Mock Porchetta Bday Dinner

The recipe that Greg has been jonesing for is mock porchetta.  That article in Bon Appetit Magazine (from Epicurious) set this in motion last year and its been a cooking quest ever since.

What better reason to cook a mound of pork, than to cook it for your friends? Not my first choice for a birthday dinner, but okay - I'm open minded...

I ordered the required belly for pickup 3 days in advance of the meal, and it took 2 days to come in to our butcher.  They only sell the whole belly, from which I was told would yield 6 pounds approx.  Perfect, exactly as the recipe called for.  Wrong! Try 14 pounds.  That belly was huge.  We cut off a chunk, and may make some bacon with it, alas, what to do with 8 extra pounds of pork belly...but you also need to order a 2-3 lb boneless, centre cut pork loin.

There is a lot of assembly required for this meal, and planning.  The recipe says to start at least 24 hours ahead.  I am the queen of getting my heart set on a recipe, and realizing at dinner time, I actually needed WAY more time to prep the dish.  I think this problem stems from not actually reading recipes completely...this is not my type of thing, so it's great that Greg stick handles this.  I've already managed to contribute to messing up the meal by ordering the wrong quantities of pork...so as per most meals, I stick to the sidelines and enjoy a gin and tonic made with the best combo - Hendrick's Gin and Fentiman's Tonic.  My role here, other than drinking, is to toast the 3 tbsp of fennel seeds and 2 tbsp of crushed chili flakes...very important component right?  They are nice and done when they are fragrant in the pan, always using low heat, only about a minute.  Then grind these spices with 2 tbsp fresh sage, 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, and 3 cloves of minced garlic. 

This belly is like having the biggest slab of bacon on your counter. You have to have it skin side down, to score it in a checkerboard pattern.  Then, flip it skin side up, and poke dozens of holes through the skin.  Get out your trusty meat mallet and pound the skin for 3 minutes to tenderize (this helps with crispiness).  Arrange the loin down the middle of the belly.  Season generously with (kosher) salt, and rub the loin and belly with the fennel/chili mixture, and top with orange slices. 

Next comes a hard part (well okay, this would be hard for me, maybe not for others).  Roll the belly around the loin, tie crosswise with kitchen twine at half inch intervals.  Move the roast to a wire rack set in a rimmed baking sheet.  This was the main assembly part, that whole visual part I commonly fail at.  Nothing to do with the gin at all.  This prepared roast then sits in your fridge for one to two days, which allows the skin to air dry. 

Before cooking, this puppy needs to be brought back up to room temperature, which will take about two hours.  You can preheat the oven to 500 degrees, and season the roast. Put the roast in the oven, on the rack and baking sheet, turning once, for 40 minutes.  Reduce to 300 degrees and roast, turning the pan occasionally.  The meat should read 145 degrees when you remove it from the oven.  This will take one and a half to two hours.  If the skin doesn't get crispy, the recipe recommends increasing the heat to 500 and roasting for ten more minutes.  It should be rested for ten minutes before serving.  This allows the juices in the, meat to redistribute, rather than just pouring out as soon as you cut it up.  Resting is important, because no one wants a plate of blood, do they?

We actually rested the meat for about an hour - just kept it aside covered in some tin foil. For a group of 15-20, this worked well. We served it with a quince aioli and two side salads, one a frisee salad and the other an arugula salad (from the garden). Even though the meal isn't too rich, it's still nice to have those greens to cut it. This was a big hit with the group, and what little amount we had left was great for sandwiches with dijon and arugula.....delish!!

Coconut Southern Comfort Layer Cake of Deliciousness

I wanted to make a decadent layer cake for the party. First, I started out by reading the birthday cake from Momofuku's Milk Bar (by Christina Tossi). However, due to time restraints and some of the harder to find ingredients in that cake, such as citric acid and glucose, I decided to "settle" with the Coconut Layer Cake recipe I had seen in Bon Appetit Magazine a couple of months ago.

To be honest, most of the description drew me in.  It sounded and looked fancy, but if your cakes weren't perfect, they would be covered up with lots of icing and toasted coconut! Good news for me since my problems are with the aesthetics! I really love baking. I think it's because it has to be exact, there is a science to it, and I always have to follow a recipe. It's not like Greg's recipes from his head, I can actually quantify the items...and I definitely have had more successes with my baking than making dinner.

I printed off this recipe on a Friday afternoon at work, and someone picked it up and exclaimed: "Ooh, who's making this?"  That was before they saw the nutritional information page...which I didn't even bring home - that went straight to recycling.  I mean really, what would you expect from a cake that is made of coconut oil, shredded coconut, buttermilk, cake flour, sugar and baking powder??  I haven't even mentioned the icing yet...because I made the 4 cakes this evening (they are cut in half to make an 8 layer cake), but managed to wreck 2 of them! Here I call oven foul - my two cakes on the top of the oven were perfect, but the bottom two had a burnt outside, even though I placed the racks just as the recipe said. Tomorrow I will redo and bake two at a time...I knew something was up when they were finishing up all at different times! I probably could have saved the cakes, but pigged out and tried one right away before Greg had a chance to tell me they were salvageable...whoops...

