Monday, String Beans - Green Beans and Tomatoes

When I was a kid, I hated my grandmother's string beans.  She was such a good cook, why were the string beans so freaking awful?  Well, they were canned, but truthfully, I don't mind canned vegetables.  They were reheated within an inch of their life, but I like overcooked vegetables.  No, these were so damn bad I would pretend to eat them, stuffing my cheeks like a squirrel, head to the bathroom, and spit them out.  All those green beans, and their bad tasting, inedible strings.  Gack!

Since then, the strings have been bred right out of those beans by genius scientists who should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to eaters everywhere.  Now, either fresh or frozen, the appropriately renamed green beans are high on my favorite vegetable list.

I first found this green bean and tomato combination, called "Papa's Greek Beans" in a southern cook book by James Villas.  Since then, I've seen this pretty basic recipe all over the South, with and without bacon.  Since I was up to my elbows in pork belly at the time I was cooking the green beans, I decided to save the bacon for another day.  This is my bacon-free variation of the recipe:

1 pound frozen whole green beans, defrosted (I use Publix brand)
1 - 14.5 oz. can stewed tomatoes, original recipe
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and black pepper, to taste

Place the green beans in a medium pot.  Add the tomatoes with all of the juice, and the remaining ingredients.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover the pot and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.  The green beans should be very soft.

Sorry the photo turned out so dark.  But you can still see how everything cooked down together so that all the flavors melded.  Nothing al dente here, I can assure you.  Crudités have their place, I suppose, but not on my dinner plate masquerading as a vegetable I'd be willing to eat.  I'm sure all my southern friends would agree.

Footloose - Braised (Salt) Pork (Belly)

I had two more weekend shelters recently - that's five total in case you were counting, and that's two trips to Orlando and all that jazz, so I had to fill up my car.  There is a Wawa on Orange Avenue, and when I stopped, music both in and outside was blaring:

Now I gotta cut loose, footloose

Kick off the Sunday shoes

Please, Louise, pull me off of my knees

Jack, get Mack, come on before we crack

Lose your blues, everybody cut footloose

... and THAT brought me to the salt pork soaking in my fridge. 

Doesn't that look like bacon? (Get it, Bacon?)

Anyway, these are those two pieces of Smithfield salt pork, that I picked up yesterday at the Spanish grocery.  I did not remove the skin this time, but I did make shallow crosshatch cuts across the top.  Then I soaked these in just-plain-cold water for 24 hours, changing the water a total of 4 times.  Each time I changed the water, I rinsed out the container and dried the inside to get out as much lingering salt as possible.  I also rinsed and patted dry each piece of pork before placing it in the fresh water.

At this point, I would have liked to slice off a small piece and fry it off so I could taste it for saltiness, but I came home from court to a complete dearth of electricity.  Robert reports that there was a very big boom and the house went dark.  KUA was on the job almost immediately, as you can see from my kitchen window,  but there was another loud boom and we are still dark.

Honestly, if a 24 hour salt-leaching soak hasn't worked by now, I'm declaring this experiment a failure.  I never really did go to Hogwarts anyway, and just because some people have called me a witch at various times in the past doesn't make me so.  So it's time to get on with the penultimate step,  the dry rub, so it will be ready for some nice braising in the near future (assuming KUA is successful, otherwise, no slow cooker, no oven, no nuthin').

I wanted a salt-free rub, so I hit the cookbooks, and came up with this slight variation of Steven Raichlin's salt-free lemonade chili rub.  He writes that he got the recipe from "Kansas City barbecue guru Paul Kirk."  I'm glad he did.

Oven-Braised Salt Pork Belly

2 nice pieces of salt pork, about 3/4 pound each (I used Smithfield brand, which I found in the Spanish grocery.  Publix carries Hormel brand salt pork in what looks to be 1/2 pound pieces)

Salt-Free Dry Rub: 

1/4 cup light brown sugar

2 tablespoons paprika

1 individual packet Crystal Light pink lemonade powder   

1/2 tablespoon dried parsley

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

1/2 tablespoon onion powder

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon celery seed

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram

1/2 teaspoon dried rubbed sage

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1/2 teaspoon dried dill

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Use a fork or a small whisk to mix this together.  Use 1/4 cup for each top and bottom of the pork.  Pat the rub into the pork, and used any extra to cover the sides.  Place in a dry container, covered, in the refrigerator for 2 hours.  Remove the pork and with dry paper towels, brush off all of the excess rub.  Discard the used rub.  Dry off the pork as best you can.

