How To Eat (that)

Erik and I have been cooking together for a while now. We're pretty good at maintaining our roles. Erik is the chef. I am the cook. The chef always knows what he is doing. The cook often wanders off course and finds new ways of annoying the chef.

Pork sandwiches being one of them.

The original recipe called for marinading the pork before cooking it. Here's the new version - a happy accident after someone's inability to follow direction. Ahem.

Heat the Oven at 350°
Line a roasting pan with the banana leaves and place the pork in the center, cover with the leaves and foil and into the oven. After 3 hours check the meat. The pork will be ready when the meat easily breaks apart. When this happens remove from the oven, let cool. When the pork is cool enough to handle by hand, but not yet cold, shred with a couple of forks.
We serve them with coleslaw a little mayo and carolina sauce.


Pour the following marinade over the pork and let sit overnight.

Marinade:
Annato paste 2 Tbsp
cumin 1 tsp
paprika 2 Tbsp
thyme 1 tsp
oregano 1 tsp
black pepper 1 tsp
salt 2 Tbsp
garlic 4 cloves
onion 1/2 cup
jalapenos with seeds 4 to 8
(your choice for spice)
beer 1/2 can
orange juice from 1
lime juice from 1
All the marinade ingredients go into a blender. Make smooth.

We've been cooking. We've been cooking a lot. We made a one-day-a-week restaurant in a pizza joint. We went down to California and cooked food for 2,000 at Phelp's Winery. We've taught cooking classes. I taught a class on dim sum. I've served, I've cooked, I've chefed, I've bussed. I've marveled at my husband's ability to remain cool and charming through equipment breakdowns, food shortages and my unwaivering inability to wait tables.

Now we're opening a restaurant.

From when I started this weblog until now, my perspective on food has changed quite a bit. Life on the other side of the apron is a laborious one. Food, as it goes out the kitchen door, isn't as interesting as when it arrives at your plate. Cooking for reals is hard. In reading other weblogs about food, I have found a severe and passionate hate for most food writing. From the New York Times to the lady who insists on calling herself girl, I have learned to roll my eyes away from the pages upon pages of food drivel.

It is no compliment to call someone a foodie. Indeed, should you be called a foodie by someone wearing a white apron, you are being sneered at.

So, how does one write about food without turning the subject into a precious little princess never to be treated like the dirty little commodity that she is?

This, my friends, is something that I have wondered about for nearly a year.

In reading My Years in France, by Julia Child, I was struck by the fact that she was, in many ways, the first famous foodie. Where she was once completely ignorant about food, she wormed her way into the kitchen and into chefdom. She was, however, not a chef of the people.

She didn't have to work along side crass cooks who can only pronounce the unlatin names for genitalia. She didn't have food return to the kitchen because the salad didn't display enough feta. She never saw the scowl of over-entitled diners who consider themselves experts in something they've never done. Julia Child never poured half a pitcher of beer down a woman's back (on accident - really). I love what she did for our country, but she was a home cook and a home cook she will remain.

I've come to dislike food television for all of it's cake making contests and pedestrian shows put on by pedestrian hosts with perky smiles and no skill. Anthony Bourdain? Predictable, snot-nosed brat (but at least he's cut himself while working). Andrew Zimmer? How many gross things can that man eat and why can't he learn the appropriate etiquette for eating them? In the end, food has stopped being entertaining to me.

My mother, who died in April, used to consider cooking as her form of prayer. I've come to agree with her. True cooking, true creation is not nearly as exciting as tantrums and flailing about. It's quiet and it's sacred. Even, as I've come to learn from my husband, in the restaurant kitchen.

Still it remains – the question – how do you write about food without the trite goo that sticks to your fingers as you type?

I don't know. I will keep trying.

After roasting the Ballotine in the oven, Erik de-glazed the skillet by putting it over heat and whisking in red wine and chicken broth (made from the bones from the chicken) and a teaspoon of flour.

The crispy bits – the roasted garlic and roasting juices – combined with the liquids and stomped out a powerful gravy.

Once the sauce thickened, Erik added a shot of Clear Creek Apple Brandy .

Served over the sliced Ballotine, life got really, really, really good.

How quickly can you bone out a chicken? Jacques Pepin can rip the flesh from a chicken in less than 90 seconds. Me? 9 minutes plus a running start of prayer and bribes.

Boning out a chicken is the first step to Chicken Ballotine – a bird that is stuffed, rolled and trussed up tighter that a hussy on Halloween.

Then comes the stuffing of roasted sweet potato in one half of the bird and lentils and mustard greens in the other. Each leg has it’s own flavor which is kind of exciting for those of us with limited attention spans.

The trussing has always gotten me in trouble, causing the bird to look like a Picasso Ballotine –a disfigured but essentially good thing that makes for an interesting presentation. This past Ballotine, knot gods behind me, the thing looked (mmostly) right.


























Ballotine Stuffing:
Roasted sweet potato with caramelized red onion

Black lentils and mustard greens sautéed with garlic and salt

We roasted the thing at 350° for nearly 90 minutes.

If I had to do all over again, I’d lower the temperature a bit on the back side of the cooking time.

The lemons added to the skillet roast beautifully and go well is duck cracklins, should you have them about.

We had a happy growing and gathering moment the other day. Erik and I found a quince tree on our property.

We had also harvested our tomatoes. The Seattle tomatoes did relatively nothing on the vine. Some had been volunteers (they tasted terrible) others were simply under ripe. The cherry and yellow plum tomatoes did the best.

Our Eastern Washington garden produced tons of stewing tomatoes and a few white heirloom tomatoes. In the end, with our travel schedule, we had to stew, puree, strain and freeze everything.

So this is what happened:
Half an onion
Two pounds of yellow tomatoes
A whole quince, cut in two
Some salt
Olive oil to coat

Roast at 350° until soft (about and hour)

Puree.

Strain.

Taste.

Should be tart and bright and perfect over an artichoke heart dressing or over roasted leg of lamb.