Too hot for cassoulet

Actually, it's too hot for anything. Right now, as I type this at 3 am, it's over 30C in Chicago. It's pretty unbearable. I'm trying to not turn on my air conditioner, because the shock of stepping out of my bedroom into a thick blanket of heat makes me reconsider brushing my teeth and begin contemplating staying in bed all day. And I've talked to several people recently who don't even have air conditioners so it must be possible to survive. But what kind of life is this????

Paradoxically, I've been cooking a lot lately, which makes my apartment an inferno. I did Pork Salome last night, which wasn't so bad because it cooks quickly. Today, bizarrely, I decided to make lentils and sausage. I looked around online for a recipe and found something that touted itself as a modified approach to cassoulet, and decided to give it a try. Here's what I did. Do give it a try, but seriously, wait until autumn.

You need:
1 2/3 cups lentils
4 cups water (with maybe 2 tsps chicken broth powder)
Fresh thyme
I didn't have bay leaves but I'll bet they'd be nice
White wine

Chorizo (I used 3 sausages)
Chicken (I used 2 breasts. I don't really like thighs, but if you do, you'd probably prefer them).

1 bell pepper
1 onion
4-5 cloves garlic
2/3 cup chicken broth

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Put the lentils in a pot with the water/broth and thyme and bay leaves if you have em. Bring to a boil, lower heat, simmer for maybe 20 minutes. Add some wine when it occurs to you it might be a nice touch. A dry white would be good, all I had was an alvarinho, and I added about a glass. When they're done. Turn off or cook on very low heat while you do the rest?

Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper, and maybe some dried thyme (or oregano? I love oregano. The dried thyme was kind of meh.) Chop your onion, pepper and garlic. Then chop the chorizo. Fry the chorizo until it's brown and the fat runs off it some. Add onion, pepper and garlic. Sauté until the onion is soft, add to lentil pot. Chop chicken. Add some oil to the pan, and brown your chicken in it. Then add that last little bit of broth and cook until done. Pour all of it into the lentil pot. Squeeze lemon juice into it. If you have and like it, maybe add parsley. I don't really care for it myself.

So, overall it was pretty delicious, except:
1. Omg who wants to eat when it's this hot out. Not me. I took a cold shower after cooking and even so, I had to force myself to eat half a bowl, tasty though it was.
2. The lentils kind of turned to mush. not really a problem. But the other night my sweetie and I had dinner at Avec and we had this amazing lentil dish where the lentils were totally cooked, but still kind of firm on the outside. Each lentil was autonomous, they kind of scattered beneath the spoon like giant grains of sand. It was great. My lentils, on the other hand, were almost like refried beans. How do I make them independent creatures? Did I cook them too long? Do they need a simmer followed by an ice bath? Wouldn't they lose all those great flavors if I did that? What do you think, Internet?

China's pork reserves

Via my friend Ben

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/world/asia/16china.html?ref=dining

Pork reserves. What a curious concept. Not even real ones, I guess, because it's not an actual freezer full of pork, it's a payment made to farmers to keep their herds at a certain level. And apparently unleashing these reserves will barely made a difference. The whole thing is very odd.

Cost of bacon rising

My google reader alerted me that bacon will be more expensive this summer. Which is interesting, because I've always been somewhat alarmed by the fact that it's cheaper than anything else. Seriously, a lot of Chinese restaurants in Chicago charge $1-2 less for the pork dishes than even the vegetable ones. According to the article, a major factor is the rising price of corn (can we PLEASE quit with the ethanol subsidies people? This is ridiculous.), but I kind of wonder if general trendiness isn't playing a role as well.

Bacon Ipsum

Credit to Harold for the discovery: Bacon Ipsum.

I did not know what loren ipsum was, but it's kind of neato.

The straight up meat ipsum is kind of... horrifying in a way. Overwhelming. The Meat+Filler is more entertaining, to me at least.

Pork Salome

Unfortunately, I no longer have a smart phone: it has been replaced with a $20 device whose camera leaves much to be desired.

I lived in Boise, Idaho for awhile as an adolescent. I did not like it very much, and there's very little I miss about it. But if I had a teleporter, I would be having lunch at Bar Gernika on a weekly basis*. And I would order the Solomo sandwich with croquetas on the side. The warm, soft, chickeny croquetas - I have never encountered their equal, and attempting to make them at home would probably break my heart. The Solomo, or rather, its pork and pimiento filling, I did decide to attempt however, and this is what I came up with:

PORK SALOME**

~1 pound pork - my grocery store sells what appears to be a pork loin that has been thinly sliced. You basically want relatively thin slices and/or medallions, how you get 'em is up to you.

