.pork loin chops w/ garlic herb butter.

For Christmas, Jim bought me a new cookbook. It's Gordon Ramsay's "Fast Food" and I'm enjoying it. I think it might send me on an English cooking spree though... especially reading this book in tandem with watching his new show called "The F Word". Have you seen it? I love it! You can find it on BBC America.

Anyway... this recipe comes from this cookbook and it's great because a lot of the recipes are divided into sections by meal. For example, he has a recipe for salad, and side dish, and entree. It's pretty cool. But even better, the meals are quick to make.. hence the title of his book.

So on to the recipe. Make the butter first.

Cut a stick of butter in half (1/4 cup) and then divide it into 4 pats (4 tbsp). Put the butter in a bowl or mixing bowl. I used my Kitchen Aid to whip all this together. If your butter is softened (which the recipe recommends), then you can easily do this by hand in a regular bowl.

Chop enough italian parsley to equal 1 Tablespoon.

Chop up enough mint... yes mint! You'll need 1 teaspoon full of this.

Add the parsley and mint to the mixing bowl. Season with pepper. If you're using unsalted butter, add some kosher salt as well.

Oops.. I didn't get a picture of this, but mince 1 clove garlic and add that to the bowl. Whip on high until the herbs, garlic and butter are well combined.

My lovely little sous chef, Paige shows what the butter will look like once it's all processed together.

Using a rubber spatula, scrape all of the butter out of the bowl and put on a piece of saran wrap.

Carefully wrap the butter and roll into a cigar shape. Put in the freezer to firm up while the chops are cooked.

Take 2 to 4 boneless pork chops and season both sides with kosher salt, pepper, and some thyme.

Heat some olive oil in a warm pan. Place the chops in the pan and sear each side for about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes.

The center of the chop should give just slightly. This means the meat is cooked through. I've said it before in another post but you don't want to overcook this chop. It dries it out considerably and you'll be left with jerky instead of a delicious, moist piece of meat. The process pork now goes through with FDA regulations, it's okay if there's a little pink in the center. You won't get any kind of terrible illness. You don't want it medium rare, obviously... but perhaps a perfect medium.

Remove the pan from the heat (or just turn the heat off if you're using gas) and put a dollop of the herbed cheese on top. Before my chops were all the way done, I did put some of the herbed butter in the pan and kept coating the pork with some of the butter as it finished cooking. mmm mm mm...

Allow these to sit for a few minutes so that the juices can return to where they need to go. Plate and serve!

.mock porchetta.

Yesterday was Jim's 38th birthday. Man, we are getting old. LOL He got back from Seattle late Tuesday night so this was his first "real meal" being back and I wanted to make sure it was a good one. It was his day to be KING of the house and he had a birthday feast!

The King's Menu

Smoked Turkey and Lentil Soup

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Spring Salad

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Mock Porchetta with Roasted Vegetables

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Potato Rolls

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Pineapple Mango Upside Down Cake

(Recipes will be posted over the next few days. )

Porchetta... REAL porchetta is an herbed stuffed pig. It's a traditional Italian meal and is usually fatty and yummy and put on a spit and grilled over a pit. Well, since I don't think we could actually eat an ENTIRE pig, I went with a pork loin roast. You should use pork butt (preferrably boneless) but I didn't want it to be as fatty.

Let me tell you it was so moist and delicious!!!! I like this a lot more than boring old pot roast! I'm sure you will love it too. :)


In a bowl, put the zest of one lemon, 3 roughly chopped cloves of garlic, 2 tsp crushed fennel seed, 12 sage leaves (fresh) chopped, 2 rosemary sprigs (fresh) pulled from their stems and chopped, 1 Tbsp capers (rinsed), and some fresh cracked black pepper.


Take your pork roast and cut it almost all the way open down the center. If your roast has a bone in it, just cut along the bone. Season well with salt.


Rub the entire roast inside and out with the herb mixture. Put in a dish and cover with saran. This is best if it's allowed to sit in your fridge like this for 2-3 days! WOW. Well, I obviously didn't read the directions thoroughly so mine only sat in the fridge for about 5 hours.

Take this out of the fridge an hour before putting in the oven.


While it sits out for that hour, cut up some potatoes, carrots, and red onion.


Coat lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.


Sorry for the ultra blurry picture. GRRR. Put your roast and all the veggies in a baking dish. Put in a preheated 350* oven.


After an hour, pull the dish from the oven and rotate all the veggies and the roast. Put back in the oven for another hour.


