Tag Archives: pork

by | March 1, 2013 · 11:19 pm

Karl’s Twice Cooked Pork

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 and Spicy Giant Bamboo and Daikon Stir-fry

Twice Cooked Pork (on the left) and
Spicy Giant Bamboo and Daikon Stir-fry
(on the right)

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Main Dishes, Pork

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 21, 2013 · 7:21 pm

Karl’s Italian Wedding Soup

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

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.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Soups

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | February 2, 2013 · 6:24 pm

Karl’s Navy Bean Soup

The girl’s are still sick so I am still making comfort soups. Bean today, for variety.

I wanted something a bit more than U.S. Senate Navy Bean Soup (beans, onion, butter, ham hock and water), but not the many ingredient soups I found on the internet. Bean soup should always be about the beans.  Any addition to the basic recipe should enhance the bean flavor not drown it out.

Navy Bean Soup

Karl’s Navy Bean Soup

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Soups

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | December 10, 2012 · 4:24 am

Karl’s Ham and Beans

When Safeway had a half price sale on hams after Thanksgiving I could not resist buying one. This is a lot of meat for my three person household, so I sliced it into three ¾” thick ham steaks to freeze and I was left with a large ham bone and the grisly pieces at the end.  For me this meaty bit says “Ham and Beans.

Karl's Ham and Beans

Karl’s Ham and Beans

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Stews

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | September 30, 2012 · 7:26 pm

Karl’s Lasagna

There are no bad lasagnas, only good and better lasagnas.  This, and the fact that lasagna freezes well, keeps Stouffer’s in business. While each step of building a lasagna is not particularly difficult there are a lot of steps to the process.  I use the term building, rather than making, because unlike most dishes where you put all of the ingredients in and stir, good lasagna is build layer by flavorful layer.  While very delicious, lasagna should not be mistaken for a health food, even my low fat version is relatively high fat (lots of cheese and meat) and high in carbohydrates.

lasagna

Karl’s Lasagna

This is one of those dishes from my youth. Lasagna was a dish that my mother would make very occasionally, because while being good it is also very labor intensive.  In addition to everything you have to do today, in my mother’s day you had to boil and cool the noodles enough so you could handle them (but not over boil or break them).  With the introduction of no-boil noodles the process is slightly easier.

I never made lasagna myself until Cook’s Illustrated printed “Faster Lasagna” in their Sept.-Oct. 2002 issue, where they passed a favorable judgment on no-boil noodles.  Since that time I have used their recipe as a guide, but as usual I had some standard changes to what they consider perfect (lower fat and lower salt and with all that cheese why would you add cream?).  When Myr asked for lasagna last week I decided to write up my changes to the C.I. recipe.

For me this is a dish usually I make for friends who are having a medical crisis. At my age, this has happened with uncomfortable regularity. After it has cooled  Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Casseroles, Main Dishes, Pork, Vegetarian MD

Tagged as , , , , , , ,