Some Pork Recipes

For the last few months, those weekly supermarket flyers have been bereft of chicken on sale, to say the least. At first I thought it was because I’d moved to a different part of the country, but no – turns out that the non-surplus of chicken is a national thing and has been for some time. Part supply chain crapola, part bird flu – those regular rotating sales of chicken parts for one or two bucks a pound are now a fond memory.

And what DOES turn up on sale repeatedly in those flyers? Pork.

I’ve never really cooked a lot with pork. No special reason, really, I don’t keep kosher (and all the shellfish recipes on this blog are a reminder of that), but I never had a lot of experience cooking with pork. But as much as I find pigs adorable and feel bad for ’em, they are certainly delicious. So I started out basically substituting pork for chicken in some recipes, and altering the spices in some others, and came up with the following dishes that work pretty well & appeal to my CHEAPNESS whenever I probe those weekly specials.

Substituting boneless pork tenderloin for boneless chicken was the simplest switch, although you have to treat the pork more like chicken breast than chicken thigh or leg meat. It’ll cook quicker and dry out on you if you’re not careful. All of the following recipes come from using those shrinkwrapped boneless pork loins that come in three to five pound logs, except for the last one which uses boneless pork shoulder.

First order of business for me is to cut the log into portion sections of 3/4 to a pound apiece. Trim the fat, and they’re ready to use or freeze easily.

Pork parmigiana – Easiest substitution EVAH – take one of those portions, cut lengthwise into two even chops and then pound them to about 1/4 inch thick. Then they got parmagianed the same as anything else: salt/pepper ’em, dust with flour, egg wash, coated with seasoned breadcrumbs, basil & some grated Parmesan/Romano cheese. Pan fried in olive oil until about 75-80% done, then topped with mozzarella & a couple of spoonfuls of marinara and into a 350 oven for 10 minutes. That’s it. Put the sauce on top of the cheese – that way the cutlets will retain their crispness & you’ll still get the cheese/sauce/crisp coating/porn flavor.

Another simply substitution was to cut a portion into 1/2 inch slices and substitute it for chicken in an easy spicy Chinese pork stir fry. Marinate in a tsp of soy, tsp of sherry & tsp of cornstarch. Sauce: 4 tsp soy, 2 tsp rice vinegar, 1-2 tsp hot pepper paste, 1 tsp cornstarch and 1 tbs honey. Stir fry the porn with a tsp of chopped garlic and a tsp of chopped ginger, add whatever vegetables you want, then add the sauce. Give it a hit of toasted sesame oil off heat. Done.

An easy pork noodle dish: cut up the pork into 1/4 inch pieces, and marinate it 2 tsp soy, 1 tsp cornstarch, 1 tbs sherry and 1/4-1/2 tsp white pepper. Precook and undercook some spaghetti – for 10 minute spaghetti, I’ll drain it after 6 minutes and put aside. Stir fry 2-3 chopped garlic cloves and red pepper to taste, then add the pork and cook until browned. Add vegetables after – some shredded carrot, small broccoli pieces, pea pods, sprouts -whatever. Then add 3 tbs soy, 1/2 tsp brown sugar (or 1 tsp honey) and 3/4 cup of water or better – use chicken broth. Put the noodles on top of this mixture and cover for 5 minutes over low-medium. Then stir and toss until all the liquid is absorbed by the now finished noodles. You can also add 1 tbs oyster sauce to this with nice results.

Easy BBQ pork chops – I cut a portion lengthwise into what becomes a pair of boneless pork chops. Into my cast iron skillet with a homemade bbq sauce of 3/4 cup ketchup, 1/3 cup water, 2 tbs balsamic vinegar, 1 tbs worcestershire, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1/2 white pepper and 1 tbs honey. Just pour the sauce over the pork. Into a 375 oven. In 15 minutes, flip the chops and recoat with he sauce in the pan, then back in for another 15 minutes. That’s it.

For pork stew, I’ll use the boneless pork shoulder and cube it up the same as I would a beef chuck roast. I like using a slow cooker for stews. I’ll season the cut up pork with salt, white pepper, paprika and garlic powder, then brown with some olive oil before adding some chopped garlic and two tbs of tomato paste. Cook that through to toast the paste enough, and into a slow cooker with an onion chopped into chunks, some chunked carrot, a can of chicken broth, a can of chopped tomato, a few sprigs of rosemary and EITHER enough of a good beer to cover OR a good red wine. Add a teaspoon of salt for the tomatoes, and a few bay leaves. Slow cook on high for 2-3 hours, and then add a cubed sweet potato before finishing on low for another hour. Remove bay leaves and rosemary sprigs. Season to taste. Add other herbs if you want. See if I care.

