keeps the thighs from cooking until the breast is completely dried out. Tell the chicken to spread its legs, turn its head, and cough.

We used our basic roast chicken recipe here but threw all the garlic cloves from two whole heads into the pan - and no, we didn't count them. We also put a quartered lemon and some rosemary sprigs into the chicken's cavity, rather than working chopped herbs up under the skin.

The vegetables that roasted alongside were potatoes, shallots, and parsnips. And they were damn tasty, especially when you squeezed the roasted cloves of garlic out over them as you ate.

Gnocchi alla Gorgonzola

Monday October 22

Using Trader Joe's gnocchi, this is almost more instantaneous (?) than the Parsley Pesto, and a very satisfying meal. Can't believe we haven't had it since March.

Parsley Pesto

Sunday October 21
A late night? Masterpiece Theatre on? The solution? The ever-popular (and next to instantaneous) Parsley Pesto. The parsley is putting in one last burst of autumnal defiance, raging against the dying of the light, as which of us is not.