In a large deep skillet, heat a small amount of olive oil, to just cover the bottom, over medium high heat.  carefully add the pork, skin side down.  It is going to spatter like nobody's business, so use the longest set of tongs you have when turning the meat, and stand as far from the stove as you can. Also keep your cooking hand covered with an oven mitt or a kitchen towel to avoid splatter burns.

When the pork is well-browned on both sides, remove to a 9 x 13 baking pan.  Do not discard the fat in the pan.  Prepare the braising liquid.

Braising Liquid:

1 onion (or 1/2 large sweet onion)

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried rosemary

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 medium apples, unpeeled, cut into thick slices or into wedges

2 cups apple cider

In the same pan in which you fried the pork, add the onion and sauté a few minutes.  Add the garlic, thyme, rosemary, and black pepper.  Continue sautéing until the onion begins to show brown edges.  Add the apple slices and cook just 5 minutes, then add the apple cider and stir everything together with a wooden spoon, while scraping up any good stuff on the bottom of the pan.  Bring up to a boil, lower the heat and simmer while you set up the pork for the oven.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  With a slotted spoon, remove the apple slices from the braising liquid, and place around the pork.  Then carefully pour the sauce over the pork, gently pushing the cooked onions back into the sauce.  Cover the pan with aluminum foil, sealing it tightly.  Place in the oven to cook for a total of 2 1/2 hours, turning the pork skin-side down after 2 hours.  Then remove the pan from the oven, and allow the pork to cool enough to handle.  Use the tongs to grasp the sides of the pork, remove it  from the braising liquid, and place the pieces in a clean pan.  Carefully remove the skin from each piece.  Place the pan with the braising sauce into the refrigerator or freezer until the fat hardens enough to be removed.  While that is going on, sear the top of each piece in a very hot pan.  

Serving options:  I cut each piece of pork belly into 3 or 4 squares, and placed them into a baking dish with the apple braising liquid.  I had added some more apple cider to the liquid, since it seems to have picked up some of the salt lingering in the pork.  The entire dish can be reheated, or just one portion at a time.

And I am STILL not completely satisfied.  Next time, I take the skin off at the beginning.  Having said that, this was so delicious.  It gives new meaning to the phrase "meltingly tender."

All you happy children, we wish the same to you - Butter Chicken

Ear worms are running my life.  They are my Muse.  If that's not the definition of crazy, I don't know what is.  My younger brother has been on my mind lately, and I associate this children's rhyme with him.  One day he came home from elementary school singing this (I can only guess the class was learning the days of the week) and it's been in my head ever since.  Since my brother is a 60-year old pediatrician with two grown daughters, that's a hell of a long time to have an ear worm.

Do any of you remember this one?
Today is Monday, today is Monday

Monday -- string beans

All you hungry children, come and eat it up!

Today is Tuesday, today is Tuesday

Tuesday -- spaghetti
Monday -- string beans

All you hungry children, come and eat it up! 

From there it just continued, adding all the fabulous foods coming down the pike as the week progressed:

Wednesday -- soup

Thursday -- roast beef

Friday -- fresh fish

Saturday -- chicken

Sunday -- ice cream

Apparently there are a number of different versions; my memories change the line "all you hungry children, come and eat it up" to "all you happy children, we wish the same to you."  Also, I don't remember a single word about spaghetti, and fish wasn't necessarily fresh in the version my brother was singing. (Still. fish on Friday was de rigueur in those pre-Vatican II days, so at least that was consistent.)  And I distinctly remember on one of the days, all the happy children were getting bread and butter, and to be honest, I'd rather have that instead of string beans.  Which is yet another upcoming blog post.

Today is Saturday and I would like to talk to you about chicken.  Incredible, edible, affordable chicken.

