Day 30: the calm before the storm

Here I was, the second last day.  Tomorrow was already planned, a lunch with my family where a suckling pig would be the guest of honour.   But something about a big finish can make you take your attention off the here and now.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons I had no will to make breakfast this morning, the other being that I was tired and cranky from a distinct lack of sleep.  The flap on the fan in my bathroom was slapping open and shut all night.  Sometimes I can tune it out, and other times it drives me nuts.  Last night was the latter.

I thought I could make up lost ground by picking up something close to work, but a packed schedule conspired against me… I gave up and vowed to make up for my breakfast laziness/failure at lunch…and I did.  By the time I got to eat, my stomach was making more noises than an old arthritic man climbing a set of steep stairs.  The groaning could be heard all across the office.  The cure was found in leftovers.  Not only did I assemble a kick-ass sandwich using last night’s pork cutlets topped with mayonnaise, grainy mustard, havarti cheese and a squeeze of lemon, but I also managed to find some fried pork dumplings at a place I go to often, but where I never noticed they made them.  Let’s call those dumplings buried treasure…even though they were quite fresh.

Pork cutlet sandwich

The pork dumpling cousin of the cookie monster...nom nom nom!

Blood sausage made another appearance at dinner.  In searching it out, I had made a quick sweep of St. Lawrence Market, but there was none to be found.  There was all manner of other sausages, game meats and every type of kebab known to man.  But still, no blood sausage.  Undeterred, I ventured into the recesses of the basement, where I found a small European grocer who had a long coil that looked like something out of an adult film…not that I would know of course.  I asked the girl “what do you serve with this?”  She looked at me blankly and said “You serve it hot” as if “hot” was an ingredient.  Dinner was hot blood sausage, pork liver pate with goat’s cheese brie and an arugula salad with avocado. 

Blook sausage...with the secret ingredient...heat

Pork liver pate on crostini

Day 29: More than just cooking

There’s no question that my cooking skills have improved since the beginning of March.  Not necessarily knife skills or technique, but more along the lines of what I’m able to cook.  Opening your horizons on what you will eat is just as important as improving your skills on how you will cook it.  I would have never thought that I would become a fan of kidneys, tails, feet and blood, but I did.  The doors of perception on what is possible with the humble pig have been blown wide open.

My cleaning skills are another thing that has improved since the beginning of March.  I’ve always been known for keeping a meticulous kitchen, but I’ve had to step up my cleaning regimen.  A lot of pork has gone through my kitchen, and with it, the splatters, drips and spills that go along with cooking.  I almost pulled my geriatric ripcord when I considered covering my whole stove top with aluminum foil so that cleanup would be easier, but esthetics got the better of me and I chose to stock up on Windex and paper towels instead.

Just saying aluminum foil reminds me of people who call it “foil paper”.  Where the hell did they come up with that?  They’re probably the same people who say tuna fish.  Why do they do that?  You don’t call salmon “salmon fish” or halibut “halibut fish”, so why “tuna fish”?  I don’t get it.  Maybe the foil paper people got wax paper and aluminum foil mixed up in their childhood after head trauma and never recovered.

Breakfast was another version of quick and easy.  In honour of my “anything goes” approach to breakfast, I made some pork and watercress wontons, and topped them with a drizzle of olive oil, soy sauce and some cracked black pepper.  I hate to admit it, but I showed this meal no respect and ate the wontons standing up while I caught the news on TV.  It’s sad when a meal gets reduced to an inconvenient necessity, but sometimes that’s the way it goes. 

I didn’t realize how much food was leftover from last night until I piled it into a plate at work.  This lunch of shoulder blade steak and pasta didn’t align with my portion control strategy, but I had a hard time pushing the plate away and ate most of it.  Alex was shocked to first see me eat that much, and then throw what remained of the pasta out.  “Two days in a row” I told him.  “It’s done.”

