Fotocuisine

We haven’t been posting as often as we’d like. Summer and a new job has kept us busy in the real world. We’ve been enjoying food when we can, especially with the summer Kids’ Iron Chef battles, and it looks like work stress may be easing off soon. Who ever said a recession was the best time to do a startup? I’m working twice as much for half the pay right now. But, employment is always desirable, and we gotta do what keeps us in shallots.

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It’s still violently summer here in Central Florida. Daily rain, hot temperatures, higher humidity. Not necessarily when the thoughts turn to braising. But, it’s been a while, and that mouth-watering tender meat sounds so good. So, what to do when it’s hot and sticky, but you get the braising bug? Well, you can’t go wrong with Cuban cuisine. One of our local restaurants does a braised pork mojo, and all that citrus just screams out tropical. And pig is always seasonal, 12 months a year.

I took a pork shoulder “picnic” cut and braised it for hours in an orange juice mojo. Rather than slicing it and serving, I took Southeastern summer tradition and pulled the pork, serving it on buns with the reduced braising sauce. Pulled Pork Mojo!

Oink oink

I’ve been wanting to try a salt-crust meal for a few years now. Iron Chef (the original Japanese version) used the technique often, and several of my latest cookbooks mentioned the technique, but at 9am this morning as I was keeping my 14 month old daughter from banging a toy into my 4 month old son’s soft-spot, Tyler Florence was doing a salt-crust steak on the Food Network, and it got me salivating. So I made up my mind to try it with whatever fresh fish I could find.

I hit the local seafood shop. There was a wonderful sign stuck in the ice in the display case: “Whole Yellowtail Snapper”, but there was just empty ice chips. I asked if they had any more yellowtail, and after a few loud, roof-raising shouts into the back, echoing back to the display, it was determined that they were, alas, sold out of yellowtail. Yellowtail is my favorite snapper, in my mind it is nearly 1000% better than the ubiquitous (and frequently mis-labeled) American Red Snapper. But again, alas and alack.

However, there was locally caught fresh and whole pompano, which isn’t necessarily in the same league as yellowtail snapper, but it is more rare as it’s a seasonal fish (and we are right in the middle of season here in February in the central Florida Atlantic coast), so I grabbed one of those, $15 for just under 2 pounds, whole and un-gutted.

After the fish store, I hit the local Latin produce mart, where most of the staff speaks only Spanish, yet the customers range from the local Latin community to restaurant owners to Asians to Muslims, all looking for quality produce. It’s as melting-pot as you can get in this coastal town. I picked up fresh cilantro, key limes, banana leaves, and onions for under $5.

It was indeed my first attempt, and I don’t think I fully did what I wanted, but it was quite tasty, and I learned enough from this attempt to improve.

Fortunately, Christey and I were in the mood to document. As usual, I don’t really like tossing out a complete recipe as much as describing technique. So, here we go:

More pictures and technique