Chinese Pork and Chive Dumplings

Back when I met Will, his diet consisted mainly of chicken tenders and fries. "Ah," I thought, "A true American diet. He will eat anything that can be found in a shopping mall food court." And then I discovered I was wrong. Oh sure, the pizza, the burgers, the Auntie Anne's Pretzels, all that he was good with. But horror of horrors, Will wouldn't eat Chinese food.

Lo Mein, Egg Rolls, Wonton Soup, none of these were on the menu for Will. And for years we went on this way, me picking up General Tao's Chicken, Will recoiling and heading for the box of cereal. About two years ago, mostly in order to keep himself from starving to death when I insisted on dining at an Asian restaurant, Will ate a dumpling. And then another one. And suddenly my leftover takeout was disappearing from the fridge. If you are in NY, and you want some truly banging dumplings (great drunk food btw) there's a place in the East Village called Dumpling Man that is now one of Will's favorite dinner spots.

In Jackson Heights however, there is no good Chinese food. We've canvased a few places, but the dumplings always turn out horrifically doughy. If I wanted in house dumplings, I was going to have to make my own. The recipe I found by digging though my old Gourmet magazines, and it came with a kick ass dipping sauce. Seriously, even if you have a great source of dumplings and don't intend to make your own, make the sauce. It's worth it.

Lantern Dumpling Sauce

Ingredients:
- 1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
- 1/3 Cup Water
- 1/2 Tablespoon Shaoxing Wine vinegar
- 1/8 teaspoon Asian Sesame Oil
- 1 Garlic Clove, smashed
- 1 Dried Red Chile
- 1/8 teaspoon sugar

Directions:
Stir all ingredients together and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours and up to two days.


Once your sauce is getting all marinadey, its time to set up your dumpling stuffing station.

Dumplings
Adapted from Gourmet magazine

Ingredients:
- 1/2 pound fatty ground pork
- 1/2 Tablespoon Shaoxing Wine
- 1/4 teaspoon Asian Sesame Oil
- 1/2 teaspoon Vietnamese chile-garlic sauce (look for the one with the rooster on it)-
- 1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon rice vinegar
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 Tablespoons finely chopped chives

- 25-30 Frozen Dumpling Wrappers

Directions:
Defrost and separate wrappers. Do not try to pry them apart if they are still a little frozen, you get a lot of torn wrappers that way. Be patient, they'll come apart.

Combine all ingredients (save for the chives and wrappers) in a medium bowl, then stir in the chives. Set the bowl in a larger bowl of ice to keep chilled while forming your dumplings. If you don't feel like the elaborate set up, just stick the bowl in the fridge and bring the filling out to your work station about 3/4 of a cup at a time.

Place a rounded teaspoon of filling in the center of each wrapper and moisten area around filling with water. Fold in half to from a crescent.

From here you have 3 options. You can leave all smooth and folded. You can crimp up the edge to be all pretty.  Or you can moisten the two corners, pull them together, and press to make them stick together. Because I'm currently obsessed with the neat little CHOW Tips videos, let them show you! (I'm not getting paid for this I swear, I just really love these videos)


I decided to test 3 methods of cooking.

Poaching: drop dumplings into a bot of gently simmering water until pork is just cooked, about 3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and serve with sauce.

Steaming: Oil the bottom of a colander and bring about 2 inches of water to a boil so that the bottom of the colander sits above the water. Arrange dumplings about 1/2 an inch apart and steam over medium heat, covered, until the wrapper becomes translucent and filling is just cooked through, about 6 minutes. Remove and serve with sauce.

Seared: This is where you get "Pot Stickers" cause the little buggers like to stick to your pan. I'll be honest, I kinda failed at this. This was the hardest method I attempted. I tried, I'd get a little bit of browning, a little bit of crispness, but it never came out quite right. Dumpling Man's website has some tips on this method, if you try and have more luck, tell me about it in the comments.

I liked my dumplings a lot. I found them a bit dry, I just used the standard grocery store ground pork, I probably should have found something with more fat. If you have a butcher from whom you can ask about fat content of their blend, that's probably best but you may just have to grind your own. The NY Times has a great article giving advice on how to do this in a food processor. We enjoyed our homemade Chinese food with a screening of Mulan. Because few things are as authentically Chinese as the stylings of Donnie Osmond.