My original idea for dinner was to bread and fry some pork cutlets and have them with a salad, but that plan got thrown out the window when the phone rang and my mom invited me over for dinner.  Nino, a close friend of the family had brought dinner over and I they wanted me to join them.  In a complete and total acknowledgement of my mission, my mom said “We’re having pork.”  It was like music to my ears.  I told my mother that I’d come over, but only if we could make the cutlets; she assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem.  Nino had prepared fettine di maiale alla pizzaiola, which loosely translated means pork cutlet with the toppings from a pizza: oregano, tomato, onion, garlic, peppers and mushrooms.

I only had half a portion while my mother got to work preparing the breaded cutlets.  It didn’t take her long, and before I knew it I had topped it with a squeeze of lemon and was half way to fried pork heaven.  I can’t be sure, but I think that I prefer the breaded pork to veal or chicken.  A blind taste test is in order.

  

Expert hands at work

We closed out the meal with zeppole, a traditional Italian dessert made in the weeks surrounding the feast of Saint Joseph on March 19^th.  While the whole world gets drunk for St. Patrick’s day, the Italians eat zeppole and get fat for St. Joseph.  I have a suggestion for next year, bacon zeppole…trust me, it’ll work.

Day 28: Restating the Goals

I stopped in to see the guys at Totera yesterday to order a suckling pig for the final dinner.  In speaking with Sam and Mike, I confirmed that I had eaten every “available” part of the pig, quite different from my original goal of “every” part of the pig; but I would have to be satisfied with that.  A combination of regulations and lack of a market for certain parts had conspired against me.  The guys told me that I could probably get those strange off cuts, but I wouldn’t be able to trust the source.  I’m a little disappointed in this setback, but I'll be successful in my main goal of featuring and not merely incorporating pork in each meal.

I hadn’t planned for breakfast, and my fridge which typically has a couple of tubs of yogurt in it was yogurtless.  I’ve been told by many that looking into my fridge you’d expect a family of four to be living in my house; not a single guy who loves to cook and eat.

I decided to stick with my original bacon yogurt idea from yesterday and picked up some greek-style plain yogurt and a takeout container full of bacon and a couple of breakfast sausages, I combined the two of them and used it as a dipping sauce for two Asian steamed buns; one with barbecued pork, the other with ham and egg.  I won’t claim that the experiment was a complete success; perhaps because the yogurt was too thick, or there wasn’t enough bacon in the yogurt, or maybe it was because I didn’t let the yogurt sit for long enough to absorb the bacon-ness.  I'll get it right next time.

Bacon yogurt...it holds amazing potential.

An aside about yogurt.  I watch a lot of cooking shows and have noticed that the Brits pronounce it “ya-gurt” and not “yo-gurt”.

I entered the boardroom where my working lunch webinar was taking place.  The rest of the people in the room were waiting for pizza to be delivered, but I didn’t plan on waiting for them to start my lunch.  It was piping hot from the microwave and when I opened the container, the aromas of both the sauce and the pork tongue in it filled the room.  I felt slightly self-conscious as I tucked into it.  Since I was the only one eating, I was reminded of those “celebrities eating” photos you sometimes see in the newspaper.  Against every instinct I cut small pieces, and ate very slowly so as not to give off the impression of being a glutton.  When it arrived, the pizza the others were eating looked undercooked and unappetizing, as if it was rushed through the cooking process to meet the “delivery in xx minutes or it’s free” deadline.  I declined a slice for that reason alone, but would have done so anyways since I’ve learned that pepperoni on mass market pizza is actually made of beef.  Sacrilege!

Dinner was simple.  I still had some sauce left from last night’s tongue, so I prepared a bit of pasta for it.  And then some pork shoulder blade steaks grilled quickly on the barbecue on account of their thickness, which was quite thin in fact.  I was thankful for the quick preparation since the meals for the last couple of nights we more like weekend meals that required at least a couple of hours to cook.  After work, a quick and easy dinner works for me; quick and easy…but don’t you accuse my pork of being dirty, that’s just plain ignorant.

