Apple-Pork Ragu with Papardelle (GK)

• 1 teaspoon olived oil
• 12 ounces ground pork
• 2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 2 Honeycrisp apples, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices [I subbed some Pink Ladies]
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• One 15-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, smashed by hand or chopped
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 pound dried papardelle [I used a box of ziti I had since in the forward to the recipe Stephanie Izard says that it's fine to use a pasta that might catch some bits of pork or apple]
• 2 tablespoons brined capers
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
• Coarse salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Mise en place.

Browning the ground pork though admittedly there was very little browning well after the suggested five minutes.  I was afraid of drying the ground meat up.  This ragu isn't really a seriously braised or stewed affair.

Browning the bacon.  Still working off the stuff I made in september.

Add onions and garlic and sweat them until onions are translucent.  Um, two minutes ain't going to do it, but as it was with the pork, it was getting there.

Add the apples and wine.  Reduce the wine by 3/4's.

Add tomatoes, broth, and browned pork and simmer, partially covered for fifteen minutes.

The dish struck me as quite sweet when I had it right after completing the dish, but it mellowed out nicely after refrigeration.  The flavors of the dish are not complicated, but they were fine enough here.  I'm surprised Stephanie Izard didn't throw some fish sauce in here as well when it dominates the rest of her cookbook.

Caramel Pork with Hong Kong Noodles (EYH)

The Pork

• 1 1/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon five-spice powder
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup Shaoxing wine or dry sherry [I already owned dry sherry.]
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 to 1 1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch strips [Stupid me didn't know what that meant and cut them up in stir-fry size slices.]

Minced garlic.

Not exactly beaten to a fine paste in my new mortar and pestle, but everything is certainly obliterated.

Marinade.

Pork is marinated for at least 12 hours and up to 2 days.  In my case, probably about 24 hours.

I assume this would've been easier to rig up if I had cut strips of the shoulder an inch in width.

They're roasted in the oven on a rack over 1/2 inch of water.

Fried Garlic Garnish

• 5 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Garlic cloves are covered with cold water, brought to a boil and drained twice to cut some of their edge.

Couldn't understand how I could possibly use a candy thermometer to measure the temperature of 1/4 cup of oil so my garlic cloves aren't golden brown but mahagony.

Caramel Sauce

• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup soy sauce

Two cups of sugar.

Cooked down into caramel.

And thinned out with the soy sauce and a 1/2 cup of water.

Finish the Dish

• Salt
• 1 pound Hong Kong or wonton noodles
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 splash neutral oil, such as grapeseed or canola
• 4 scallions, thinly slice on the bias
• 2 tablespoons sil gochu ["You could certainly substitute thinly sliced fresh chilies or crushed dried chili as long as there's some heat to balance the salty sweetness of the sauce."]

I dunno if I really have a vessel where I can create an ice bath to shock blanch noodles.  Did a rather poor job transferring the noodles over.
I don't have a lot of experiences with ice baths yet.

Thrown together with the oil in the pan to heat the noodles back up.

 
Throw the pork in the caramel sauce and heat those up as well.

Toss the noodles, pork, and sauce and top with garlic and sil gochu.  Or in my case, gochugaru, Korean ground red chili.
How did I like this dish?  It was pretty satisfying I must admit, but involves a whole bunch of culinary gymnastics to pull together.  Perhaps for Thanksgiving.

Spicy Pork Sausage & Rice Cakes (Momofuku)

• 1/2 cup grapeseed or other neutral oil
• 3 large yellow onions, cut in half and thinly sliced
• 2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 pound ground pork
• 2 very loosely packed cups (1 1/2 ounces) dried red chiles
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons toban djan (jarred Chinese fermented bean and chile sauce) or ssamjang (the Korean analogue to toban djan)
• 1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon kochukaru (Korean chile powder)
• 6 tablespoons waters
• 1 tablespoon usukuchi (light soy sauce)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 cups sliced or coarsely chopped Chinese vegetables, such as Chines broccoli or bok choy
• 8 long cylindrical rice sticks, cut into 1-inch lengths [I found these rice cake at about that size already, but they were cinched in the middle.  I remember actually having it at Momofuku and their way is definitely an improvement]
• 8 ounces silken tofu, drained
• 1 cup sliced scallions, greens and whites
• 1/2 cup packaged Chinese fried shallots [All the varieties at C-Mart were labelled as "Red Onions"

Mise en place.

Caramelize onions for 30 minutes.

Raw ground pork over medium-high heat.

Jab at meat with edge of spoon just until it loses its pinkness.

Heat chiles and dried garlic until fragrant.

Stir in chile bean sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, and kochukaru.

Stir in chopped greens and cooked until stem are just tender.

Whisk silken tofu until creamy.

 

I don't quite remember having this at Momofuku being quite as big a pain to eat with pulling out the fragments of chile and accidentally chewing on one way too often.

