Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops

Photo by Julia Frost, on flickr.

 The first recipe I prepared from the Ruhlman cookbook was the Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops. I've been brining pork for a while now, so the method isn't exactly new to me, but Ruhlman adds a lot more to the brine than I ever have. Ten (10!) cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of sage, lemon, shallot, etc. He also has you boil everything together briefly, which I suspect is important to releasing all the flavors, especially the lemon. Everything in a bag, and then we just had to wait seven hours.

Once the pork chop was done brining, we coated it in flour, breaded it, and pan-fried it, also according to instructions from Ruhlman's book. While frying it, I made a lemon-caper sauce and my wife prepared brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes. While the pork chops were thinner than Ruhlman suggested, they cooked perfectly -- if anything, they were slightly underdone. I've always been impressed by how much brining makes pork much more tender and juicy, and this brine added some really good flavor. It's a really heavy dish, though. The lemon-caper sauce was necessary to cut the heaviness with the acidity of the lemons and the saltiness of the capers. The brussels sprouts were a good side, and complemented the pork chops nicely; I'm glad we didn't roast them, as that may have been too much. Similarly, the potatoes were good, but they may have been a carb too far. I really enjoyed this meal, and look forward to trying it again!

The Lady's Leg

This week's Mixology Monday was themed around 'humbug', trying to create an anti-Christmas drink. I didn't have any particularly good ideas, but if by anti-Christmas, you mean an escape-your-relatives-boozy type of drink, this one will do it for you. It's named after the iconic lamp from A Christmas Story. This will be my last post until the new year. Merry Christmas!

Lady's Leg
3 oz Crabapple Schapps
1.5 oz Vanilla Vodka
.5 oz Allspice dram
.5 oz Maraschino Liqueur
dashes, mole bitters

The Tuxedo

The other day, I was looking for cocktails to use my new Bittermen's mole bitters in, and happened across this article which, in addition to the lovely Left Hand cocktail (pro tip: go easy on the bitters in this one), had a recipe for the old tuxedo. In the PDT cocktail book, it had a picture of a money in a tuxedo, which recommended this to the writer. Such is the acumen of Wall Street Journal writers: easily distracted by a monkey in a tuxedo. Nevertheless, it is a quite excellent cocktail.

It is a variation on a 2:1 martini, adding in a few dashes of maraschino liqueur and absinthe (I used Pernod). These additions make the martini more interesting, though one needs to be careful about adding too much Pernod. The PDT recipe has you rinse the glass with Pernod, and add 1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur. I used Dale DeGroff's recipe from Craft of the Cocktail, which is reproduced after the jump. Following Mr. DeGroff, which asks for a couple dashes of Pernod and maraschino liqueur, I ended up without quite enough maraschino, though that's probably mostly my own fault. Certainly the variations in the recipes are mostly a matter of individual taste.

MxMo: Rahasia

A hearty welcome back to Mixology Monday! Mixology Monday is a semi-regular event that has various cocktail bloggers creating a cocktail based on a theme. It's hosted by Cocktail Virgin Slut, and we appreciate Fred bringing it back. Past themes have included tiki and morning drinks. This month's theme is 'equal parts'. The idea is to create a cocktail that mixes equal parts of its component ingredients. Since fall is fast approaching, I thought I'd go with an anti-Negroni.

As opposed to the Negroni, which is bright and a little fruity, this is dark and rich. I was originally calling it the Inorgen, which is Negroni spelled backwards, but then decided that was dumb. I didn't think it was going to be much good -- it was pretty sweet and a little syrupy. But the addition of the grapefruit bitters transformed the drink. It's wonderfully complex, with some spiciness from the rye, some bitterness from the Averna, some sweetness from the Cardamaro, and some herbality (herbalness?) from the bitters. It's still very rich, but pretty good. Recipe after the jump.

Bacon's not evil.

Erik over at Savoy Stomp has what he calls an evil idea: figs cooked in bacon fat. I don't know, I might add some blue cheese, but it sounds fantastic!

because i’m evil

Let’s say you’ve had a delicious vegetarian meal.

There’s nothing wrong with that. 

But, you know, maybe a little after dinner snack might be in order.

Go check it out!

Lately, I've been wanting to make a hash for dinner. It has something to do with the surfeit of potatoes we've been getting in our CSA, but especially with fall coming on, it's a nice comforting dish. I based it on a recipe for Red Flannel Hash from Rick and Ann's restaurant in Berkeley, but with some changes. I used to make a sausage and onions dish when I was in law school, and still enjoy playing with sausage meat, so I used de-cased sausages in place of the bacon. I also added some jalapeno and vinegar to kick it up a notch. It turned out pretty good, and it's a nice, easy recipe to have in mind.

First, I started the potatoes steaming while I peeled the beets. I chopped a jalapeno, onion, and a garlic clove. I also sliced open the sausages and removed the casing. Once the beets and the potatoes were done steaming, I started frying the sausage. After the sausage was browned, I removed it and deglazed the pan with some vinegar, after which I added the aromatics. Once those were brown, I added the potatoes and beets in, mashed them, and once they had heated up a bit and gotten a bit brown, I put the sausage back in and let it all meld together.