"Pride of Szeged" rub in full effect.  Hungary shouldn't be so proud; it was just OK.





Day 28: Pork Based Media

I've been meaning to include some of these gems in my daily postings, but I keep forgetting.

Here they are in rapid fire fashion.

 

© 2011 – 2013 Alyson Thomas, available at shop.drywellart.com



© 2011 – 2013 Alyson Thomas, available at shop.drywellart.com

Day 27: Slipping the Tongue

I’m nearing the end and the finish line is becoming visible through the thick perfume of bacon.  Breakfasts past have all blurred into one and I couldn’t remember if this morning’s breakfast was a new episode or a re-run.  I had previously criticized PC’s Bacon Marmalade for using bacon seasoning; artificial bacon flavour in a product marketed as “upscale” is just plain wrong and completely unnecessary considering how cheap and plentiful bacon is.  My previous version of this breakfast sandwich used crispy pork skin, this morning’s used bacon.  It was breakfast on the QT… as in quick and tasty.  No offence to my breakfasts over the past few weeks, but I’m longing for some yogurt.  This gives me an idea for tomorrow morning.

Bacon Marmalade and Bacon...genius!

There were plenty of leftovers from last night for today’s lunch; a few pieces of pig tail and a container full of my mother’s liver stew.  As usual, I offered to share, but the mere mention of liver causes fear in most people.  Peter, my faithful non-food-loser lunch partner was willing to try both dishes and he came away quite pleased.  The sauce of both was amazing; salty and sticky for the tails, and thick and bacony for the liver.  I freely admit to having my own fear of liver up until recent years which is understandable since unlike bacon liver really is an acquired taste.  I remember going to Swiss Chalet a few years back and nearly gagging when I ate some chicken liver that hadn’t been removed from the bird.  I was thankful for the hot lemon tea they put on the table, it got rid of the liver flavour in a hurry.  The waitress was a little surprised when I asked her for a top up…what was her problem?  But I seem to have gotten over my liver aversion at least in part, and that can only be a good thing since a broad palette opens you up to new food experiences.  Now if I could only get over my dislike of and suspected allergy to eggplant…vile weed!

Sticky tail

If last night’s dinner covered the “tail” portion, tonight’s was the “tip”.  Some people would tell you that the snout is the “tip” but I disagree.  The “tip” is technically the tongue since that’s the part that can extend the furthest forward.  As you may have guessed, I don’t really have any reservations about what parts of the animal I eat, but I fully admit that I have no fucking clue what I’m doing when it comes to cooking tongue.  My earliest recollection of cooked tongue was when my mom used to make cow’s tongue occasionally.  I remember going up to a bubbling pot that was sitting on our harvest gold stove and lifting the lid to see what was cooking.  As I lifted the lid, the tongue rose slightly out of the water, almost as if it was coming to get me.  That memory stuck for a long time and it wasn’t until I was well into my teen years that I was willing to try it once again.

My mom gave me some brief instructions last night that hinged on first boiling the tongue, then stripping it of its layer of papillae (taste buds) and then either frying to brown the meat or cooking it briefly in a tomato sauce.  Since this pig shared some genetic material with Gene Simmons, there was enough tongue to try both preparations.  I needn’t have been so apprehensive about cooking the tongue, nothing could have been easier.  I ran into a snag when peeling the layer of papillae away from the meat because some of it wasn’t cooperating.  I found a simple solution to that problem in a sharp knife and cut away the offending layers.

In the end I prepared the tongue three different ways: boiled with a drizzle of olive oil; boiled, then pan seared; and boiled, then pan seared with tomato bacon sauce.  I’m completely convinced that If I served it as presented here, nobody around the table would know its provenance, and everyone would agree that it was delicious.  Now...give me some tongue!

Pan fried

Boiled, with a drizzle of olive oil

With tomato bacon sauce