When you've got pork and you have jerk...

Jim couldn't find mussels at Raley's and he was on his bike, so he wasn't going all over town to find them. He talked to the butcher about cuts of pork and ended up with the fattier, cheaper product (shocker). He brined these in a sugar salt water solution when he returned from the bike ride from the gym. He still had jerk paste from the last round of jerk pork, but he added another habanero and more total paste to the chops ) which were thinner this time.

Peta cooked the chops and we served them with Tropical Mash and something else green.

The chops were juicier (could have been the brine and/or the cut) and then jerk was better. Just a little left for wings this week!

Peta's Italian Chicken

Jim did the chicken this time, under Peta's phone tutelage. Here's the original post. He put parmesan under the skin of the chicken legs and added the "goo" from the last round of Peta's chicken along with another bay leaf and more garlic. Then he removed the chicken and reduced the sauce. Always gotta have the sauce.

Vegetables? Sure.

Unfamiliar Grains

We took a page out of the Fat of the Land blog from this recipe and made Venison Backstrap Medallion in Pan Sauce with Spelt, Chanterelles and Mascarpone. It may have been better if we had chives to garnish and we couldn't figure out why our spelt was so white compared to the FoTL blog. But apparently, you can make your own mascarpone from cream and tartaric acid. We'll look into that soon!

PS: We swear that we had vegetables...

Chicken "Marsala"

There's no real recipe for this one anymore. Jim butchered a chicken with the new Wüsthof cleaver Peta gave him for Christmas. He pounded out the breasts, put jerk rub onto the wings and into the fridge, put the whole legs into a bag for Peta's chicken into the fridge and chopped up the carcass and froze (liver separate).

After sautéing sliced onion and button mushrooms in butter/oil, Jim took the pounded breasts and dredged in salt, pepper and marjoram flour and fried in butter and oil.

NOTE: In retrospect, the breasts must be shaken thoroughly and the fat must be hot to avoid a gluey coating.

The chicken was moved into a warming oven and the pan was deglazed with Madiera (no Marsala in the cupboard) and the mushrooms and onions were added. Jim added a little butter to the sauce and poured over the chicken. Vegetables? Yeah, we had them but who can remember what they were.

Stuffed Eggplant Fail

Peta tried to cook up some stuffed eggplant with ground antelope that had been in the fridge for a while. She tried her best but the product that Jim had provided from last year's hunt was not so good. We choked it down and threw the rest out. Not a banner meal. I had a little posole to tide me over.

Winter is Stew Time

On the 3rd day of 2010, Jim decided that it was finally time for posole, a traditional Mexican pork and hominy stew from Jalisco. Hominy is corn that has been treated with lime which makes them more easily digestable and causes them to puff out like little blossoms. The first posole that Jim had made was his best and the last, from the Gourmet big book, was the worst.

In his "research", Jim found that most recipes call for Guajillo and Pasilla peppers to be re-constituted in chicken broth and that many so-called Pasilla peppers are just dried Poblano peppers or Ancho chilies. In reality, the pasilla negro is the dried version of the chilaca chile. We managed to find those peppers at the local Raley's.

We used homemade stock to reconstitute the peppers and then went on to use variations on these recipes: one and two. We used the garlic, mint, cilantro, onion, oregano, peppercorns and cloves of the latter and cumin, pepper amounts and types and browning of the pork.

We've been eating it for days!

AJANTA: The Amazing Indian Restaurant!!

On the first day of the New Year, we smuggled some leftover roast pork and spinach sandwiches on homemade bread and fruit salad into the airports so that we didn't have to waste money on crap food. By the end of the long day though, we were out and wanted Thai or Indian. Jim found Ajanta, the top rated Zagat restaurant in the Bay Area in the Albany area of Berkeley. They were also Voted Best Indian Restaurant in the Bay Area by SFGate Baylist 2009, San Francisco Focus Magazine, Bay Area Restaurant Guide, and East Bay Express had top reviews by: Diablo Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and East Bay Express
and are Michelin recommended 2010.

They hadn't understood how quickly we would be there when we made reservations and how upset Peta gets when she needs food. They sat us at the tiny "bar" and we got some Gewurtztraminer, but they brought out papadam lentil crips and cilantro-mint chutney. We looked through a spice rack full of Indian spices, many of which were unfamiliar, and the Ajanta cookbook. Then a kindly old man began to talk to us about the book and Indian food. He turned out to be the owner, Lachu Moorjani and he tried to sell us a book. Yeah, right! We asked where the map was so that we could see where the regions listed were and he got bummed out that the publishers hadn't included one and that they hadn't let him change the color of the actual recipes. We felt kind of bad for him.

But as we went on and saw how excellent and attentive the service was ("Oh, it's too hot. Let me get you some riata (no charge)). We ordered the special dinner and got vegetable and chicken samosas, Baingan Bagarte (Hyderabad), Goa Fish Curry (Goa), Methi Murg (Andhra Pradesh). We now knew that Methi is Fenugreek leaves. Cool! The fish was either ling cod or something else. Jim wasn't sure and didn't ask that question, but he certainly asked a lot of others!

It was a great experience and we'll tell everybody about this fantastic experience.