It was really quite tasty, with just a couple flaws. First, the sausage didn't actually have enough fat to grease up the pan, so I should have added some oil/butter/fat to the pan before putting in the aromatics, and certainly before adding the potatoes. Second, I'm not sure the beets ended up as well cooked as I would have liked. But the jalapeno and vinegar gave it a good kick, the flavors worked really well together, and the combination of beets, sweet potatoes, and russet potatoes had a really nice color. Recipe after the jump.

The Good Corque

I like thespir.it, though sometimes the recipes seem less than entirely useful. But today I got a recipe for a drink I wanted to try: The Good Cork. One problem though -- it called for Red Breast Irish Whisky. We don't have Red Breast, and I wasn't sure what would make a good substitution for a single malt Irish Whiskey. I thought about bourbon, but I eventually decided on brandy. My wife made a similar cocktail, but subbed in scotch. We both liked mine better, but disagreed on whether it was because mine was less sweet or more sweet.

I like this drink both because it's tasty, and because it admits easily of substitutions. You could easily use any brown liquor instead of the Irish Whiskey,  and any herbal liqueur instead of the Benedictine. (I think Green Chartreuse might be especially interesting). The mezcal in this version gives it a smoky backbone, while the brandy lends a nice sweetness to balance the smoke. Recipe after the jump.

Czech Friend

I tried this drink twice, first as part of my spurt of becherovka cocktails, and then later with a few changes. It's basically a twist on the Old Pal, with the ingredients lightened up to allow the Becherovka to shine through. The first version was good, if a little simple. There was lots of cinnamon, enough that I thought it needed something to cut the cinnamon, maybe something sour. So the second time, I added a couple dashes of lemon bitters. The lemon bitters definitely help make this cocktail. There are definite cinnamon flavors still, but they don't overwhelm the rest of the drink. It's not robust enough to be a winter warmer, but it's a nice drink for a summer night. Recipe after the jump.

Burgers with Cantaloupe Salsa

Thinking ahead for once, I realized that I was going to want to have something pretty easy for dinner on Sunday. We haven't had burgers at home yet this summer, so that sounded like a pretty good option, though it left open the question of what to have for a vegetable. There was a cantaloupe in our CSA this week, and so I thought, why not use that to make a salsa to put on the burgers? The sweetness of the cantaloupe should go well with the spiciness of the peppers and the beefiness of the burgers. Poking around the internet, it turns out I wasn't the first person to think of this, and I found a good recipe to use as a base.

About 40 minutes before cooking time, I took the ground beef out of the fridge, shaped it, and seasoned it with some salt and pepper. I want to shape the ground beef into patties while it's still cold, since the beef resists my manipulations somewhat, and so maintains a bit more texture. But, it should be room temperature when I throw it on the grill, so that it cooks evenly. Seasoning it early helps the seasonings seep throughout the meat, and the salt helps structure the proteins. I was fortunate enough to have a wife who made the salsa the night before, so once the patties were shaped, I just had to pour the coals into the chimney to get ready to cook.

The hamburgers turned out well, with a nice crust but juicy and meaty on the inside. I was a bit nervous about how it would pair with the salsa, but it went really well together. The salsa was just nicely sweet and a little spicy, so with each bite, you got a bit of juicy spicy sweetness. If I had to do it again, I might spice the burger with some allspice or some cajun spices, but this works quite well with just some salt and pepper.

Tasha's Uncontrollable Laughter

I bought some Becherovka lately, and I've been experimenting with it a bit. So if there's a surfeit of posts involving it, you know why. Becherovka is a Czech herbal liqueur, invented by a shopkeeper named Josef Vitus Becher, who had 16 children. Like most liqueurs, it's complex, but there's a strong cinnamon flavor and an undercurrent of anise. It's a bit more mixing friendly than most liqueurs, and so the experimenting hasn't been too hard on me.


My first concoction is a saucy little thing. It's very tasty and complex. I used bourbon to give it a decent backbone without overpowering it with the spiciness of a rye. A strong gin might be a good base spirit as well. I added some burlesque bitters balances out cinnamon. This resulted in a flavor mildly reminiscent of an Atomic Fireball, though the complexity of the Becherovka prevented it from becoming too candy-like. Recipe after the jump.

Tomato and Onion Stuffed Pork Chop

Occasionally, you're at the store, and you can't find what you're looking for. This time, I was at Harris Teeter trying to find a nice big juicy pork chop. They didn't have a nice big juicy pork chop. They did have small butterflied pork chops, which didn't look too bad, and my wife suggested we could stuff them with some of the heirloom tomatoes we got in our CSA. So we picked them up and took them home.

We poked around the internet, and found this recipe to use as a guide. So I chopped up one and a half tomatoes with an onion and a not insubstantial amount of garlic. I fried that in a tablespoon of butter and a roughly equivalent amount of olive oil. There was a lot of liquid floating around, and I was tempted to just wait until it had all boiled off. But I thought that would just mean the vegetables would end up stewed and tasteless. So I let it cook a while, and then used a slotted spoon to transfer the vegetables to a bowl, so it wasn't too liquidy. The vegetables then got mixed with some feta and some fresh oregano and basil. 

I ended up with a lot of filling, so I don't think I even used half of it to stuff the pork chops. Once stuffed, I put the pork chops in the oven at 400 degrees and let them cook for 30 minutes. The pork chops ended up a bit overcooked. 25 minutes would have been sufficient I think. The stuffing, however, was absolutely delicious. We covered our green beans with it, and it was just as good as the duck fat roasted potatoes, which is saying something!