Epicurette and the Smokey Mountain Boys

Earlier this week Will expressed an interest in driving around the USA. This is an interest his father has also has, except he wanted to do it in an RV. This is not quite my idea of a vacation. As I rolled it around in my head though, I did start thinking about a few parts of America that had three things I go crazy over. Good music, good booze, and good food. Savannah, Georgia sprung to mind as a place that always has a famous restaurant by a new up and coming chef. Had we not been able to afford Dublin, Will and I had talked about heading out to Sonoma, California and returning with a few cases of wine, and I've always been interested by the music scene that is Chicago. There was one part of the country that has all three of the elements I desired, and within a few hours I had filled Will's email box with articles about a drag of road called Highway 61, Music highway.

It's a connecting highway between Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana. I had already built a fantasy around it that involved renting a pickup truck, pulling on my cowboy boots, and cruising down stopping for Blues, Bluegrass, Barbecue, and Bourbon. However, it is January, not the ideal time of year for doing said cruising, though I'm sure it's warmer down there then it is up here right now. Also I have a job, one that would not appreciate an email saying, "Sorry, can't come in this week, searching for the home of Muddy Waters and the perfect shot of Rye." The trip, though I am determined to take it, must be delayed until I can actually plan it, request the vacation time, and let the weather improve. Damn my lack of spontaneity.

The ideas however, would not stop plaguing me this week. I downloaded a huge album of bluegrass music, and ordered a CD of blues. (Has anyone listed to a CD from the "I heard it on NPR" series?) While writing Friday's blog, I sat there with a glass of Ezra Brooks in hand. Finally the siren call of barbecue could no longer be ignored. I needed slow cooked meat. I needed it bad. I remembered the sandwich I had to quest for at the Big Apple Barbecue last year, the sandwich I had stood in line for over an hour to get. I fantasized about the brilliance that is a great pulled pork sandwich.

This, I discovered, was easier said then done. First was my complete lack of a smoker, a place to put a smoker, or a way to deal with the smoke. Apartment living strikes again. It seemed, through, that every cookbook I owned with a section for slow cookers included a section for a pulled pork sandwich. Not exactly the authenticity of standing by a fire pit south of the Mason Dixon line for eight hours, but I was desperate. These recipes differed in everything from cut of meat to sauce, one even included root beer as a main ingredient. What would I have to do to recreate the experience of that exceptional lunch over six months ago?

I launched into research, and it turns out, Pulled Pork has two distinct schools of thought, having to do with whether you are dealing with the East side of the Carolinas or the West (and you thought North and South were all you had to worry about.) In the East, you'd get a vinegar based sauce, which is spicier, where in the West, it tends toward tomato based sauce, which is sweeter (and usually still includes vinegar, just to be confusing.) I looked up the website of the place that had sold me the elusive pulled pork, Black Jack Barbecue. It turns out they sell their sauces, and there was a barbecue... and a cider. Crap.

Sweeter was the operative word for me, I remember as what sticks out in my memory was a sweet, tangy flavor. Ingredients jumped out like Molasses and Brown Sugar. I decided tomato based was my kind of barbecue. I briefly considered ordering the sauce, and getting the exact sauce I remembered, but A of all, this seemed like a cop out, and B of all I would have had to wait for shipping, and pay $8 for it. No, if I was gong to do this, I was going to do it right. Working mostly from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, I worked on my perfect West Carolinas barbecue sauce.

The Sauce

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

2 Onions, Minced

2 Garlic Cloves, Minced

2 Tsp Chili Powder

1 3/4 Cup Ketchup

1/2 Cup Light or Dark Molasses

2 Tbsp Light Brown Sugar

1/4 Cup Cider Vinegar

1/4 Cup Worcestershire

1/4 Cup Dijon Mustard

2 Tsp Tabasco

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and chili powder and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds.

Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the the sauce is thickened, about 25 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cool to room temperature before serving, about 1 hour. (Can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 2 months)

I ended up with about three cups of sauce, and tossed it in the the refrigerator overnight next to the nearly four pound pork shoulder I had spent a small fortune on earlier in the day. I went to Dickson's Farmstand Meats, one of the "Rock Star" butcher shops invading Manhattan, but my thought was if I was going to make that much meat I was going to have it be the good stuff. They were exceptionally cool to me, I ordered the pork shoulder, and they didn't have it in the case so my sales person trotted over to the butchering area to have it cut for me. He asked if I wanted it tied. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and in nicer terminology, told him so. I explained this was my first time buying a shoulder. Saying this in a very nice butcher shop felt tantamount to walking into a record store and asking who the Beatles are. He was very nice about it though, and asked me how I was preparing it. When I told him pulled pork, he smiled and said he would take care of me. You get what you pay for. I went home with a gorgeous 3.75 pound shoulder, neatly tied, locally sourced. I was getting excited.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Ingredients:

3-4 Pound Pork Shoulder

3 Cups Barbecue Sauce of Choice

Salt and Pepper

Cider Vinegar

Directions:

Heat large skillet over medium high. Place in shoulder fat side down, then brown on all sides. While browning, pour half of sauce into slow cooker. Once browned, remove pork from skillet and place into slow cooker. Pour remainder of sauce on top. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, or on high for 4 to 6 hours. (I went with the slower route) Once the meat is fully cooked, remove to cutting board or platter. With two forks, tear meat into shreds (or pull the pork apart, as it were.) Toss meat with sauce from the slow cooker. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with cider vinegar if desired. Serve shredded meat on hamburger rolls with your favorite cole slaw, either on the side or on top of the pork.

When it came time to take the meat out of the slow cooker, it was falling apart. Success! I loaded it into a foil roasting pan, and proceeded to rip it apart. I took a preliminary taste, and nearly fell over. It was juicy and tender and amazing. With a big kitchen spoon I started spooning on the sauce, three spoonfuls to start with. My eyes rolled back in my head. I kept spooning until I felt I had achieved the Nirvana like status that this meat called for. Will wouldn't stop comparing the dish to porn. Three sandwiches later he collapsed on the couch with a satisfied and deeply impressed smile. I think we have found his new favorite dish. What is it with boys and barbecue?

I did miss the smokiness that comes from sticking a huge cut of meat in a cabinet built specifically to cook pork, but for an apartment in Queens I think I came as close to authentic barbecue as one could, and it was knee buckling good. To get "the real deal" I think I'm going to have to rent that pickup truck and head towards Dixie. Epicurette in Memphis has a nice ring to it...

J'adore Le Cruset

I have been in a cooking funk lately. The wedding drawing close, I long for the part of my brain back that has been relegated to questions of favors, flowers, and dresses. With a large part of my brain power (not to mention my daily energy) now commandeered by these trivialities, it's been hard to answer the usually exciting question of "What's for dinner?" In these last weeks to the finish line, I've also had to balance out my stress eating (a girl's best friend) by cutting out red meat and refusing to make any sweets myself. If other people make sweets and they happen to cross my path, however, well that's just fair game. Take Out has become an unusually large part of my sustenance, and Indian, Chinese, and hot dogs have filled out my diet. Meanwhile I've glared at my pots and pans and informed them I simply did not have the time for them this week.

The wedding was ruining my urge to cook, but that all changed when the first wedding present showed up at my door this week. A simple brown box, I gasped with glee when I read those beautiful words on the side, "Le Cruset." God bless you Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson. I tore into the package with glee, emerging with a 5.5 Quart dutch oven in Carribean Blue. Will may have been laughing at me as I celebrated my new equipment, but I was ignoring him. Men don't understand the possibilities contained in new cookware. My mind was on two things. One, getting rid of the crappy five quart pot I'd gotten second hand from someone when I moved to New York, and two, the pair of apples sitting unused in the fridge. This was, it seemed, the perfect time to tackle one of my favorite fall dinners, Pork Roast with Apples and Onions.

My schedule being what it is, I of course didn't get to it over the weekend, but so determined was I to use my new exciting cookware that I started the meal at 7:30 pm last Monday night. Luckily Will doesn't mind eating at 9 pm, and was making cocktails for me in the interim. The original recipe calls for 2 tbs of mustard with fennel seeds pressed into it. Will is not a fan of mustard, nor do I adore fennel. Therefore I use a touch of mustard--just a thin layer to create a glaze--which Will doesn't mind as much and I pressed in Rosemary from the pot on my window sill. I find these to be great improvements, but follow your own tastes. The original recipe also calls for 15 minutes of roasting, which was a woeful underestimate. It took about 25 minutes, and I threw the lid on for the final ten, so use your best judgement there as well. In the end you will have a fantastic fall meal, all cooked in one pot. My only hope is that your pot is as awesome as the one I used.

