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Hungry for Pork

I've been craving pork ever since I saw the photo of this beautiful pork sandwich--at New York's Porchetta--on Serious Eats last week.

Cocktails on the iPhone

Cocktails, on the phone: the future is truly here!

Photo from spiritsandcocktails.com

Cocktails--my absolute favorite iPhone app, both for reference (while at the store, looking to buy everything I need to make a cocktail) and for browsing fun--just got a recent upgrade. Along with the usual bug fixes, speed improvements, &c., they've added a new collection of recipes, which they're calling the Contemporary Masters series:

Our inaugural release includes a generous 78 recipes from Seattle mixologist Jamie Boudreau. We’re confident you will find in his recipes a rich trove of fresh ideas and techniques. In another first, we’re implementing in this release our first real batch of ingredient recipes: formulations for extraordinary ingredients you make yourself, ahead of time.

The drink I'm most excited to try is the Twelve Five Cocktail, a mixture of scotch, absinthe, Punt e Mes, and Benedictine.

Warm Kabocha Squash Salad

Another weekend, and yet another winner from the Lucques cookbook! This was a warm kabocha squash salad with bacon, roncal (I substituted manchego), and pecans.

This recipe from a 2004 issue of Sunset (penned by Suzanne Goin) approximates the recipe from the cookbook, as you'd expect, with a couple of slight changes.

I love kabocha squash, especially roasted as it was here, with olive oil, thyme, and some salt and pepper: it's sweet and delicious, and paired with bacon, a sherry-based vinaigrette, toasted pecans, shaved manchego, arugula... I'm hungry again, just thinking about it.

Bucatini all'Amatriciana

One of the major benefits of having made a batch of basic tomato sauce a couple of weeks ago is that I can now make one of my favorite pasta recipes, bucatini all'Amatriciana, using Mario Batali's recipe.

I've been making this dish for a couple of years, after we ate it at local Italian restaurant and loved it. It's a simple dish, at heart, and it can withstand a lot of experimentation & tweaking: I've made it with bacon, as well as with pancetta; I've made it with a basic 28oz can of San Marzano tomatoes, as well as with the aforementioned basic tomato sauce; I've even made it, once or twice, with a pasta other than bucatini.

But I've never been as happy with the Bucatini all'Amatriciana as I was the other night, when I made it with lovely chunks of pancetta and the basic tomato sauce. It was simple, hearty, and delicious.

Braised Chicken with Saffron Onions, Italian Couscous, and Dates

From the Lucques cookbook, dinner Saturday night, marinated for 24 hours or so: braised chicken with saffron onions, italian couscous, and a date relish. It was delicious, and our kitchen smelled incredible for hours afterward. The flavors all came together really well: tasted individually, the onions, date relish, and italian couscous (actually, fregola sarda) were just okay, but when they came together, they created a fantastic and fragrant dish.

I didn't take any photos, unfortunately. But Well Fed made this dish a couple of years ago and has some lovely photos.

Ginger Syrup

Over the past couple of months, I've made a bunch of lovely drinks from The Art of the Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the Classics, written by bartenders from Absinthe Brasserie & Bar, including some that featured my beloved rye.

Yesterday, I made their recipe for ginger syrup: 2oz thinly-sliced ginger; 1 cup of sugar; 1.5 cups of water; and 1.5 tsp of whole black peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 35-45 minutes, until the syrup is nice and strong and gingery. And then, use in your favorite cocktails that call for ginger syrup!

Pig's Head

On Gourmet.com, Chris Cosentino demonstrates how to butcher a whole pig's head (via Serious Eats), and how to make porchetta di testa from the meat, skin, snout, tongue, &c. Not for the squeamish, I guess.

At the Whole Hog cooking class I went to a couple of months ago, the instructor butchered a pig's leg while we watched, but a pig's head is even more fascinating.

And, I have to say--the look on the pig's face in the photo to the right makes me laugh every time I see it.

The Alinea Cookbook

The Alinea cookbook (via Michael Ruhlman) looks absolutely gorgeous. And only $31.50!

Of course, the recipes are difficult:

Will it be criticized? No doubt many will take pot shots at it for the difficulty of the recipes, but that would be a little silly. This is not a home-cook book. This is a document of the exact recipes the Alinea brigade uses. It's very complex stuff and some of the techniques are difficult to pull off, requiring a good deal of skill and delicacy.

But I do love a challenge.

Market

We took a break from our usual weekend visits to the Ferry Building Farmers Market this weekend--recent weeks have found it far too crowded, far too busy, far too much.

Instead, we walked down the hill to our local Noe Valley Farmers Market (website powered by Movable Type!), which we hadn't been to in over a year, now. And it's grown a lot, in that time, and for the better. There are still things I miss from the Ferry Building market: Mijita, Primavera, and other places to snack; the mushroom vendors; the varieties of arugula; &c.

But I prefer the layout & the pace of the Noe Valley market, and obviously, the fact that it's within walking distance for us is a huge plus.

Anyway, I bought some hangar steak at the Prather Ranch booth (this in itself is a great new addition from the last time we came to the market), and tonight I cooked that up with a shallot & red wine sauce (this recipe is a good approximation of how I cooked it), along with a classic steakhouse salad (well, a variation thereof, using goat cheese instead of blue cheese). Very tasty!

Lots of Batali

I enjoyed this quote from Mario Batali in the press release about the new Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine video game:

"I'm delighted to be involved with Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine," said Chef Batali. "My video game counterpart is as passionate and competitive in the virtual Kitchen Stadium as I am in real life..."

Speaking of Batali, I made a batch of his Basic Tomato Sauce last weekend. It was satisfying work, and when it was over, I had around four cups of fantastic sauce, most of which I froze. I've used some of it already in making spaghetti and meatballs this week--they were wonderful.

And finally, you can watch Batali making the pasta sauce on this episode of Molto Mario, which even features special guest Michael Stipe: