Category Archives: Recipes

Last night I made Pomegranate & Spice Braised Pork, a recipe I’d seen in the Wine section of the Chronicle a couple of weeks before. I had actually meant to make it Monday night, but I miscalculated when I had to start on the recipe so I left it for dinner last night.
I followed the original recipe quite faithfully, though I used regular anise seeds instead of the star anise, I chopped rather than pounded the garlic (misread it) and used a good quality cab instead of the fruity wine (I wasn’t serving it with wine any way, and wanted to use what I had open).
The results were quite good, the sauce was sweet but not overwhelmingly so and complimented the pork quite well. Mike liked it, but he found the pork a little dry. I don’t know if somehow I failed in cooking it, or this is related to how lean pork nowdays is (and I may have messed up by cutting off the lawyer of fat on the outside of the pork shoulder). I thought the pork was fine – though the fattier parts were definitely tastier – but I found the sauce to be too one-dimensional. It was just there, tasting good but with no complexity to it. It bore me. I served the dish with couscous (always a good choice for any sweet sauce) and I do have to admit that it went wonderfully with it – the couscous much better than the pork set off the different flavors within the sauce.
It was an easy dish to make, though as with any braise dish it takes quite a while to cook. Pork shoulder is relatively cheap, but beware that a bottle of pomegranate juice cost me $6, the hoisin sauce was another $3 – so this dish can get expensive. Another caveat is that it smells just like cinamon rolls while it’s cooking, it may give you a craving 🙂
Recipe

• 3 1/2 to 4 lbs bone-in pork shoulder roast
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 tsps.. vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 5 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 6 slices fresh ginger
• 1/4 tsp. anise seed
• 1 stick cinnamon
• 2 tsp. whole black peppercorns
• 2 cups dry red wine
• 2 cups unsweetened pomegranate juice
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 2 tsps. fish sauce
• 2 tsps. hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp. dark brown sugar, or to taste

Instructions
Heat the oil in a large pot or dutch oven. Season all sides of the pork with salt and pepper. Brown all sides of the pork in the oil. Remove and set aside.
Fry the onions until transluscent. Add the garlic and cook until aromatic. Add the ginger, anise seed, cinnamon andn peppercorns and stir. Add the pork, wine, pomegranate juice, soy sauce, fish sauce and hoisin sauce.
Stir, bring to a boil, turn down the heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes. Check the level of tartness and if needed add the brown sugar.
Continue to simmer for 1 hour, turn the roast, and simmer for another 1 1/2 hours, until the meat is tender.
Remove the meat and set aside. Bring the sauce to a hard boil, uncovered, and boil until it’s reduced by 1/2 to 1/4th. Meanwhile, slice the meat. When the sauce has reduced, strain it, discard the solids and return the liquid to the pot. Add the pork to the liquid and simmer it for a few more minutes until it gets warm. Serve.

I’ll be brining a turkey this year, and this useful website tells you (and me) how.
THANKSGIVING SPECIAL / The Chronicle’s Classic Turkey

When we went to the Halloween store, Michaela picked up a bag of Halloween petit four paper cups and I went ahead and bought them. I didn’t want the purchase to be useless, so I decided to make these easy candies that have been a favorite of mine since I was a little kid. They are rolled on shredded coconut so we decided to call them Maggot Balls.
They weren’t as big a hit with others at the party as I’d had expected. Well, it just meant there were more for me! 🙂
All the proportions are approximate, as I didn’t measure when I made them.


Maggot Balls

• 3 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup 1-minute oats
• 2/3 cup dulce de leche
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• a dash of cognac, rum or another liqueur
• shredded sweetened coconut

Mix all the ingredients save for the coconut together in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat until they all melt and can be easily combined, stir well. Take off the heat and let the mixture cool down. Take a teaspoon of mixture in your hands and roll into a ball. Roll on the shredded coconut, put in a paper cup or directly a serving sheet.
When they are all done refrigerate before serving.