1 jar roasted peppers (I happened to have some Trader Joe's brand handy)

1 lime

1 clove garlic (or so)

salt, pepper

Juice the lime into a bowl. Add the entire jar of roasted peppers, liquid included (you may want to dice them a bit. I didn't, out of laziness, figuring I could just do that once they got to my plate. It worked out fine. But if you are making this for a group, I'd suggest strips or something along those lines). Add pork, stir well. Leave to marinate for a few hours (probably not more than 2-3, and maybe it'd be better to do less. I think the lime juice dries the pork out some. I guess you could potentially add it during cooking, but I think maybe it like, shocks the meat into absorbing more flavor? I dunno.).

(If, as I did, you're making kale and rice to accompany this dinner - which was quite delicious - you'd begin put the rice on, then get the kale going, then turn your attention to the meat. The timing worked out perfectly.)

In a large pan, melt a pat of butter and add a bit of olive oil. Fish the pork out with your fingers and brown it on each side, adding garlic salt and pepper to the side facing up once you've put the piece down. Once it's browned - ie, basically cooked, if it's thinly sliced - squeeze in the garlic (I admit, you can probably skip this step) and then dump the marinade over the top, bring to a boil, and turn it off. Boom, you're done.

The pork is juicy and infused with the flavor of the roast peppers. I think the lime is key, because it cuts the heavy sweetness of the peppers just a bit. I'd recommend a nice white wine to go with it. I had some Espirito Lagoalva 2007 in the fridge, so I drank that. Pleasant a wine though it be, it was a little too sweet. I think you want something slightly dry, but still fruity.

*It's a strange quirk of Boise - it is a strange magnet for various ethnic minorities. There is a Basque part of town, which is actually one block, consisting of a small museum/cultural center, some sidewalk art, and Bar Gernika. Or at least, that was the case when I lived there, which was about 15 years ago.

**Yes, I changed the name slightly.

Bacon Lentil Pap

I was sort of scavenging around the kitchen for scraps to make into dinner last night, and figured that lentils would probably make for a solid meal. In searching for what to do with them, I came upon a number of recipes, one of which suggested cooking them in pork fat. This, of course, seemed like a great idea. I then found some other recipes, and combined them in my head with inspiration from a recipe I really like for pappa al pomodoro* (now that I look at it, the resemblance is actually quite minimal, and is based mostly on the bread and vinegar part, but whatever), from which this dish derives is onomatopoeic ish? name.

So.

2/3 cup lentils

2 slices thick cut bacon (more is great too, that's just what I had handy)

8 cloves garlic

3 slices bread (day-old/stale works well, but fresh is fine too. but it needs to be real bread, the quality kind with a proper crust, not some sliced sammich shit.)

oregano

vinegar (red wine is best, but I ran out and supplemented with apple cider and then, in desperation, balsamic)

salt

Peel and finely chop the garlic. In a heavy bottomed pot over medium-low heat, fry the bacon. Once the fat has rendered, remove the strips, setting them aside to cool. Maybe throw in some extra bacon grease - I did. Add the diced garlic to the fat, and as soon as it starts to sizzle and get fragrant - ie, before it turns brown or black, which happens so much faster than you'd expect - add the lentils and toss. Then add 4 cups of water, some salt, a bunch of oregano, and a good few glugs of vinegar. Cook at a medium-low simmer until the lentils are done. Every recipe I consulted said this would take about 25 minutes, but wtf, my lentils took like an hour. What's that about**. Anyways, be sure to check on 'em occasionally and add more water if necessary. Once the lentils are basically cooked, toast your 3 slices of bread (stale bread would not require toasting), roughly chop it, and add it to the pot. Boom, you're done.

EDIT:

Oh, I forgot - about 20 minutes into cooking, I discovered that I had two very nice tomatoes, so I chopped them up and added them as well. You could probably use a can of diced ones too. I think they're a good touch.

*Which, by the way, I have made with a surprise addition of chorizo, and it worked very well. I thought I'd posted about that, but apparently not. Mea culpa!

**Incidentally, one recipe I saw said to put the lentils in cold salted water, bring it to a boil, cook 5 minutes, remove from heat, let them sit for an hour, then cook 25 minutes. This seemed like a royal pain in the ass, but maybe it would be more effective?

Bacon Van Gogh

Via Charlie: step by step instructions for recreating Van Gogh's Starry Night in bacon.