This Swine Flew ... Into My Mouth and Down to My Belly!

Finally, we had the year's first grilling of an object larger than a London Broil. We've had a nice looking pork loin in the freezer for some time, and it just felt like the time to cook some pork again. The last time I blogged about pork loin I smoked it and attempted to shred it only to give up after maybe doing half of it...I was working too hard for my vittles. I decided to roast it instead, but on the grill.

I searched until I found a recipe that looked good (and was reviewed as such) and settled on it. I made some adjustments for preference and ingredient availability, so here is the complete ingredient list:

1 (4 pound) boneless pork top loin roast (single loin)
1 teaspoon olive oil

2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

I did not have any onion salt, so I substituted onion powder and seasoned salt. I also prefer brown sugar to regular sugar, for a more caramel-like, barbecued flavor. After brushing the loin with olive oil and applying the rub I wrapped it and let it marinate in the fridge for about 90 minutes before grilling.

Instructions seemed simple enough. The grill is simple enough. Count on me to complicate shit. Temp was around 400°F when I put the loin on, with the fattier of the two sides on the grill itself. I resolved to check it every couple of minutes and at the first check I noticed the temp had gone up so I adjusted the flame down up because I wasn't freaking paying attention. A minute later the temp is still rising, so I turn it down up again, but realize I'm doing it this time and correct way down. I check again two minutes later and the temp is runaway, above 500°F but all I needed to see was the smoke pouring out of the grill to know there was a fire inside. After pulling it off the grill, knocking the charred bits off and flipping it (I figured that side had had enough!) the rest of the grilling went smoothly, as did the follow-on roasting. The only minor issue was that my grill wasn't able to hold 400°F (only about 380) with only two burners running.


We roasted up some peppers and onions to enjoy with it, and cooked some corn on the cob.


The meat was excellent! No sauce needed; marinating with the rub provided all the flavor it needed, just enough balance of sweet and spicy.

...and plenty left over for sam'iches!

Kick-Ass Steak and Stout Pie

The last 48+ hours of ball-freezing weather we received in Boston has really been an experience. We had hoped Saturday to travel south to Somerset to my cousin's annual Christmas Caroling Party but the 24+ hours of winter storm prior to the party left me little doubt that the safe play was to stay off the highways for 60+ mile drives. Damn. I was looking forward to the food, the beer, the company, the beer, the glogg, the beer, the caroling, the beer, the whiskey, the beer, and the beer.

As a humble donation to the festivities, we had made a steak and stout pie. It's one of my favorite dishes, great pub food, and perfect on a cold winter's day. We have a recipe we use, and it is not written down at all. Until now. I will tell you up front. Make this. It is so good, you won't know whether you should eat it or hump it.

You'll need:

1 lb top round, cut into bite sized pieces
4 strips bacon, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large carrots, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
8 oz stout
Broth - beef or chicken
Pastry - either short crust or puff pastry.


Fry bacon and onions together until the onions are done (translucent, but not browned). Remove and set aside, leaving as much fat in the pan as possible. Working with the big iron skillet, I needed to add some olive oil to make sure I'd have enough to brown the beef. Mix flour, salt and pepper in a large bowl.


Dredge the beef in the flour mixture and immediately place in the hot oil to brown. When browned, return bacon and onions to the pan. In this case, I transferred the entire contents of the skillet (including the brown crusty bits - they make it yummy! - to a large pot. Add carrots, worcestershire sauce and stout, and then add broth to just cover. Set heat to medium and simmer for several hours. We cooked this one for about three hours, but we've done this previously when we simmered it all day; the longer you can leave the mixture on, the better! Replenish liquid - using either broth or water - as it cooks off. We find the carrots are a good thing - if the stout you use is an overly dry kind (like Guinness Extra) the sugars in the carrots will balance it out nicely. Plus, they allow you to say "Hey, this is healthy...see? I put carrots in!" The brown sugar is optional and can be used to cut the bitterness of the gravy if you wish. We haven't done that before, but we were using particularly strong stout (the final, flat 8 oz of the Poszharnik Imperial Stout) and it needed it, so after about 90 min of simmering we put it in. When done, you want to have a rich, thick (I mean thick!), dark filling - then it's ready to put in the oven.