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Ingredients:

1 large pork tenderloin (about 14 ounces)
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons whole grain Dijon mustard (or to taste)
2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
1 large onion, sliced
2 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/2 cup dry white wine

Directions:
Preheat oven to 450°F. Season pork with salt and pepper.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in large nonstick ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork and sear until all sides are brown, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes. Transfer pork to plate. Cool slightly. Spread mustard over top and sides of pork; press fennel seeds into mustard. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to skillet. Add onion slices and apples; sauté over medium heat until golden, about 5 minutes. Spread evenly in skillet and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place pork atop apple-onion mixture.Transfer skillet to oven and roast until apple-onion mixture is soft and brown and meat thermometer inserted into center of pork registers 150°F, check after about 15 minutes. If not done, cover and roast another 10 minutes. Transfer pork to platter and tent with foil. Let stand 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour white wine over apple-onion mixture in skillet. Stir mixture over high heat until slightly reduced, about 2 minutes. Cut pork on diagonal into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Spoon apple-onion mixture onto plates. Top with pork and serve.

Note to the readers: By next Monday I will be all married and honeymooning in Ireland! This is exciting, nerve wracking, and a bit time consuming. My hope is to have a blog scheduled for next Monday, but I can't promise. Keep and eye on the Twitter feed for the status of this. The good news is I'll have my wedding brunch and a bunch of Irish restaurants and bars to review once back, not to mention the upcoming exciting project of the Thanksgiving Lobsters. Oh yeah. It's always an adventure at Epicurette in New York.

Pork Chops in a Maple Brine with Roasted Pear Chutney

Trying to find a good recipe for Pork Chops, which happened to be on sale last week, I ran across a recipe for Maple Syrup Brine with a Roasted Pear Chutney. It's been a few years since I've brined, I did it once or twice with success before I absolutely ruined a few chops with an overly salty brine and have shied away ever since. I do not take well to serving a pork chop that tastes suspiciously like a salt lick. This recipe did have a few things that intrigued me though, including the maple syrup ingredient. While in PA last weekend my mother had given me some farmers market syrup she had picked up. Because it's just Will and I in the apartment and I rarely cook breakfast (before coffee my culinary skills involve toasting and that's about it) I had been concerned about my ability to find uses for such a tasty syrup. A rich brine seemed like the perfect "solution." That's right, it's a righteous pun. Deal with it.

There were other advantages to brining. Since both the brine and the Pear Chutney need to be created the night before, I could cook it in the later hours of the evening, when the sun had gone down and my apartment cooled off a few degrees. It was an elaborate and time consuming bit of cooking which I don't usually tackle on a weeknight. Before moving to NY when I lived at home I usually only cooked on the weekends and would make complex meals. When I moved, these were the recipes I knew best and didn't calculate in the full time job when attempting them. According to the people I love I get a tiny bit cranky when my blood sugar plummets, and I nearly risked my relationship and my cookware making mozzarella stuffed meatballs at 8:30 on a Tuesday night with Will hiding in the bedroom and ground meat all over the table before I finally figured out that not every meal could be created on a weeknight. The brilliant part of the brining plan was I had already eaten a simple sausage sandwich and none of the food was for the same night, making the weeknight cooking a much lower pressure and higher blood sugar situation.

So that's how it came to be that at 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday I was standing over my "non reactive" pot. Who are these people buying the "reactive" pots recipes feel the need to warn you about? The nice thing about brine is that it's generally a "Throw things in pot, stir, boil, cool" kind of directions. There was a lot of chopping and measuring involved, but no sauteing or roasting or extra work to speak of. As per the comments on Epicurious, I halved the salt, didn't concern myself with the Juniper Berries (which I don't happen to keep on hand), and added a bit of Bourbon. As I had nearly killed the bottle, I threw the remaining shot in a glass, added an ice cube and a mint leaf and enjoyed a nice southern summer treat as I cooked. Cooking is better when you have a drink in your hand, which is one of the reasons I keep Will around and let him eat my food.

