I am spending hours roasting a pork shoulder to have the pulled pork for tamales on Sunday. I wanted something more than my usual boiled parsley potatoes to go with it. Stuffing came to mind. However, my thanksgiving stuffing is enough for a crowd and it has been a while since I’ve used instant stuffing. Since this will be for pork I am using cornbread and I have reduced the proportions, because this is just for the three of us.
Karl’s Cornbread Stuffing
Filed under Side Dishes, Starches
Fun question: I was watching A Taste of History and I found out a bit of American history.
Who introduced tofu to America?
(hint: It was not Thomas Jefferson. Answer below the recipe.)
This dish is not what I went to the store to prepare. As I was sitting and thinking about dinner I remembered the stir-fried lettuce stem I was served in Chengdu. When I got to Lion Market, I found that they did not have it. I had seen it there before, so I guess it simply is not in season. What was in season was Chinese broccoli (gai-lan in Mandarin). What I normally do with this vegetable is make Spice Chicken and Noodles, but that is a real production number and takes hours to prepare. I wanted something simpler for a week day meal.
Twice-Cooked Tofu
Filed under Main Dishes, Vegetarian MD
I needed a vegetable side dish to go with my twice-cooked tofu. In China, it is a very poor household indeed that has only one dish to go with their rice. Variety is the spice of life and the Chinese take their food very seriously. Like the French, if they are not eating, they are talking about food or thinking about food.
To make a change from what I made to go with the twice-cooked pork, I used celery as the foil to the giant bamboo in my side dish.
Spicy Giant Bamboo and Celery
Filed under Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
Adapted from CHICHI’S CHINESE
When we lived in Chengdu, Sichuan, this was one of my favorite dishes. My Chinese friends would ask, “Why do you want to order THAT? It’s a peasant’s dish!” One of my first culture shocks in China was when one of my students proudly announced, “My father was a peasant. My mother was a peasant. I am a worker.” Because there are no peasants in America, we tend to forget that many other countries still have them.
One thing that I have learned since that time is that it is not just twice cooked pork that I like, but the way that dish was prepared by the old cook at the Panda House Restaurant. Many of the recipes that I have found, since I came back from China, call for fatty pork belly and cabbage. The cook at the Panda House used a very lean cut of pork and lots of green onions. The other recipes are nice, but his was spectacular.
Twice Cooked Pork (on the left) and
Spicy Giant Bamboo and Daikon Stir-fry
(on the right)
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork
I needed a vegetable side dish to go with my twice-cooked pork. I wanted something with spice, color and crunch. I had some daikon radish, red bell pepper and green onions left over from another meal that would add the color. I only needed some chili garlic sauce to add the spice and some giant bamboo for the crunch.
Stir-fry on the right
Filed under Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
I have always struggled with making latkes. I am forced to limit the amount of oil that I cook with because of Jan’s dietary restrictions. As a result, fried foods are not a common occurrence in my household. Without enough oil in the pan to half-deep fry the potatoes the centers of the latkes never quite get cooked before the outsides are nearing burnt. Thank you cooking shows! I noticed that professional cooks sometimes “finish off” pan-fried dishes to avoid this problem. Ten minutes in a 350° oven insured that they were cooked and did not destroy the crispness of the latkes.
Karl’s Sweet Potato Latkes with Apple Sauce
Filed under Breakfast, Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
Jan asked for some comforting, warm Italian Wedding Soup. After a brief warm spell, winter just came back to San Jose with a vengeance and there is snow on the brown hills. San Jose is in the south of the Bay Area with hills on both sides, there is a reason they call it Silicon Valley. Locals orient themselves by the color of the hills. The green hills, the coastal range, are always green and west. The brown hills, the Diablo Range, are higher, dryer and east. If there is any snow near San Jose it will be at the top of Mount Diablo.
Karl’s Itallian Wedding Soup
I did not like any of the recipes on-line; they were either too simple or too complex. Although I generally avoid recipes that are “add can of A” to “can of B,” I am not a food-Nazi. I will use some shortcuts, especially if it is a weekday meal. I looked up what defines Italian Wedding Soup on Wikipedia. The basic ingredients are green vegetables, meat (usually meatballs), chicken broth, and usually some kind of small pasta. I decided to be creative.
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Soups
Adapted from *Parsley* (Food.com)
This week’s challenge started when Jan and I were watching “Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.” One of the featured dishes was Lebanese Za’atar Pizza. I made this for dinner the next night and it was such a hit that Jan wanted a Lebanese meal built around it for Sunday.
Lebanese Chicken and Potatoes
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry
Adapted from orayeena “The secret for good eastern food. Actually it’s a mix of 8 spices.”
On the Internet many non-Middle Easterners complain about how they can’t get Lebanese 7 spices right. Orayeena let slip why this is so, because there are actually 8 spices in the mix. (Of course there is pepper in it! Why would anyone count the pepper as a spice?).
Karl’s Lebanese Seven Spices
Filed under Sauces and Spices
Long before you could easily find recipes on the Internet The Complete Middle East Cookbook by Tess Mallos is my go to book for Middle Eastern cuisine. Like many of my best cookbooks I bought this one at a library discard sale. It had seen much use before I bought it 25 years ago, but as tattered as it is, it has some great recipes in it. I have made a few changes to her recipe over the year’s but not as many as I make to other dishes.
Karl’s Tabouleh with
a Bed of Mesclun
Filed under Salads
karllueck
Miriam
Jabberwocky Stew 