My favorite way to do this is to make a deep-dish, two-crust pie with a traditional short crust. This time we simply put it in a baking dish, covered it with pre-made puff pastry, brushed it with milk and put it in a 400° oven until the crust was done. We had to cover the edges with foil after about 30 minutes to keep them from over-browning.


It's great as the meat in a "meat and three". Enjoy with a nice, hoppy ale. Tremendously satisfying, as the last steak and stout pie I had was a pre-made frozen one in a "pub" near the hotel I was staying at across the road from Heathrow Airport in October. Very disappointing to be in England and get a piece of crap like that!


This recipe will serve four. Two if you want seconds. One if you're a pig. I didn't have seconds yesterday, but I did polish off the last two servings (like a piggy) today. The coffee flavors in the Pozharnik was evident in the gravy, I was surprised to taste it, but even more surprised that it really enhanced the flavor of the whole dish.

Apple Crisp, Imperial Stout and Quantum Theory

I'm a sucky photographer in general, but believe me, it tastes awesome! I haven't done a food post in a while, and as I'm too distracted to do much else, that's what you get to read tonight...

My wife made an amazing apple cobbler last night. So amazing that between her, my son and I we nearly wiped it out. We ate it in an "English" style, pouring fresh cream over it, though we lamented the lack of vanilla ice cream. Today, when I was shopping for some din-din, I bought some vanilla ice cream.

Plain vanilla ice cream is good, but it's best when you have something warm and baked to eat with it. Since I din't feel like making a crust for a pie, I decided to make an apple crisp since it's soooooooo simple.

Filling:
2.5 lbs apples (we used 2 each cortlands, red romes, and honey crisps) - peeled, cored and sliced
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Crisp:
1/3 c each of flour, sugar, rolled oats
1/2 stick butter (cold, unsoftened)

Toss apples and lemon juice. Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, add to apple/lemon mixture and toss to coat. Combine dry ingredients. Cut up the butter and cut into mixture until you get a crumbly mix. By the time you're done cutting the butter in, the apple mixture should be nice and wet, with a small puddle of syrupy mixture in the bottom of the bowl. Put the apples in a buttered baking dish, sprinkle the crisp mix on top, and pop in a 375-degree oven for 45 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with ice cream. Repeat as necessary.

Found here and modified only slightly.

BEER UPDATE:
The Pozharnik Imperial Stout is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE. Most aromas are pretty muted, but the taste is great - initially chocolaty and roasty, with some toffee-like notes, then a hint of sweet vanilla and a finish that brings out the oak and whiskey of the barrels it was aged in. Drink chilled, not cold, the character changes wonderfully as it warms. In a wine glass or snifter. I opened it yesterday, resealed and continued today. Most of the carbonation is gone (evident in the photo), but it's still amazing to drink. This is my holiday brew. I am definitely getting some of this to cellar for a year.

OH WAITAMINIT!!! Look at today's history note. It's the 108th birthday of Planck's Theory that the energy of a photon is quantized and proportional to it's frequency. E=hν baby!!! Without ol' Max, we wouldn't have this here blogging thingy we love so much...

Steak and Beer Make Bull Healthy and Strong!

The reality is we don't get out much with 4 kids (only one of which is school-aged) and now that our babysitter is in Toronto tending to her ailing sister, it's effectively nil for some time.
So I was pleasantly surprised this Wednesday when I arrived at the Charles/MGH T-Station more than 40 minutes early for a nearby doctor's appointment and had time to poke around Beacon Hill for a while. Beautiful brick buildings housing specialty shops and some great looking restaurants - there's a Thai restaurant there I'm dying to try. I only had time to walk up Charles St. a bit, and ended up going into two places, Savenor's Market and Charles Street Liquors, pretty much right across the street from each other.