Are those enough pork recipes from this Jew? Oy vey, I hope so. I’d always been led to believe that pork was not good for you due to the fat content, but if you trim the fat, the meat itself is very lean. And lard is not as unhealthy a fat as people think, compared to some of the other stuff out there.

And pigs are still cute and smarter than cats or dogs, and I feel kinda bad whenever I eat them. But they are delicious.

Movies Worth Seeing: Pig (2021)

It’s been a while since I saw any new films worth recommending. But I’ve seen a couple in the past week worth your while.

First up is “Pig,” featuring Nicolas Cage searching for his stolen truffle pig. The film begins with Cage living a wilderness-man off-the-grid life in some deep woods, digging up truffles with his pig and selling them to someone who starts out looking to us as some yuppie asshole.

Cage is beaten and robbed of the pig later on – and since he has some inkling of who stole her, he treks to the city (Portland) to find her. In this journey, we’re brought into a bizarre underground world of chefs and chi-chi over-fancy Portlandia style overpriced gourmet bullshit as Cage tries to get his pig back.

And what makes the film truly work is that Cage doesn’t care about the truffles. He loves the pig.

The film is a long and slowly revealed character study of Rob (Cage) – little by little, we learn of his backstory and why he was out in those woods in the first place. As he pairs with that truffle buying yuppie asshole Amir (a wonderful Alex Wolff), we learn more about Amir’s backstory as well…. and how it intertwines in significant ways with Rob.

The trailer & some of Cage’s recent films (Mandy, Willy’s Wonderland, etc) would make you think the story would be a violent revenge bloodbath with Cage avenging his stolen pig – but this movie is a quiet and beautifully sad drama, mostly about loss, grief, and the power of memory to trap us into emotions. The ways in which the sensory experience of a wonderful meal can create and trigger such strong emotional memory figures strongly into the plotlines and character exposition. Wonderful interactions between Rob and people of his past, especially a former prep cook now a chef who crumbles under Rob’s brutal honesty, helps us see Rob’s rejection of the entire Portlandia gourmet scene much more clearly. And in those reconnections, we see the devestating toll of loss – not only the loss of a beloved pig pet, but of truth, of hopes and dreams, of plans, and ultimately of all human contact.

Cage plays his role beautifully – with the never ending stream of weird crap the guy makes, it’s always a good thing to be reminded what a great actor he can be. He’s great here – buried under facial wound make-up for the entirety of this film, and slowly building up his verbiage as the film goes on and he adjusts to the city after years alone (well, not really alone… he had his pig) in the woods.

Highly recommended!

A Tasty Culinary Abomination

This one felt wrong when I looked at the interior of my fridge and thought of it, but I gotta say… it was beyond easy and tasted really good. <insert your own joke here>

I made what I can only refer to as “California Roll Soft Tacos.”

Let’s be honest, sushi people – California roll is ALREADY an abomination. One of the better long-gone sushi bars of Los Angeles, Sushi Nozawa, would actually THROW YOU OUT if you ordered it.

But what can I say? I’ll eat any kind of seafood if it tastes decent. Kinda like the way I’m a total pasta gourmet and snob, but would still snarf down Kraft mac ‘n’ cheese out of a box or even Chef Boyardee.

So I had some fake crabmeat I’d figured on making some simple sammiches with, but instead, I did this:

1. Chopped up said fake crabmeat and tossed with mayo, set aside
2. Took 2 avocados, mashed ’em up with some lemon juice and salt, set aside
3. Seeded/sliced up some cucumber into long strips, as well as some shredded carrot – set aside.
4. Made a quick abomination of sushi rice – basically, 1/2 cup of rice rinsed until the water was reasonably clear, cooked in cup of water – bring to boil, simmer until mostly done, then let sit off heat for 10 minutes. Then I mixed it with a tablespoon of vinegar rice. Set aside.
5. Warmed up some flour tortillas, soft taco size.
6. Assembly! A layer of the rice in the tortilla, followed by pressing the crab, avocado into it, then the cucumber and carrot.
7. Rolled it up tight and alternated between sprinkling soy sauce or tabasco on it, in between bites.

And it was DAMN GOOD.

Certainly a good thing to do with the fake crab from now on. And, minus the hint of salt/crisp from the seaweed wrapper of an actual California Roll, pretty much the same affect.

And considering how I got all the major ingredients at the local Aldi…. DIRT CHEAP!

I’m sure if I wanted to spring for actual sushi quality fish, the same sushi-burrito motif would work just fine with a tweak here and there with the other ingredients. And yes, I did miss the picked ginger, although I mostly eat that as a palate cleanser when switching between fish at an actual sushi bar.

I keep wondering if dim sum or a sushi bar will be my first long sit-down restaurant meal once this covid bullshit is over with. But in the meantime… I guess I’ll try to come up with more stuff like this.

Other Guys Dream About Girls

So last night, I dreamed that I had been trying to sleep outside in some North Hollywood park for some reason, and maybe about 4am or so, with the sun coming up, I gave up and figured I’d better head home and call in to work to let ’em know I wouldn’t be coming in.

I walked down Moorpark street in my pajamas trying to make my way back to Burbank (even though I don’t live there anymore), and then found myself in an underground parking garage of a large mall in Universal City.

I thought about catching a bus, but then I looked up the escalator and saw Donald Trump heading my way.

So, I went up the escalator and figured I’d meet the guy, regardless of mine or anyone else’s politics.

I introduced myself and shook his hand, still in my pajamas.

“You look really tired,” he said.

“Well, I’ve been up all night sleeping in the park, gotta get home,” I said.

He laughed and said “I hope you have a pitcher of Margaritas waiting for you there.”

I shook my head no, and then he added. “Watch, now they’ll talk about how I’m drinking pitchers of margaritas.”

“No,” I said. “I know you don’t drink at all.” (And this is true, if you’re curious.)

And then Trump added an observation that has had me pondering all day:

He began “You know when someone puts out a tray of muffins to sell, they always take the best tasting muffin and put it up front, to draw you in. But you know, it’s the best muffin and it’s only there up front to make you buy the others which are inferior. So when you think about it, that muffin is a total lie, a total lie.”

The dream breaks up after that, I woke up chuckling over the muffin speech… but the more I think about it, the deeper it gets.

It’s like a Zen muffin koan.

Avoid the muffin that LIES.

Now, I’ve had some psychic dreams before – I’ve written about them and worked them into the plots of my Wagstaff detective books – so now I’m hoping that Trump tweets something about muffins that tell lies. The more I think about it, it’d be on brand.

I also remember the distinct feeling during my dream that Trump didn’t give off a “Presidential vibe” while I listened to him discuss the muffins. Granted, I’ve never actually met a President. The closest I came was shaking hands with a Presidential candidate, Senator Frank Church, back in 1976 when he appeared at a discount store in Warwick, RI… very fitting for a discount candidate, but it was nonetheless cool to go when I was a kid.

And biggest-loser-in-history Walter Mondale attended my college graduation, and I walked by him and saw how much weight he’d put on since the previous November. He definitely drowned his sorrows in donuts. Or muffins, perhaps, who knows? I didn’t meet or talk to the guy.

But the deeper meaning of my dream is pretty clear to me, at least: when you go into the voting booth, avoid the muffin that lies.

Or just try the chocolate muffins from Costco. They’re pretty damn good, liars or not.

When You Need To Start Using Coupons Or Buying In Bulk

I’ve come a long way since 2011. Now I stiff them on the service charge.

Tonic Water Adventures

It’s not easy to be a healthy drinker.

When I needed to cut carbs out of my diet, it meant cutting down on my consumption of beer. I used to be pretty much a beer ‘n’ wine guy, depending on whatever I had for dinner. Italian food? Wine. Chinese, Indian? Beer. BBQ, pizza, American? Well, either, really.

When I wanted to maintain variety and not drink wine every night, I figured I could work in some cocktails into the rotation, since I also enjoy having a drink while I cook as well as matching a drink with my meal.

So I learned which whiskeys I like, and how I like them (rather simply) with water or seltzer and a little lemon.

But I also love tonic water – the sweet/sour flavor of it, as well as that hard-to-pin-down quinine flavoring. I prefer gin to vodka, so gin & tonics have served as a nice drink to have now and then….

…. but while I found various gins that I like (and I can get giant Tanqueray bottles at Costco, yay!), it’s been the tonic water that has been the bane of my existence.

Why?

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.

