Grilled Pork Chop with Butternut Hominy

Ha! I tricked you! No recipe here. I brined and grilled some boneless, center cut pork chops. I also grilled some asparagus, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The real beauty of this dish is the perfectly balanced hominy with butternut squash and goat cheese, but I stole that recipe from my all-time favorite food blog, Thursday Night Smackdown and I refuse to steal her thunder. Go. Read her. Worship her. And make her food.

Ricotta Gnocchi Pillows w/ Spring Veggies

These are very simple gnocchi to make, but they make for a substantial meal. Toss with any simple, fresh sauce to let their delicate flavor shine through.

Fed 2 adults and a child, with leftovers.

1. I roasted a peeled, seeded, and cubed butternut squash (tossed in oil, salt, pepper, and sage) in a 425' oven while I did everything else.
   
   
2. In a frying pan, I crisped 6 slices of bacon, which were cut into 1" squares. I removed the bacon and added a diced sweet onion, and let them caramelize while I stirred together the gnocchi batter. Then I added a cup of frozen peas and warmed them, and spooned all the veggies into a serving bowl before wiping the pan clean.
   
   
3. For the gnocchi, I combined a couple of eggs, salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg, about a cup of grated Parmesan, and 1 lb ricotta. I gently stirred in 1 1/2 C flour, then covered my counter and hands in more flour (the dough is very wet and sticky). I scooped out half the mixture onto the counter and rolled gently into a 1" thick snake, then cut 1" pillows with a floured knife. I put the gnocchi on a floured sheet pan, and did the same with the rest of the batter. I put the tray in the freezer while I waited for a large pot of salted water to boil.
   
   
4. My water was boiling, so I dropped half the gnocchi in, a few at a time. When they rose to the surface, I cooked them about 5 minutes more (these are big, wet gnocchi and need extra cooking time). At this point, I also put 1/2 a stick of butter in the veggie pan for about 6 minutes, until brown.
   
   
5. When the gnocchi were done, I tossed them in the browned butter and then scooped them in a serving dish. I repeated the process with the rest of the gnocchi, then topped it all with the veggies. I drizzled over the remaining butter and topped it all with some more freshly grated Parmesan.

#CookTeaseThanksgiving

Normally, I am crap at cooking big fancy dinners. In theory, I love to do it, but really what I like is the impressing-the-hell-out-of-people part and not so much the actual execution of it. This year, however, I made the same Thanksgiving meal for the third year in a row and, I must admit, it went swimmingly. I actually planned ahead, cooked things in advance, and stuck to a schedule. Yes, I forgot to make the cornbread until the last possible second, but otherwise I count this year's Thanksgiving a tremendous success.

I tweeted the steps as I completed them, which was fun for me, if not necessarily for everyone who had to read my incessant, smug tweets. It kept me focused and entertained. I had every intention of writing a for-reals blog post about the meal, but the tweets were pretty sufficient, I thought. Hence, I'm going to plead lazy and overworked, and I'm just going to post them below with pictorial accompaniment. Naysayers, this is all I can muster up right now, so tell yourself it's better than nothing.

Oh, and by the way, my entire menu comes from the greatest Gourmet menu of all time. You can get all the recipes (and see the shit I was too lazy to make) at Epicurious.com.

1/50: Groceries purchased, sorted, and minimally prepped.

2/50: 10 poblanos have been roasted, peeled, seeded, and made into rajas.

3/50: rum and nutmeg custard base for ice cream.

4/50: Chiles guajillo, ancho, New Mexico, chipotle, and de arbol toasted and soaking in boiling water.

5/50: Adobo red chile rub for turkey pureed and in the fridge.

6/50: Onions caramelized and joining yesterday's poblano strips in the rajas bin.



7-10/50: Dishes washed, dried, put away; plastic containers for leftovers washed, dried, and stacked.

11-12/50: roasted pineapple and onion for cranberry salsa; made salsa.

13-14/50: Roasted squash; mixed with coconut milk and brown sugar; pureed.

15-16/50: Rum ice cream frozen; cornbread for stuffing baked.

17/50: Turkey rubbed with red chile adobo; marinates for 24 hrs.

18-21/50: Potatoes peeled, sliced, and fashioned into gratin strewn w/ poblano and onion rajas; gratin baked.

22-24/50: Cooked veggies, chorizo for stuffing; browned giblets, neck; simmering w/ veg and broth for turkey stock.

25-29/50: Toasted cornbread; baked stuffing; made piloncillo syrup; prepared apples/syrup, poured into pie shell.

30/50: Took break to make pumpkin-butter filled pancakes for my family. Haven't fed them properly in three days.

31-33/50: Apple-pilocillo pie baked; pomegranate, mango ready for guac; scraped caramel from pie off bottom of oven.

34/50: Made emergency pumpkin pie. Well, actually, my 5-year-old made it. Read the recipe and everything. LOVE him.

35/50: Pomegranate-mango guacamole done.

36-40/50: Dishes.

41/50: Round of Pomegranate Kir Royales made, toasted, and working its way into our bellies. Ahhhh.

42/50: Green beans blanched and sauteed w/ lemon, garlic, thyme.

43-47/50: Red-chile roux made; gravy simmering; sides reheated; turkey resting.

48/50: Emergency #2--gratin is still cold, but everything else is ready. Fail. Jack up oven temp to 450.

49/50: Turkey sliced. Possibly by beavers, from the looks of it. 

50/50: And...done. Everything superb. Standouts: poblano gratin, cran-pineapple salsa, mango-pom guac, caramel apple pie.

Choose Your Own (squash) Adventure!

In the past week, I made butternut mac and cheese TWICE. This is unprecedented, as I repeat meals less frequently than Victoria Beckham repeats outfits. I don't even eat leftovers. This fact alone should help convince you that both of these recipes were very, very good. [Food blogger fail: I have pictures of neither dish. Sorry.]

They are also extremely different. Both are easy and delicious. Only one has any nutritional value to speak of, and one is decidedly grown-up food. So, I'll let you choose.

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M-N-C #1
Last weekend, my family joined forces with another awesome family and rented a cabin near Unicoi State Park in north Georgia. On the first full day of the trip, we took the kiddoes to Burt's Pumpkin Farm for hayrides and...well...pumpkins. There were about 30 different varies of squash and pumpkin, laid out in the sun and bunched together in wooden trays under a rustic lean-to, and every one of them called out to my root-vegetable-loving heart and demanded that I Cook Them That Very Night.

Enter the first squash success: butternut mac-n-cheese. Quick, kid-friendly, delicious, and surprisingly good for you. Since we're all friends here, I'll admit that, if I had read the recipe carefully and realized how healthful it was, I probably wouldn't have made it. Because anything calling itself mac-n-cheese that has so little cheese it in would just piss me off on principle. But hear me out, because it really was delicious. Just, maybe, don't think of it as mac-n-cheese--more like a butternut pasta casserole or something.

Saint's Butternut Mac-n-Cheese
--Cut 1 large butternut squash into 1 1/2" cubes.
--Boil squash in mixture of mostly water w/ some stock and a little 2% milk (enough liquid to just cover squash), 15-20 min.
--Puree or mash squash w/ liquid; add pinch dry mustard, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
--Mix squash with 1/2 C part-skim ricotta and 4T grated Parmesan.
--Taste and adjust seasoning.
--Combine squash with 1 lb cooked penne pasta. Mix well.
--Coat lasagna pan w/ cooking spray; add pasta.
--Sprinkle with panko crumbs (mixed with 2T Parmesan and 1t of butter or oil).
--Bake at 375 for 10-15 min, or until brown.


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M-N-C #2
In the middle of the week, I needed an emergency dinner idea. I was really hungry, and I actually had some time to prepare a decent meal (as opposed to the twenty minutes in which I normally have to cram prep, cooking, and eating). I had a butternut squash in my fridge (don't you? at all times? just in case?) and a large block of Cheddar, so I thought, what the hell?, and I went for my second m-n-c of the week.

Browsing around Tasteologie always gets my creative juices flowing, and it has pretty enough photos to convince Dorian to try almost anything, so I relied on those fine contributors for my recipe. This one is adapted from A Good Appetite. They have buckets of yummy recipes, so go check them out! At any rate, it was far easier than I'd anticipated, what with the whole roast-the-squash-then-make-a-cream-sauce thing. By the time the pasta was cooked, the squash was roasted and the sauce simmered patiently on the stove.

Sinner's Jalapeno Butternut Mac-n-Cheese
--Roast cubed butternut squash w/ olive oil, salt, and pepper until browned.
--Cook 1 lb penne pasta (I used whole wheat to great effect here).
--Melt a little butter in a saucepan, and saute 1/2 minced onion and 2 chopped jalapenos.
--Add 2 T flour and cook, stirring, for 1 min.
--Whisk in 1/2 C heavy cream and about 1 C milk; stir for 2 min. until thick.
--Stir in 10 oz grated sharp Cheddar and 1 T dry mustard.
--Season with salt and pepper.
--Combine pasta and squash in saucepan.
--Pour mixture into buttered/sprayed lasagna pan.
--Sprinkle with panko (tossed with Parmesan and olive oil); bake at 425 for 10 min.

If I had planned this meal instead of throwing it together at the last minute, I would have also made a fresh pico de gallo with tomatillos. Nothing makes cheese more delicious than tomatillos and onions and chiles. Seriously. Try it.

I also put some broccoli on the plate for this, as an alibi.

I will warn you, in advance, that the first m-n-c gets a little dry when you reheat it, so add a little stock or water or cream. The second m-n-c gets a little oily when you reheat it, as the cream and cheese begin to separate into their components. Still tastes awesome, though. And maybe it's a good thing--you can pour some of the grease out and then you don't ingest it.