Chicken is God's gift to the human race.  Like the rainbow in Noah's Ark story, it represents a promise to the people of the Earth.  By giving us chicken, God has promised that humans will never be forced to eat fish eyeballs or lamb fries (or any other sort of gonad), or pig brains, or any offal, or insects, or beating snake hearts, nay, any bizarre food unless they choose to do so (and hopefully get paid for such insanity, like Andrew Zimmern).   And especially for God's Chosen People, the chicken is a promise that we will never run short of Jewish penicillin.

I am an unabashed carnivore, and I love all the standard cuts of beef, pork, lamb and veal, as well as most forms of fin fish and shellfish, but if for some reason I had to choose a single source of protein for the rest of my life, it would be chicken.

Chicken can be prepared for eating in every way known to humans, except raw.  Boil, bake, roast, pan fry, deep fry, grill, sauté, poach, simmer, braise, stir fry.  You can smoke it, buffalo it, throw it in a crockpot, pressure cook it, seal it in a plastic bag and sous vide it, or even shove a beer can up its rear.   And chicken can be breaded, barbecued, tempura'ed, and stuffed.  There are almost as many recipes for stuffing for chicken as there are for chicken itself. 

Contrary to general belief, chicken is not bland in taste, although it is mild, and therefore plays well with all kinds of seasoning.  I would hazard a guess that there are so many recipes for chicken that they constitute a statistical universe.  And then there are chicken eggs, schmaltz, chicken liver, gizzard, and hearts, but that's definitely another couple of blog posts.

I grew up eating chicken that had been simply prepared.  Boiled soup chicken, broiled chicken quarters, chicken quarters dipped in butter, pressed into cornflake crumbs and then baked, chicken quarters drizzled with maple barbecue sauce and baked, whole chicken rubbed with a paste made of spices and a little corn oil, roasted and then cut into quarters.  Except for the skin on the boiled chicken, I loved it all.

I am a self-taught cook, but that doesn't mean I haven't learned a lot of good cooking stuff from others.  While I may have read The Joy of Cooking cover to cover when I was a newly married bride in 1974 (theoretically, I can skin a squirrel), my knowledge of the best recipes and cooking techniques came from watching my friends and relatives cook.  And so on chicken days, I thank my college (and lifelong) friend, Vicki Schumacher Granek, for introducing me to another way of preparing the ubiquitous quartered chicken.  Once I tasted her Hawaiian chicken, and watched her prepare it, there was NOTHING I could not do with quartered chicken.  Complex flavors, ease of preparation, all this from only 4 ingredients.  From that day forward, my chicken world expanded exponentially.  Once you see the recipe, you will understand exactly what I mean.

But not today.  Today I am going to give you the recipe for another super-easy chicken recipe which requires very few ingredients.  This relies on a really good bottled simmer sauce from Patak's Taste of India product line, Butter Chicken. Butter is not the overriding ingredient, so I have no idea where the recipe got its name, but it does have smoked paprika and other lovely spices in a tomato base.  Reading the ingredients reminded me of a very non-Indian dish, csirke paprikas (Hungarian chicken paprikash, which I do prepare from scratch) so I just had to try it.  I've also used Patak's Tikaa Masala sauce in the past, with great success.   

1 -15 oz. jar Patak's Butter Chicken simmer sauce

1/2 of a small onion

1/2 of a small green bell pepper

2 tablespoons butter

8 skinless chicken thighs

On medium heat, melt butter in a large deep skillet.  Add the onion and green pepper, and cook until the vegetables are nice and soft.  Push the vegetables aside to make room for the chicken, and then four at a time, place the chicken into the pan and brown it in the butter on both sides.  Take your time with this, as it will take longer to develop color without the skin.  Remove to a baking dish, and repeat with the last four pieces of chicken.  Return all of the chicken to the skillet and pour in the butter chicken sauce.  Add about a half cup of water to the sauce jar, cover and shake to get all of the sauce off the sides of the jar, and pour that into the skillet as well.  Bring the sauce to a boil, then immediately cover the skillet and reduce the heat to simmer.  Cook the chicken for an hour, stirring occasionally.  Cool, and transfer to a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Refrigerate overnight.  About an hour before serving, remove the fat from the sauce.  Add a little water to the pan, cover it with aluminum foil, and place it in a 275 degree oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken is as soft as butter.  Serve with rice or couscous.  Really tasty.