Once the brine was all set and cooling on the table, I turned my attention to the Roasted Pear Chutney. This involved, unsurprisingly, roasting the pear. In 87 degree humid weather. Dammit. The kitchen already felt downright gross so instead of turning on the oven to roast a single pear, I flicked on my brand new toaster oven, a wedding shower gift from my childhood friends the Jacobsons. I peeled the pear, cut in half, and tossed with lemon, sugar, ground cinnamon and ground cloves. I was a bit weary of the recipe as my kitchen now smelled like a Christmas cookie in the middle of a heat wave in August...but I plowed ahead. The onion mixture was simple enough, though it called for

golden raisins and currants, neither of which I had thought to buy, so I skipped them and crossed my fingers. Thank god I had lined the roasting tray of the toaster oven with foil. The extra sugar sauce that dripped off the pear became a black smoking goo within 15 minutes, and while the pear was fine, it would have been a hell of a thing to subject my brand new cookware to.

At 10:30 p.m. everything was covered and in the fridge, and I was drenched in sweat and exhausted. Of course, exhaustion doesn't necessarily mean sleep. Insomnia racked me and I got out of bed and surfed the internet until three in the morning, which left me a bit cranky when I rose the next morning and set about the task of actually plunking the pork chops into the brine. I really, really hate dealing with raw meat before coffee. I'm perfectly fine with smooshing ground meat with my bare hands or butterflying

a chicken after, say, one in the afternoon. Let's just say handling a giant raw pork chop at 8 a.m. isn't my favorite way to start the day. I plunked the chops into the brine and, after the damn things started to float on me, weighed them down with a butter knife.

Sticking it back in the fridge I muttered something about how I swear to god I'm going to turn Kosher, and then settled in with toast and coffee.

At 6 p.m. that evening I stumbled into my apartment and collapsed on the bed, four hours of sleep did not make for the most invigorating day. Thank god I had done 90% of the work on dinner the night before or I would be calling my friends at Dominos. Will and I were getting worried we called them too much when we started receiving "Valued Customer" coupons in the mail... but then some friend of ours told us that their delivery guy recognized them on the street and knew them by name. I'm sure the people who deliver for Dominos are solid upstanding citizens of high moral character, but that's far from the point. I just don't want to feel like a fatty. That hasn't happened to us yet, so I guess we're still okay.

I proceeded to nap until Will got home around seven and then I decided I had better start cooking the massive pork products. Well, first I had Will make me his patented Raspberry Lemon Cosmo. Then I got some laundry together. Then I had a piece of baguette with cheese and read a magazine while Will tackled some of the sink of dishes I had created the night before. Okay fine, so maybe it was close to 8 p.m. before I actually chopped potatoes and got them cooking, and another half hour before I got the grill pan going. I was tired! The directions, which were of course written for an out door grill and not my teensy Queens kitchen, instructed the chef to have one part of the grill on high heat, and another part on medium. The chef is to sear both sides of the chops on high heat, and then transfer to the medium heat part and cover the grill. I regarded my singular grill pan with trepidation. I solved this problem by

searing, and then removing the chops entirely to a plate, turning down the flame, and then holding the grill pan in midair for a minute while it cooled the hell down. Grill experts could probably tell you ten things wrong with this system, but luckily I haven't talked to them. Once the chops were back in the pan I covered them with a lid from an old cheap pasta pot that is ventilated. I threw out the pot a long time ago when the bottom rusted (ew), but I discovered this method while grilling Turkey Burgers, so I've held onto the lid. I'm so handy. I'm also very attractive and funny, but that's off topic.

So, after all that, at nearly 9 p.m. (which, I suppose, makes this a 26 hour meal for those keeping track) we sat down to Grilled Maple Brined Pork Chops, Roasted Pear Chutney, and Roasted Red Potatoes. The Pork Chops, thank god, were delicious. They were juicy, they had a deep oaky salty flavor without being overly salty, and I didn't even burn the outside, which I've been known to do on a grill pan. The potatoes are fool proof, so they were tasty as always. The Roasted Pear Chutney, well... it was very very vinegary. The white wine vinegar completely dominates the dish. If you tried the pork with a bite of pear you could still get some of the pear's sweetness, but none of the spice I worked so hard to put on. The onions were completely overpowered, which might have to do with the fact that I was supposed to use a red onion, which has a stronger flavor, but since I really don't like red onions that much I'm not sure that would have made it taste "better" to me. Maybe those raisins and currants would have saved the dish, but I don't see how they would have made an impressive dent in that vinegar. I might try it again someday but the chops were perfectly wonderful without it, and even the recipe refers to it as optional.

