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 found some nice lamb loin chops the other day, and I decided to try another bit of regional swapping. I love taking a technique or recipe from one part of the planet, and mixing it up with a completely different part of the planet. I think the foodie word “fusion” leans a little bit to the Asian/Western combination, but that’s sort of what I’m shooting for — combining what works in one culture’s food with what works in another culture’s.

Sometimes, this may be reinventing the wheel. Similar methods of meal creation pop up all over the globe, independently from any cultural link. For example, many cultures have discovered the basics of food fermentation separately, from kimchi in Asia to the preparation of chocolate beans in South America. Other cultures have relied on connections, sometimes roundabout connections, and have adapted ingredients to their own culture — Mexican cuisine uses the Middle-Eastern cumin, and Italy uses the South American tomato.

Therefore, I’m not entirely sure there’s not a Greek equivalent to the Argentinian technique of creating chimichurri sauce — which itself has been described as something of a Patagonian pesto. Heavy on the herbs, with some olive oil, vinegar, some vegetables…generally local stuff blended and chopped together into a chunky, pasty, loose sauce.

In any case, that’s what I thought of when I saw the lamb. A nice marinade for flavor, grilled nicely, then a chimichurri-like sauce with classically Aegean ingredients.

More lamb inside

Because of the Bocuse d’Or blitz, Christey and I took a day to eat our way around the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. One of the city booths was Buenos Aires, where they served a beef with chimichurri that was probably one of our top-3 dishes in Epcot for this year’s festival.

A couple days ago, we were craving it again, and perusing my magazine collection, I found that Gourmet magazine had a Argentinean-Style Beef with Chimichurri just a couple months ago, in their August issue. It was adapted from the Abingdon Manor restaraunt in Latta, South Carolina, and I’ve adapted it myself to what I was able to buy or grow. While I was buying ingredients, I saw some wonderfully ripe yellow plantain, so I served it over some shredded plantain hashbrowns.

Southern hemisphere after the jump