Food glorious food - No saveloys, please

Gack!  Another earworm.  And this one goes back to sixth grade at Number Six School in Woodmere, New York.  The Lawrence-Cedarhurst Union Free School District movers and shakers were extraordinarily imaginative when it came to naming the elementary schools.

Yes, that's my elementary school for sale

Sixth grade plays, very important.  We did H.M.S. Pinafore, while Miss Kass's class put on Oliver, which at that time was a fairly new musical.

Food glorious food
Hot sausage and mustard
While we're in the mood cold jelly and custard
Pease pudding and saveloys
What next is the question?
Rich gentlemen have it boys
In-Di-Gestion

Okay, a couple of things come to mind - this is America and kids are still hungry, and that's not necessarily parentless kids living in an orphanage. Our government supplies food stamps and other financial assistance to low-income families with children.  There are free breakfasts and lunches available from public schools.  If a family comes to the attention of DCF - my world and welcome to it - unless there is present danger, the family is wrapped with services to help keep the children safe in an intact family.  That includes financial assistance when warranted.  I realize that the victims of homelessness and human trafficking are likely to go hungry, but I don't think those numbers alone account for the percentage of American children who do not eat on a regular basis.  

So I must be missing some other social or societal factor, and I don't claim to know all the answers.  But I will throw one idea out there.  Too many parents don't know how to food shop effectively and economically, and they also don't know how to cook.  I know I went through a semi-rant on this subject last month, October 20th to be exact, but it still irritates me that there are parents who are screamingly resistant to cooking for their children.  (It also irritates me that there are parents that blow their food budget on drugs, alcohol, and designer potato chips, but that's a whole other can of rutabaga.)

Cooking for a family can be easy and relatively cheap, but it takes time, it takes planning, and most of all, it takes sacrifice.  Oh, and at least one good all-around cookbook.  Mine have been well-loved and very well-used.

Food shopping is one of my favorite things to do in the world.  I hate the mall and I hate shopping for anything I can't buy online, but I'll spend hours wandering around any grocery from Publix to Pathmark, Walmart to Waldbaum's.  I never use coupons, but I am a very careful shopper.  BOGOs are my friend.

There are different ways of stretching a food budget, buying on sale being the most obvious.  Ground beef instead of steak, whole or quartered chicken instead of boneless and skinless chicken breasts, tilapia instead of ahi tuna; slipping an extra can of beans into the pot of chili or an extra cup of cut white turnips into a stew; serving an array of inexpensive side dishes, based on potato, rice, pasta, kasha, couscous, or one of the superfoods like quinoa, and vegetables; using prepared and processed foods as an ingredient rather than as the main event.  All obvious stuff to most of us, but if someone wasn't raised in a home where the parents cooked and shopped, not so obvious.  

If you've ever eaten in the home of a family with strong ethnic identity, you have probably seen some of this stretching.  Italian pasta, Hispanic rice and beans, Pennsylvania Dutch seven sweets and seven sours, Asian rice, Eastern European dumplings, and I know there are so many more but my brain is beginning to sputter.  Bread or biscuits. Soup.  You get it, I know you do.  The question is, all those parents of hungry kids - do they get it?  If not, why not?  And how can that be changed?

To say I am a crazy food obsessed cat lady would be a slight understatement, and I know that every parent is not going to embrace cooking as I have, but nothing feels as good as nurturing your kid.  I should know, I've been feeding a vacuum-cleaner-with-teeth for 27 wonderful years.

What a difference a day makes - Aunt Ceil's Apple Cake with Cinnamon Crumb Topping

What a difference a day makes

Twenty-four little hours

Brought the sun and the flowers
Where there used to be rain

My yesterday was blue, dear

Today I'm a part of you, dear

My lonely nights are through, dear
Since you said you were mine

How about 3,652.421 days, hmmm?  What do you think that much time can do to a person?