Yes, the EVIL that is HFCS turns up in nearly EVERY brand of tonic water. I’d totally cut out soda from my diet to help with weight loss. And regardless of what the science is behind cane sugar versus high fructose corn syrup, I’m willing to settle with the mere FEELING that HFCS is WAY worse for my metabolism than regular cane sugar.

And I can tell the difference in flavor – Mexican Coca-Cola, made with cane sugar, tastes superior to the HFCS version normally available.

And judging from the way they market Mexican Coke as well as other cane sodas, I’m not alone.

So where is the cane sugar tonic water?

For a while, Trader Joes sold a tonic water under their own label with cane sugar – and then stopped, those BASTARDS.

There’s a cane sugar tonic water made for Whole Foods – it’s not bad, but it’s pretty sweet, and my G&Ts have a candy-esque quality to them/

Recently I discovered Fever Tree tonic water – it’s a little pricier even when found in the supermarket or Target or Wal-Mart, but it uses lower amounts of sweetener, doesn’t use HFCS, and doesn’t overwhelm the flavor of the gin or lime I add to my G&Ts. So I’d highly recommend the stuff.

I’m tempted to try their other mixers now. And considering how cheap & set in my ways I am, that’s saying a lot.

Get Off My Lawn, Trick or Treat Edition

Online quizzes don’t lie, I guess. Either that or it was liking black licorice.

Dean Martin’s & Frank Sinatra’s Burger Recipes

I’m putting Don Rickles in charge of dessert.

Some Boneless Short Ribs In The Slow Cooker

It’s gray and gross outside today. I got some chores to do around the house and will do them intermittently with farting around on a Sunday… so what better day to make my entire house smell like thyme & braised beef?

And a lazy recipe it is… perfect for my mood today. I took about 2 pounds of boneless short ribs, salt & peppered ’em up good, and then browned them nicely on all sides in a little olive oil.

Removed them to the slow cooker insert, then threw one cut-up onion (I cut it half, then just cut big 1 inch slices out of each half, jumbled it up a bit with my hands for big pieces), 3 chopped garlic cloves & a half tablespoon of dried thyme into the cooked oil/brown bits miscellany.

Cooked it for a bit, scraped up the brown bits, then added 1 cup chicken broth and a cup (maybe more) of a nice Italian red wine blend.

It’s mostly Nero with something else, making it just like Agrippina’s sex life. Hiyo! But seriously folks, it’s great to be back at the Circus Maximus. I’m here all week, until the lions show up… thank you and try the dormice and flamingo…

Brought the wine/onion mix to a slight simmer, added it to the slow cooker insert, and then put the cooker on high for 4 hours.

Will remove the beef to rest under foil for 10-15 minutes while I return the sauce to the stove top, cook down a bit, adjust the seasoning and then toss with the ribs. I’m figuring on two big HE-MAN sized portions, one of which will go into the freezer to taste even better as a leftover.

In the meantime, the music is on. The local jazz station has a blues show on during weekend afternoons. Maybe I’ll watch a movie during the day and another this evening. Maybe I’ll read a little. I look forward to drinking the rest of the wine with my dinner… maybe a nice big Italian-dressed salad (I’m thinking Armani) and a nice big piece of crunchy bread will suffice. Or maybe I’ll make some polenta as a bed for ’em, something I’m sure Agrippina did at the orgy more than once.

Have A Healthy Day, Jack!

So I’m at the grocery store on the way home, loading up on a few items, grabbing some ginormous shrimp for dinner and the like.

I get into the checkout line and in front of me is some kid who works at the store, cashing out a couple of snacks. It must be break time.

Then the other kid starts to ring me up, and goes “Oh, how’d that happen? It’s giving you his employee discount.”

So I say “Does that mean I have to grab a uniform and start stocking shelves?”

The kid smiles, and I regale him with stories of my brief days working at a supermarket as Jimmy the Bagboy™ for minimum wage many years ago. He finishes ringing me up & bags my stuff and hands me the receipt. “I couldn’t reset it, whatever!”

Oh YEAH! At the bottom of my receipt reads “Team Member Discount -6.49 Have a Healthy Day, Jack!”

So thanks for that six and a half buck discount of my bill, Jack. I hope you have a healthy day as well.

Oh wait, it WAS too good to be true. A customer had an allergic reaction to some guacamole they were giving samples of, and the bathroom is an ungodly mess. They’re handing me a mop and bucket. The hazmat suit is extra, and I’m not giving back that $6.49. Well, here goes…