A few posts back, I documented the three day epic of demi glace. The technique I used was adapted from one of my culinary idols, James Peterson, writing in Saveur magazine. In the same article he provided a handful of sauce recipes using demi glace, including a derivation of the classic pork Sauce Robert, called Sauce Charcutière.

I wanted to try this with some mustard and herb crusted roast pork tenderloin, and man was it a good match. Read to the end for our next giveaway!
Pork and Demi Glace inside…

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

To some, May means the Kentucky Derby. To others, the start of the summer growing season. To many backyard chefs, May is the start of barbecue.

Barbecue used to be a very regional thing. One area might mean pork while another means beef. Some barbecue chefs prefer to smoke, some to grill, and some to braise. There are passionate arguments about dry (a spice rub) vs. wet (cooking with the sauce), and even the ingredients in a sauce, whether the meat is cooked in it or not.

I like to barbecue, and I don’t like to get drawn in to one technique over another. No matter the method, barbecue is just good food. For this month’s POM blogger entry, I’ve made a tasty POM pomegranate juice barbecue sauce for pork baby back ribs. The sweet spice of the sauce is a nice balance to the salty, tender rib meat.

OMG BBQ inside

As Tropical Storm Fay bears down on us (we’re fine, just a lot of wind and rain), nothing much to do except work, and watch the rain. I worked most of the day, but now my cell keeps giving me an “all circuits busy”, so I opened a Kalik beer (I figure Bahamian beer is appropriate during tropical storms) and I’m going to write up last night’s dinner.

So, like a billion years ago (okay, two), I saw Emeril cook up some lettuce-wrapped spicy pork and rice. They looked pretty good, and I filed it away as something to try.

Oh man, these were good. I wouldn’t have thought it, as Emeril’s recipes always seem a little bland to me, which is odd coming from the self-appointed king of New Orleans spice. There’s not even any Essence in the recipe. But it works so well. I’ve made a couple adaptations, but here’s the link to the original: Bam!.

Tasty pork inside

Michelle, at Thursday Night Smackdown threw a smackdown challenge: Pick a recipe or technique you’ve never tried before, and do it. Christey and I took the challenge to another level, and switched roles. She cooked, and I shot the pictures.(Snarky comments in italics are Christey’s)

Christey cooked 40 clove garlic chicken (yes, 40 cloves of garlic), with a side of fettuccine carbonara. I struggled with a macro lens and had to have my white-balance and strobes set up for me (and film speed, shutter speed, and fstop, but who’s counting ). Between the two of us, we created this:

Garlic and bacon, what’s not to like?

It’s been summer in Florida for a few months now (in season, if not by calendar), but nothing says summer like ribs.

I lived in Atlanta for a decade, and barbecue always means pig in Georgia. There are heated debates about wet (sauce-slathered) ribs vs. dry (spice-rubbed) ribs, and a couple hundred years of heavily regional cuisine hasn’t solved the debate….though dry ribs seem to edge out wet in Northern Georgia.

I’ve never been accepted as a Southerner by native Southerners because I was born in California (on an Army base), my family is from Nebraska, and have actually lived chunks of my childhood in the North, from Connecticut to Washington, DC. I went to college in upstate New York, which is heresy to the college-sport loving South. I’ve lived in Florida more than anywhere else in my life, but most of that was in middle and southern Florida, which true Southerners consider to be the North with more humidity. I have no Southern cred with the people who truly inhabit the South.

So, with my lack of qualifications, how do I solve the wet-dry dilemma? I dodge it, and do both.

Baby back pork ribs, with a guava barbecue sauce, with a side of fried plantain chips.

wet, dry, it’s all pig

This is a pork-only weekend. We haven’t posted any food in a week, life and work getting in the way. So I wanted to do as much as I could over the weekend, and if we’re doing a double header, why not concentrate on pork?

I have wanted to do a pork loin dish for a while, and there are a lot of marinades using Coke and fruit juices, but Christey found an espresso maker at a garage sale for $2, so why not inaugurate that? After sterilizing and de-calcifying, I figured it was a good chance to break it in.

I made an espresso-pineapple marinated pork-loin, with grilled pineapple and an espresso-pineapple-cream sauce. Bitter, sweet, pork, and cream. Oh yeah, there’s bacon, too.

Here, piggy piggy piggy