After that second hour, pull from oven and pour 1/3 cup chicken stock (or pork stock) on top of the veggies. Return to oven for another half hour. By this time your house should be filled with the smell of delicious herbs! Man it was amazing.

Pull the roast from the oven and put on a platter. Drizzle the pork with the sauce from the baking dish. Slice and serve!

.greek potatoes.

My word. I get on a food kick and I kill it to death. First Chinese, and now Greek. I'm sorry. I have many other things planned that ARE NOT Greek coming up this week.

In fact, the next items coming up are a delicious nectarine-blueberry salad, stuffed grilled trout, tequila-lime shrimp..... lots of good stuff!

These are very tasty and are PERFECT for barbecues. They're soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. They have a big of a smoky flavor from the grill that leaves you begging for more.

First we need to make the lemon vinaigrette.

In a bowl, put 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil.







Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon and put that in the bowl.







Mince up 2 tablespoons shallot.







Add 1 tsp oregano (use 2 tsp if you're using fresh)







and 1 tsp rosemary (or 2 tsp fresh).







Mince 2 cloves garlic.







Chop up some italian parsley. Add to the bowl.







Whisk everything together using a fork or an actual whisk! (go figure ;) ) Split the vinaigrette in half. You'll need some for later.





You can use either white, gold, or red potatoes for this. I am using white potatoes tonight. Cut them into wedges.







Add some potato wedges to your bowl and coat.






Once they're all coated, put them on a baking sheet. Season well with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.






Pour 1/2 cup chicken stock around the potatoes. Bake in a 425* oven for 45 minutes.




Remove from the oven and let cool completely.



Just before serving, put the potatoes on skewers.




Using the vinaigrette you held to the side, brush the potatoes again before they go on the grill. In fact, take the sauce out there and grill each time you turn them.




They don't take long on the grill. Look at how crispy and golden they are. The lemon gives them a fresh, zesty taste and then you've got the herbs in there that give tons of flavor.



This is why these are perfect for a bbq. You can cook the potatoes to this point early in the day and all they need is a little grill time to heat them up and crisp them up. So easy. So delicious. So fun!

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_74czzt6hfj

Happy Mother's Day

(Written by Suzanne's husband, Jim)


So it's the day before Mother's day and Suzanne casually mentions that one of her friends suggested that I make dinner for her on Mother's day and post it here on her blog.

I'm like, "Crap, I don't know what to make!"


So I'm trying to figure out what to make. I look through some cookbooks. I know I want to do something with steak on the grill because that's what I do. I pull out my grilling cookbook and find a recipe. It's something even I could handle even though it involves making my own salad dressing.

I was trying to keep what I was making for dinner a secret. I went into work for a litte bit Sunday morning. On my way home I picked up the ingredients I needed for the salad and some flowers.

We had lunch, watched a little TV and I started dinner while Suzanne took a nap with Perry.

I made the dressing first which has balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a clove of garlic.

I brushed some of this on the steak and some red onion slices.

I then put some rosemary and thyme on both sides of the steak and pressed the spices into the steak. I saved the rest of the dressing for the salad.

I then grilled the steak and red onion slices over medium heat for about 15 minutes until the steak was medium rare.

Take a look at that steak!

When the center of the steak was slightly soft I took the steak off the grill. We like our steak medium rare. If you like your steak more well done, keep it on the grill a little longer.

I took the steak and cut it against the grain, similar to when we cut it for fajitas.

I started plating the salad. I used a bag of spring mix salad greens. I put a large hand full of salad on the plate.

Put some steak slices slightly staggered on top of each other down the center of the plate.

Then I put some grilled red onion on top.

It says in the cookbook that Gorgonzola cheese is a rich and creamy blue cheese made from cow's milk. It has an ivory interior that is streaked with the characteristic blue-green veins. If the cheese is aged for more than 6 months, the flavor and aroma can become quite strong -- in fact, down right unpleasant. This flavorful cheese teams nicely with sliced pears, apples, peaches, and hearty red wines. Adventuresome cooks will find it especially tasty melted over grilled steaks or baked potatoes or crumbled into salads.



Put some crumbled Gorgonzola cheese on next and drizzled some of the dressing I made earlier.

This recipe also calls for tomatoes but Suzanne doesn't really eat tomatoes in her salad so I left them off. If you like tomato, put some on your salad.

Paige didn't seem to like the salad very much, but we really enjoyed it. Suzanne said she will be making this one again. All in all, a great summer salad for Mother's day.


Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_52cf9cf9gk