Savenor's was a cozy little place that had just about every kind of meat and poultry I could think of, including meat byproducts like rendered duck fat, which is absolutely superb for roasting potatoes (put about half an inch of fat in roasting pan, heat to 400F, parboil potatoes, throw them in the pan and roast, turning occasionally - they come out with an awesome deep-fried-crispy-outside-creamy-inside-book-your-bypass-surgery-now flavor). A great deal of it is fresh, butchered right there, and raised more naturally than the usual stuff you buy from the grocery store. They make plenty of specialty meats there, and they import some hard to find (buffalo, wild boar, kangaroo) flash-frozen stuff as well. Throw in a produce section, a cheese section and a good selection of gourmet specialty groceries and it's a place I'll be returning to when I go back next week. All their beef is grass-fed, as corn tends to seriously f**k a cow's shit up. The stuff is expensive, but I was still curious to see their prices. On my way back to the T station I picked up a piece of top round (slightly more than a pound, about $11). We're cooking it this weekend; I'll let you know how it tastes. I also grabbed a piece of aged Vermont cheddar.

Charles Street Liquors is, well DUH you know what it is. I could spend hours in there - they do an amazing job optimizing what little space they have. A little more pricey being in Boston (as a benchmark, Sam Adams Chocolate Bock costs $16.49 a bottle vice $15.99 at most other places) but their beer selection alone is worth it. Tastings Friday and Saturdays from 4-7 pm. In addition to a bottle of Chocolate Bock to replace the one I've consumed, I bought the following to haul back home on the T.
The Lindeman's Kriek (cherry) is the second bottle of lambic I've bought since James gave me a big bottle of their cassis (currant) on my birthday. My last bottle was a framboise (raspberry). I think I'm hooked on lambic. I'll get to this when I do over the holiday season, but the other two are what I'm interested in. I have the Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale in the fridge right now, and will open it later. According to the bottle, the brew is "wet-hopped" with freshly-picked (the previous day) hops of the standard Pacific Northwest variety. Some of the reviews called the beer "piney" but I'll see for myself. (note: I drank it between writing this part and publishing; the hop character was excellent - very complex, citrus, spice, floral and pine accents, strong but not overpowering at all, and you can still taste the malt. Well done, I would drink it again and would love to try it on tap.) And the one I'm saving for later this weekend - Pozharnik Imperial Stout - espresso, vanilla, aged in a whiskey barrel. The bottle states it's great to try now, but recommends "afficionados" cellar it for a year or two. Like Hell I am - it has me as excited and intimidated as "that girl". You know...you've hooked up, and you're gonna' get something you've got from others, but you know it's gonna' be different, and you think probably better, but just HOW better? Or is it going to be lame? Or is it going to be just so damned freaky that you need to cut her loose right now? Lower your expectations, man, lower your expectations...hey waitaminit, this is just beer. Keep 'em sky high! If it's good, then I'll get some to cellar!

This Week's Special - Pancakes

Sunday has been pancake day in the household for quite some time. Pancakes, eggs, bacon, juice, coffee, the whole ball of wax.

It started simple (and mediocre) with Bisquick Shake 'n Pour or some crap like that, until about three years ago when we traded my wife's sugar cookie recipe for my boss' pancake recipe. That ancient manuscript has long since disappeared, but it is simple enough to remember.

2 cups all purpose flour
1/8 cup sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2-1/4 cups buttermilk
2 eggs

Blend liquid ingredients. Sift dry ingredients. Add dry to liquid, mix until slightly lumpy. Cook on greased griddle. I typically use 2 cups buttermilk and 1/4 cup skim milk, simply because it stretches one pint of buttermilk through two weeks. I like my batter a little thin, so I always splash in a little extra milk.

I have a great anodized griddle, but it's getting really old...I need to replace it. And my stove is electric, which I hate - gas very much preferred.

Simple. Which is good. And the best ph00k1ng pancakes you'll ever eat, with a couple of eggs over medium (fried in butter) and some oven-fried bacon. Definitely only a once-a-week treat. I like throwing some blueberries in them - fresh is always better, but I'll take frozen.

Pix on flickr to follow.

Next week's special - RIBS! Those of you attending the Gary Gygax Memorial Game Day (GGMGD) will see what I mean.