I spent the first extra-long holiday weekend of the year cooking. It was experimental fun and something that I enjoy doing. Normally, I would have spent much of that time watching college football. But I didn’t have a favorite in any of the College Bowl Playoffs. In years past, I’d have been rooting for OU wherever they were playing. But I’ve never been a fan of the mega-conference SEC. So when OU and Texas jumped ship from the Big12, I didn’t follow.
First recipe: Rigatoni con Sardin.
This recipe was easy and I’ll probably be making it many times in the future.
- 1 15oz can Sardines in tomato sauce
- 1/2 can Black Olives
- 1/2 can Green Olives
- 1 dz Sun-dried Tomato halves
- 1 10oz can Tomato Puree
- Oregano, Basil, Salt, Pepper to taste
I used my knife skills to petit-dice the sun-dried tomatoes and a food processor to rough chop the olives. From there, everything went into the sauce pan. I always add a little water to the puree can to help clean it out. I do this and don’t bother to add that amount of water as a recipe ingredient. Sue me. The sardines were in large pieces so I broke those up with my stirring spoon. While all that was going on, I was boiling my water for the rigatoni. I chose rigatoni because it was available at the normal Crest market. I might also have used my new favorite pasta; Calamarata. But I digress. I dropped the pasta in the pasta pan and turned the sauce down to a simmer and added my spices to my sauce pan.
Fourteen minutes later, I have a nicely thick sauce and cooked pasta. I strained the pasta, put it back in the pan and stirred in my sauce. It was served with a spoon of Parmesan cheese on top.
Second recipe: Chicken and Dumplings.
This recipe started with the remains of a rotisserie chicken after the majority of the meat is stripped off.
And therein lies a quandary. I priced a whole, raw chicken. Its cost was double that of a cooked and seasoned rotisserie chicken of equal weight. I’m not sure how this makes economic sense. But I don’t think that I’m likely to be buying and cooking a whole chicken (unless I’m looking for a particular flavor profile) anytime soon.
As I boiled the carcass to make stock, I realized that there was a good amount of chicken meat in the stock also. I carefully pulled out the skin, bones, and cartilage from the pan and ran the rest through a wire-mesh strainer a few times to be sure of my quality of both broth and meat. I put together a little roux in another pan and used that to thicken the broth. In yet another pan, I sauteed some onion and celery. Then added that to the soup with some frozen peas and carrots.
Then I cheated. Instead of making my own dumplings, I just used Bisquick and milk and added some oregano and rosemary to it. I dropped teaspoons of the dough into the simmering soup and followed the Bisquick recipe of cooking the dumplings uncovered for ten minutes and then covered for ten minutes. I should have followed my instincts. The result wouldn’t have been as soggy. Next time, I’ll dump the soup into a casserole, drop the dumplings into the casserole pan and bake it all for twenty minutes uncovered. I’ll wind up with dumplings that are lighter and browned on top.
Third recipe: Apple Pulled Pork.
This is a minor variation on your standard pork loin and apples. It’s cooked longer and slower for pulling rather than slicing. I started with a three pound pork loin and a thought about making a pulled pork that wasn’t your usual barbecue. I diced up an apple like I was making a pie and tossed it with salt, pepper, green chile powder, and onion powder. I laid all the apple pieces out on aluminum foil in a single layer and put the loin in the center. Then I carefully folded up the foil making sure that the apples covered the meat entirely. I added another layer of foil to hold it all together and thereby forcing it to steam in its own juices.
Three hours in a 330 degree oven later, I pulled the pork out of the oven and foil and pulled the pork. There was a good amount of liquid and apple pulp, maybe two-thirds of a cup, that was rendered and held in the foil that I could use as a sauce. Since it was a really sweet and spicy au-jus, I only needed to add some powdered mustard and corn starch to round out the flavors and thicken it. Then I introduced the sauce back to the pulled meat and served.