I think I mentioned in a recent blog post that I was pulling stuff together to renew our passports.  Part of that stuff was a recent photo.  Another part of that stuff was to submit our expired passports.

Put the two together, and you get Shock and Aw-ful.  Incidentally the only reason I don't look even more like a candidate for the local mortuary in the picture on the right is because Brenda, my friend and paralegal, made me promise I would put on a little lipstick and comb my hair.

At least now the customs officials won't give me a funny look when I try to get back into the United States after a trip to somewhere.  Anywhere.  Any ship, as long as its first name is Carnival and it is sailing out of Port Canaveral.  I really have a one-track mind.  

The headaches are back, if in fact they ever left.  I had trouble falling asleep because of a headache, which outstayed its welcome, because then I woke up practically blinded by the light.  I could not open one of my eyes.  It hurt to lift my head, it hurt to breathe.  Other than that, it was a pretty good start to the day.  I like to look at the positive side of things.  For example, we were going to head up to Vienna ("Vy-Anna") Georgia this past weekend for the glorious barbecue blowout known as the Big Pig Jig.  But the week kept slogging along without either of us making a reservation or any kind of plans and then we realized there was no way we were going to make it, and that was okay.  Better than okay, because about 2 hours after that discussion, I found out I was on weekend shelter duty, and that if I had made reservations, we would have had to cancel and possibly face some kind of penalty fee.  

As Rob's Grandma used to say, "everything happens for a reason."  Sometimes I think my whole life is based on that belief, and that's also okay.

As it turned out, I had three shelter hearings to handle on Saturday.  Could have been a bad thing, but I had good CPIs and case management there, plus a judge I knew from the bad old days as a divorce attorney, and the whole thing was done and over by 9 AM.  Never mind that I had awoken at 5:45 that morning to get ready and drive up to Orlando; I will pay for that later, I know I will.  But for now, I'm still standing, and if I can stand, I can cook.  I can also food-shop, which is what I did on my way home, stopping at one of the Spanish groceries in my continuing search for pork belly.  I just happened to find a few other things ...

That's salt pork, two lovely pieces, and I am going to try some more Harry Potter magic to draw the excess salt out before braising it in the crockpot.  So into some cold water for a while, with the water being changed every 4 to 6 hours.  Wouldn't even consider cooking it for consumption until sometime tomorrow.  And two green tomatoes, rescued from a pile of red, ripe relatives and a pretty purple eggplant.  Maybe I'll fire up the old electric frying pan.  Maybe tomorrow.

First, though, I am finally going to make good use of those lovely apples I picked up in Georgia.  The apple cake recipe came from my great-Aunt Ceil, and the crumb topping came from another cake recipe I happened upon during a random internet search.  Of course, I've made some changes to both of them, but bringing them together on this blind date is going to be positively revolutionary.  

First, prepare the cinnamon crumb topping:

1 cup flour

1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cardamom

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 stick cold butter, cut into pieces

Mix the flour. sugars, and spices in a large bowl.  Cut in the cold butter with a pastry blender or two knives, until the mixture resembles very coarse crumbs.  Put the bowl in the refrigerator while you prepare the apples and cake batter.

Next, the apples:

5-6 apples, peeled and sliced fairly thin (use a combination of cooking apples)
2 rounded tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Combine the apples, sugar, and cinnamon in a covered container.  Toss together, and set aside.

Now the batter:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup V-8 Splash Tropical Blend

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and 3/4 cup sugar in a large bowl.  Make a well and add the oil, eggs, vanilla and V-8 Splash. Use a wooden spoon to combine wet and dry ingredients, and then beat with an electric mixer for about 2 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray an 8 inch square baking dish with baking nonstick spray.  I used an aluminum pan, and placed it on a cookie sheet before sliding into the oven.  Spoon half the batter into the pan, then place half the apples over it.  Repeat with the remaining batter and apple slices.  Cover the entire top of the cake with the crumbs.  Put the baking pan in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.  Check the cake for doneness.  If needed, bake another 10 minutes.  Place the cake on a rack to cool.  Let the cake cool completely before cutting.

This cake is so freaking delicious, I surprised myself!!