I wanted to make chicken & dumplings the other day but I didn’t specify in my shopping list that I wanted regular chicken and Mike got me skinless, boneless chicken breasts instead. Not ideal for chicken & dumpling purposes, to say the least. So I want to use them for something else. Just grilling them seemed boring, but given the very limitted ingredients I had at home the possibilities were limited. So I decided to make chicken salad.
Now, I’ve eaten chicken salad before but I had no idea how to make it. Unfortunately, for this one task, the internet was kind of useless. I found tons of recipes for gourmet or strange chicken salads, but not one well-rated recipe for a simple, supermarket variety chicken salad. Still by looking at the other recipes I learned enough to improvise.
So I grilled two chicken half-breasts, sprinkled with cajun seasoning, in my George Foreman. When done I put them in the food processor with 3 stalks of celery and chopped it all. To that I added some chopped walnuts I found in the cabinet (I don’t want to imagine how old they were) and enough mayo to hold it together. I added some salt (probably a bit too much) and some lemon juice and ta-da. It was pretty good, though I still like the chicken salad at Albertson’s better. Mike really liked it, though and even Mika had some. So yeah, I’ll probably make it again.

Pastel de Carne, or Meat Pie, has been one of my favorite dishes since I was a little girl. It’s rich and hearty, perfect for a cold winter day – and to satisfy those pregnancy cravings.
A pastel de carne is very simple and quite reminiscent of an Irish Sheperd’s pie. It’s consists of a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of cooked ground beef and another layer of mashed potatoes baked in an oven-safe pan. I use the same filling I use for the empanadas (a modify version of which I also use for spaghetti sauce). It contains many more spices than my mom’s simple Argentinian basis, but I like it more.
To make it you need
-6 cups mashed potatoes (I often use boxed ones, but if you want to make them yourself this recipe is great
-1 tbsp. olive oil
-1 onion, chopped
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 lb ground beef
-salt & pepper to taste
-2 tsp. garlic powder
-2 tsp. oregano
-2 tsp. paprika
-1/2 tsp. curry powder
-1/2 tsp. coriander
-1/2 tsp. cumin
-1/2 tsp. chili powder
-1/4 tsp. allspice
-1/2 cup pasta sauce (optional)
-1/8 cup red wine
-1/2 cup raisins
-Shredded and/or parmessan cheese to taste
Sautee the chopped onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat in a deep skillet. When soft, add the garlic and sautee for a couple of minutes. Add the ground meat and brown. Add the spices and stir. Add the pasta sauce and the red wine, stir and cook until the meat is well cooked. Remove from heat and stir in the raisins.
In a oven-safe deep pot, layer half the mashed potatoes, cover with the ground beef and top with another layer of mashed potatoes. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake until the cheese on top melts or browns.

Kathy arrived today for a month-long visit. She always complains that I’m always talking about this great food I’m making and yet never cook for her when she’s here. She’s right. So I offered to make dinner for the night of her arrival – she was afraid I’d back down but I didn’t. I had already eyed this recipe – I had some leftover stilton – and she was OK with giving it a try (after I explained that stilton was another blue cheese, just like the gorgonzola that she likes).
It was great. Easy to make and delicious – the sort of thing you can serve either for a family dinner or for company. It is terribly fattening (with all that butter, cream and meat). I’m pretty sure it would work just as well with another blue cheese (at least with one of the milder types), so just use your favorite. Finally, if you are not a blue cheese fan, you don’t need to sprinkle the rest of the blue cheese on the steak. The original recipe called for beef tenderloins (expensive), but there is no reason why it shouldn’t work as well with a cheaper cut of meat. I made both a tenderloin for Kathy and New York steaks for us.
The original recipe is for 6 (people/steaks) but that would leave you with too little sauce per person. I think it works best for four. I served them with egg noodles (the first thing that I found on the pantry) and that worked well. Mashed potatoes would also go well with the dish.
Recipe
-4 steaks
-salt & black pepper to taste
-1 tbsp dried tarragon
-5 tbsp butter
-1/2 lb portobello mushrooms, sliced
-1/3 cup red wine
-1/2 cup sour cream
-3 oz silton, crumbled.
Rub steaks with salt, pepper and tarragon. Let rest until they come to room temperature.
Melt 2 tbsp. butter in a large skillet. Grill steaks until done to your taste. Remove and keep warm (put them in a plate and cover them with a heavy napkin).
Melt additional 3 tbsp butter in the skillet where you cooked the steak. Add mushrooms and sautee until soft, 2-3 minutes. Add wine and deglaze the pan. Add sour cream and mix well. Add 1/4 cup crumbled Stilton cheese. Remove from heat.
Spoon mushrooms and sauce over each steak. Sprinkle remaining stilton and serve.