After all the work and patience and waiting, I reconciled my relationship with brining and had a (mostly) satisfying meal on the table. Now if I can just get over my fight with blanching, my coldness towards basting, and the outright silent treatment I've been giving deep frying, there may be harmony in my kitchen.

Pork Tenderloin with Tomato-Peach Compote

After a busy couple of weeks I FINALLY made it into my kitchen long enough to make my own dinner. It was Wednesday, which means the New York Times has its food section, and I had received my Gourmet Magazine that week (as I've mentioned before, I'm a print media addict) so my hands were twitching to create something. I had bought peaches on sale earlier in the week so when I stumbled across Pork Tenderloin with Tomato-Peach Compote in Gourmet, I had a plan.

In preparing to make the recipe I noticed it called for rubbing the pork with a ginger/garlic/curry powder mixture. I had never worked with curry powder before, but I've been enjoying Indian food more and more lately. Of course I was an idiot and just picked some up at Whole Foods, before remembering that I live in Jackson Heights, one of the most heavily Indian neighborhoods in the city, and probably could have bought something exciting and authentic a block from my apartment. I actually went out of my way to be a gentrified hipster douchebag. Sigh.

It's always a challenge working with a new ingredient, not just because you don't yet have a bead on proportion to flavor, but because Will has a slight concern when it comes to new foods. A little history: when Will and I met 6 years ago his favorite foods were chicken fingers and pasta with butter. I wasn't cooking yet but I was an avid eater and this concerned me greatly. For the first few years developing his palate was a challenge, if the food was a weird color or tended to look less then American he would start backing away slowly with his eyes darting toward the Domino's coupon on the fridge. Those days are (mostly) behind us. Will tries everything I give him, and I accept it when he tries something and just plain doesn't like it (shrimp). Still, occasionally I'll have a new bottle of some ingredient or another on the counter and I can see the suspicion in his eyes. This occurred to me as I mashed the garlic and ginger and curry, and it all turned bright yellow.

Will makes up for his sometimes less then adventurous spirit by being a first rate sous chef and bartender. Wednesday the Times ran its summer drinks issue listing summer drinks from A-Z, and Will whipped up a Whiskey Peach Smash for me and a John Collins (the vodka version of a Tom Collins) for himself. Then he created a Queens Park Swizzle from another article. I swear, they were as good as anything I've gotten at Death and Company. I live a charmed life where I can read a drink recipe and go, "Honey, could you make this for me?" and be drinking it 20 minutes later. And since these types of drinks go for about $14 in NY, having Will around is just recession friendly. And in the middle of all this, he also cut up the tomato and peach for the compote. If a bartender had sex with a Cuisinart, the offspring of that unholy union would probably look a lot like my fiancée. Okay, I won't call off the wedding... yet.

After rubbing the pork it gets browned on the stove, and then is moved to the oven to roast. The recipe said 10-12 minutes, I ended up having to leave it in for about 15 to get the inside temperature between 145 and 150. Remove pork from the pan and put it on a cutting board to rest. While it sits you then just make the compote in the same pan! It's a great weeknight dinner. I tend to think of pork roasts only in the fall when I make them with apples, but this is a great way to bring summer flavors into pork. While the recipe takes less then an hour to make, we had bread and cheese beforehand and with the drinks... we ended up eating around 9pm. Not all that unusual for an urban diet really.

Pork Tenderloin with Tomato-Peach Compote
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine

Ingredients:
- 2 Garlic Cloves
- 1/2 Tablespoon chopped peeled ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
- 1 pork tenderloin
- 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
- 1/2 pound of tomatoes, cut into 1 inch pieces
- 1 small peach chopped
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees with rack in middle.

In a food processor, pulse garlic, ginger, curry powder, pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper until it forms a paste. Rub all over pork.

Heat oil in an ovenproof 12 inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Brown pork on one side, about 5 minutes, then turn over and transfer skillet to oven. Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest park of meat registers 145 to 150 degrees for juicy meat, 10 to 12 minutes. Let pork rest, uncovered, on a cutting board while making compote.

