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.