I've found that processed rice noodles really do not hold up as leftovers and the dish was basically inedible by the third day.   I admit the dish has personality but its not suited to my needs.

Stir-Fried Pork, Eggplant, and Onion with Garlic and Black Pepper (CATKTV)

Sauce

• 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
  
• 2 1/2 tablespoons low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Pork and Vegetables

• 1 (12-ounce) pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat and silver skin and cut into 1/4 inch strips [I used pork loin because the only tenderloin at Stop and Shop is pre-marinated.]
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 3 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1/4 cup) [Peeling and microplane-ing this amount of garlic took ridiculous amount of time.]
• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 medium eggplant (1 pound), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1 large onion, halved and cut into 1/4-inch wedges
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
  

Between peeling and finely grating the garlic, hand-grinding the black pepper, and picking off cilantro leaves, the prep involved was INVOLVED.
The other prep was a breeze later in comparison, and stir-fries are the opposite of a 3-hour braise.


Cooking through the slivers of pork in about 2 minutes.


Browning the eggplant until it is no longer spongy. I saw some graffiti eggplant at Trader Joe's yesterday. I wish I had been playing with that.




In goes the onions.
Also keep in mind, that everything is being cooked in stages over high heat. Most things cooked in just a couple of minutes. The eggplant just took a few minutes longer.


Clearing out the center of the pan and cooking the aromatics (in this case, garlic and black pepper) in the center of the pan seems like it's a pretty classic technique for cuisines ranging from Southeast Asia to Italy.


A strong stir-fry. It didn't wow me, but it certainly tasted cleaner than oily thing I might hope to expect to order in a restaurant.
Plus there's about 3 more recipes worth of pork loin in my freezer now.

Chicharones

When I roasted the pork belly in my Ramen entry, I wound up throwing out the skin I removed from the belly. I knew that I had an opportunity to make these for the event, but the hours were wearing on me in the kitchen and I didn't have the time to do all this.
I've largely stuck to the recipe in the Momofuku cookbook, but I didn't want to buy a food dehydrator just for this project when I could just set them in a low oven for three hours. Sorry, I'll wait for some other project to urge me along into buying one.
Hmm, the URL I used seems to have gone dead, but I'm pretty sure I had the pork rinds in the oven at about 250 degrees F for 3 hours. No, I didn't totally fail, David Chang.


Throw the pork belly in a pot and fill it nearly to the brim with cold water. Bring to a boil and boil hard for 1 1/2 hours.


At that point the water will look like this.


Draining them a bit. Notice that this process totally didn't remove the fat, but I assume this makes the next step easier.


One must remove all the fat from the pork belly or "they'll have the texture of soggy packing peanuts if fried." I think I had a few patches of fat, but I did make a good attempt and was fine.
Imagine scraping that down raw? Sounds gross and hard to do, but in my googling I didn't see another example of this technique.


Laid out and sprinkled with a little salt.


Three hours later. See the patches of fat? Overall though, good job.


Heating the fat to 390-400 degrees F.


And then you have chicharones. I think I enjoy ones made out of chicken skin better. Or maybe I should have gone ahead with Latin flavors (ground dried chipotle, lime, salt) rather than Asian (togarishi, a Japanese chili blend, and salt).
I suppose I'll figure that out next time.

RAMEN!

An event I'm planning for 4/14. Contact me for more details:


Ok, you lucky dogs, I'm again pulling out the culinary stops and finally throwing my own ramen party.
Ramen, if you aren't aware, doesn't need to be as basic as the stuff you can buy down the street for 40 cents a packet (Perhaps even less!) and the truly great stuff is mysteriously elusive in the Boston area (infinitely less so in NYC sadly). You can go to Wagamama and endure their price-gouging and less than authentic fare. Or you can go to Sapporo Ramen in the Porter Square Galleria for reasonably priced, authentic, filling stuff (DO NOT order extra ramen the first time you eat there. I suffered for days.). Their one failing is that they use a chicken-based broth rather than a pork-based broth. For the record, this is hugely lame.

Let me slavishly amend this situation while following Momofuku giant David Chang's recipe where roasted pork bones simmer for 6 to 7 hours, I'm basically confit-ing pork belly in the oven for 2 hours, and braising pork shoulder for 6 hours. Among other things, geesh!, but I guarantee it'll be a mind fuck.

Guests are encouraged to bring nibbles, Japanese/Korean alcoholic beverages (Soju is pretty icky but I guess traditional. They serve it in magnificent slushy form at the Momofuku Noodle Bar, but I'm not exactly going to attempt that one.), and desserts (I guess frozen mochi might do it, but more ambitious, homemade suggestions are welcome). Please come equipped with your own Asian soup bowl, soup spoon, and chopsticks (The kind they use in Pho places). I'm sure you can get this at any major Asian Supermarket for about $5.

Also there's no way I'm making more than 20 servings of this stuff so please RSVP early and mention any guests you're bringing.