Add onion to skillet and saute over medium-high heat until softened, 5-7 minutes. Add tomatoes and peach and saute until just softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in thyme and sugar.

Slice pork and serve with compote.

The curry went over just fine. The flavor was understated, and only noticeable when you took a bite from the outside of the pork. I thought it added a subtle and interesting level to the pork, which can be a less exciting meat sometimes. And Will? He had 3 helpings.

Oh Holy Hell

I had a number of epicurean topics to choose from this week, I ate from the bar menu on the opening night of DBGB, but I live twittered that event. I went to a Mets/Phillies game at the new Citi Field (Phillies won by a run in the 11th inning, so a shout out to my home town). While the Blue Smoke chicken wings were delightfully spicy and falling off the bone, and while Will's Shake Shack Burger was juicy and the fries were crisp, the excitement about there being real food at a NY ballpark has been extensively written about already.

Then today I made the somewhat ill fated decision to tackle the Big Apple Barbecue, despite having seen this picture from last year.

Yeah, it was as bad as all that.

I had carefully picked a time, 2pm on Sunday, for a few reasons. 1. This was right in between lunch and dinner. I'd be dealing with snackers, right? 2. It was supposed be cloudy, maybe even a little rainy on Sunday. This would easily pick off the faint of heart as well as the tourists. 3. A musician who I had met back when I interned at the McCarter Theatre named Bill Sims Jr. was playing at 2:45, and I really enjoy him. The entire music lineup was sponsored by 101.9 Rock Experience, which Will cleverly chose to dub "Roxperience!" I had worked in a 45 minute buffer so that I could get food, drink, and be all situated by the time he went on. This plan was fool proof. To quote many a 1980's sitcom, "What could possibly go wrong?"

Well I had vastly misunderstood people's eating schedules and it was in the mid 70's and sunny. Will and I arrived to a wall of people and twisting confusing lines that led to places that may or may not be out of food. It took us 20 minutes just to fight the crowds and find the beer, and then once we got through the line to the main beer tent they weren't serving the cider I wanted, for which you would have to go across the courtyard where the hard cider had it's own table. Thank god I'm one of the few people who enjoy the fermented drinks of ye olde forefathers, that process was actually painless.

Once we had found a place in the dirt to sit (I had forgotten to bring the picnic blanket I had bought YESTERDAY for exactly this type of event) and put our stuff down, I decided to forage out in search of food. It was only 5 minutes until Bill went on, but he was playing until 4. I would grab the food and be in like flint.

Oh Holy Hell. I had decided on brisket, looked at the map, and decided to head for the northern most corner to the Salt Lick. After shuffling for 10 minutes to get there, it turns out the Salt Lick was out of brisket, but as the tiny woman shouting at the large crowd informed us, they were still serving sausage! Sausage. Right lady. At the biggest barbeque event of the year, surrounded by southern pit masters from across the county, I was going to eat food best procured year round from Little Italy. I was tired of pushing my way to different stands, however, so I decided pulled pork sandwich was just fine and shifted to the next line over to BlackJack BBQ from Charleston, South Carolina.

The guys in front of me were so preppy it was cartoonish. Polo shirts, sandals, and, no kidding, one of them was holding a football. In the middle of a crowd the size of the one pictured above, he had a football. Where he thought he was going to throw it is a mystery known only to himself. Maybe he envisioned himself playing a game of catch with the guys chopping up an entire pig "OK guys, out of bounds is this dense crowd of people over here, and that dense crowd of people over there. The goal line is that traffic jam on Broadway, and if you hit the Empire State Building you've gone too far." With such company I wove my way through the line for a solid 45 minutes, dreaming all the while of the Sunday Times I left at home, or the iPod that just wouldn't fit in my tiny clutch that looked so cute with my outfit.

The payoff was two extremely good pulled pork sandwiches that were satisfyingly juicy with a delectably sweet sauce. The potato roll was fluffy, if a bit generic, and even the cole slaw was yummy, and I usually don't touch the stuff. Hustling them back to our spot by the stage I got to catch the last 20 minutes of the set, and Bill Sims Jr. was as good as I remembered. Will asked if I wanted to get another drink and walk around for awhile, but I was done with the crowds, and I remembered what a flavorful Mint Julep Will can make. I decided we could continue our Southern gastronomical "roxperience" from the comfort of our own living room.