Round two of the cakes was a success, thank goodness.  It really was the most coconutty cake, even without the icing.  Given how much coconut (coconut oil and shredded coconut) is in the cake, it's not surprising.
I bravely strided on that afternoon - one hour before company was to arrive - with the icing, which was butter and coconut and cream cheese heavy!  I learnt the hard way that when making a "southern" recipe, when it calls for cream cheese, you should probably go with the cheap regular blocks.  I made the mistake of buying "fancy" cream cheese which I think was whipped.  That of course made the icing turn to soup.  Round two!!!  After a trip to the store, it was successful with your run of the mill cream cheese. 

Just like the recipe said, it was convenient to have all that icing to cover up any cake errors.  Even better, all those toasted coconut chips cover any poor icing skills (like mine...).  In the end, this cake was so tall that we had to keep it cool in the garage instead of the fridge.

It deinitely wowed the table, as did my stories of how this thing came to be.  If I were to make it again, I would definitely know what I was up against!  Quite worth it though in the end, down to every last bit of coconut.

The recipe can be found here: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/02/coconut-southern-comfort-layer-cake
Enjoy!

Birthday Dinner - Just the Two of Us

It's my 28th birthday today, and seeing as it's a Monday - we are postponing any celebrations till the weekend.  Actually, this is the first time in four years I will be throwing a birthday party - it seemed like the year to do it because we are housesitting, so we will definitely have the space to accomodate people!  More on that later though.

Being that it's my first post, I thought I would keep it to a pretty simple dinner - I have a hard enough time keeping up with recipes and cooking while just watching, let alone trying to write at the same time!  Okay I'm lying just a bit, there is definitely some vinho verde involved, with some more nice wine to follow.

Main tonight is seared east coast scallops with fiddle heads and beurre blanc.  Greg (said significant other in my "about" section) says: that's too simple, is he going to have to try harder?? No I say, that's the point, keep it simple tonight so I can follow along!

It was great to finally see fresh scallops at our local shop, as well as fiddleheads that they have from time to time.  First thing to know about fiddleheads is that you can't actually eat them raw - they look like a mini fern and must be cooked first.  For dinner tonight, they are blanched first for about 5 or 6 minutes till they are tender.  Then put them in an ice and water bath immediately to stop them from cooking any more and being over done.

As I'm asking all of these cooking questions, rather than just sitting at the kitchen island drinking wine, Greg is realizing that there may be a side effect of me writing out the recipes that mostly come from his head - I might actually become a better cook...we will have to see about that.  The difference between him and I is, although I am terrible at following recipes, I always need measurements and times.  Greg operates with terms like, "till they are done", "use a bit", which just puts me in a spin because I am foreve trying to figure out what those terms mean to him, let alone actually cooking!

Back to the bday recipe.  Dry the scallops with paper towel.  Next step is for the beurre blanc: cook a couple of chopped shallots until soft, with unsalted butter (always unsalted).  If you are even asking yourself the question, "but can I use margarine?" please do not read on because you clearly don't won't be able to enjoy these recipes - sorry.  Add a bayleaf and some kosher salt.  I should have started this blog by writing a section on "the essentials" so I could rant about the greatness of kosher salt and unsalted butter.  Later...

Add "some" white wine (classic case of Greg vs. Vanessa measuring - this is approximately a cup).  Let it reduce, cook down a bit, until there are only a few tablespoons of liquid remaining.  Get a stick of cold butter and chop in to small cubes, keep chilled.  In a large heavy bottomed pan, add olive oil, finely diced shallots, and a pinch of salt, on low heat - this is for the fiddleheads for later.  Strain the shallots, butter and wine mixture, making sure to push down on the shallots, and put back in your sauce pot.  Note you are keeping the liquid and chucking the shallots, do not throw this out!  Add the butter cubes to this liquid, whisking the whole time. Heat a large heavy bottomed pan with grapeseed oil (its hot enough when it ripples on the surface), add scallops.  Add fiddleheads to their pan, turn up the heat to medium, just to reheat.  Once scallops have browned on one side (about 1.5 mins), turn over and add a knob of butter.  Let the scallops sear on the other side and turn off the heat.  Place the reheated fiddleheads on the center of the plate, scallops on top, surrounded by the beurre blanc.

We enjoyed this with a bottle of chenin blanc + viognier from Pine Ridge, 2010.  Cheers, Vanessa.