Linden's Panang Curry

If you go to www.oed.com - that would be the Oxford English Dictionary's website, for those of you not in the know - and search "potato effect", you will find three entries. The first is spelling-related, pertaining to the 'e' introduced when pluralizing the word. The second has to do with Ireland, and thus is of little interest here, as their cuisine is not predominantly what you would call photogenic. Our family has a historic, if tense, relationship with the third.

When Papa cooks plain baked potatoes, his thoughts go something like this: There are five of us, and these are big baking potatoes, so reckon 3/4 each (maybe a whole one for me), better make four and hope someone isn't hungry. There are usually two left.

When he roasts potatoes, he can cook the same amount and only have one or two little potatoe eighths remaining (the runts of the litter). When he makes french fries - which, I would like to point out, he hasn't done in years, a major failing of his kitchining - he uses the same number and we all complain that he didn't cook enough.

His response is always to retaliate with baked potatoes, and then complain that we aren't eating them. He says, "I don't know how you expect me to estimate how many potatoes people will eat when one night you want more than a whole one each and the next all of you together barely manage one", and feels very righteous about his own consistent intake.

However, this is easily explained by what is commonly known as the potato effect, which refers to the phenomenomenon whereby delicious food is less filling.

I have found that chicken experiences the potato effect when cooked in the form of Panang Curry. I will cook enough raw chicken that I expect enough leftovers for another full meal, and there will be absolutely nothing left, or maybe enough for a small snack the following day. Unlike Papa, however, I am an adapter. I just double my quantities.

Xan and Paul: Pulled Pork!

Oink.

Oink?

Oink! Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink Oink!

That's ten pounds worth of oinkers, which is actually the smallest amount you can get at Costco in the form of pork shoulder.  Ah pork shoulder, the intersection of two most delicious things.  Oink!  Read on for the Saga of the Most Delicious Way of cooking the intersection of two Most Delicious Things...

A detour for those who want to learn more about meat science.  You know, there was a time when I didn't understand meat cuts.  I thought it was just a bunch of random pieces to learn the characteristics of.  But actually there's a simple logic to meat properties. (Oh, speaking of meat properties, please take a detour from the detour and watch this excellent short film.  Or perhaps this visual guide to Mr. Oink is more up your alley, brought to you by The Onion, America's finest news source. ). Anyway, let me lay it out for you:

• Plants don't move much, so they can store their energy reserves in tough, relatively inert starches.  But animals must react quickly to their surroundings, which means they are made up of more volatile, reactive (read: detectable to our tastebuds!) chemicals...and in particular, fat packs more energy per pound than starch, so that's how they store fuel.  In making energy more readily available to themselves, animals thus make themselves more flavorful to us.  Eat that, vegetarians!

• In particular, the parts of the animal that do a lot of work need to have a stand-by energy store in those places, i.e. fat.  On the other hand, they also need a denser support structure of connective tissue to hold everything together.

• Thus, you can loosely reason from "part of the animal" to "properties of the meat."  In particular, animals use their shoulders a lot, which means they're very fatty (delicious) but also full of connective tissue (not so delicious).

The main connective tissue protein of interest, collagen, you really don't want to eat.  Fortunately it has the nice property that at high temperatures it dissolves into gelatin, yum!  But if the temperature is too high (i.e. in the vicinity of 212) too much of the water in the meat will up and leave.  So typically we cook shoulder at something like 200 degrees for a long while, to give the collagen time to get up to temperature and melt away.
Because shoulder is so delicious (and cheap!), I make a lot of stews and braises with pork and beef shoulder; these cook for maybe a couple hours.  But pulled pork is cooked a lot longer -- like all day -- and it ends up much more falling-apart-y.  Which is good, since you have to pull it afterwards.

Anyway, so moving along with the Saga, I decided to make a big lot of pulled pork to take down to the beach with the family back in June.  The first step was to find an awesome recipe.  Accomplished!  The next step was to find the meat; the recipe calls for a 4-7lb shoulder.  7 pounds is a lot of meat, in case you aren't clear on this, but I figured we need to feed a lot of people at the beach.  And I figured, Costco will sell pork shoulders on the big end, because it's Costco, right?

But when I got to Costco, I realized they had outsmarted me.  Costco's goal isn't to sell big, it's to embiggen.  And because pork shoulder is already sold in large sizes at regular supermarkets, the only way Costco could embiggen it was to pack two shoulders together.  So I ended up with two 5-pound cuts, which was absolutely the smallest they had.  Ah well, like I said, we had a lot of people to feed.

Next, the cooking.  The recipe called for cooking it in the oven, but of course dad wouldn't hear of it.  So he fired up his grills (not a typo) and off we went.  We started the pork on the old Weber.  And this is where things started to go wrong.  

A grill is not a plant, okay? So will someone please explain to me why the sprinkler system came on and watered it liberally when I wasn't looking?  

You know, that's exactly what you would do if you wanted to cool off a hot piece of metal as fast as possible.  Like, if there was an overheating reactor core in there somewhere, SOLUTION=WATER IT!  But like I said, a grill is not a plant.

In any case, that wasn't fatal because it was only supposed to be on there for a couple hours of initial cooking.  Next we put it on the gas grill for the main cooking.  The gas grill is nice because you can hold it at a controlled temperature for the hours and hours needed to cook the pork.  

Unless of course the gas runs out at some unspecified point in the evening.  I'm actually getting really tired of this story so let me just say that the pork wasn't done until we were getting really tired early the next morning.  And then we had to get in a car and drive to the beach. And then it was time to pull it.  Here's before:

And after:

Finally, to go with, I made some Eastern NC-style vinegary bbq sauce and dad also made some delicious Kansas City bbq sauce.  And then it was time to eat it!  And boy was it good.

So there you have it.  I keep a spreadsheet of all the food I've made, and to date this is the first and only food I awarded a full 5 stars.  For those of you who loved this, which is everyone who ate it, you guys should be able to replicate this pork exactly with the right equipment, now that I've given you such detailed instructions.  You will have to ask mom about the proper schedule and positioning for a sprinkler system though.

Christmas Food

I thought it was high time I put up some of the photos of food I was asked to take over Christmas break!


Daddy's trifle.


Mama's blackberry pie


Daddy's weird nut thing


Daddy's banana bread


My trifle and Mama's pumpkin pie!


Christmas Dinner


Xan's Potato


Christmas Eve dinner


Monkey bread



Mama's Ribs


Xan's Furtada

Xan: Marshrooms and more

And now back to our regular programming.  The kitchen was out of order again after Thanksgiving, but we're back in action.  On the menu today: Thanksgiving leftovers!  Specifically, we still had some uneaten turkey bits.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  And before you go there, the answer is no, we have not had turkey sitting in our fridge for the last several weeks. That would be ridiculous! Who do you think I am, my father?  No, unlike him, my fridge does not contain a bajillion acres of deep shelf space for "dry aging" leftovers, as he would say.  My fridge is a normal size, which means we can't afford to leave anything in there for weeks.  The space is too precious.  Therefore I kept my turkey bits under my desk.

*

I am talking, of course, about the marshmallows that propped up the tails of the turkey cupcakes from Thanskgiving.  That's right: turkey butts.  There were a lot of leftovers, even despite the fact that Catherine recently discovered their hiding place.

To use them up, I went ahead and Invented these marshrooms:

I don't know if Liz would be excited, or disappointed that they aren't really mushrooms.

Bottoms up!  Ready to grab.

Indeed, this may well be my most complex and groundbreaking invention to date.  Or not.  It probably depends on your ability to detect sarcasm in the written word.  There comes a time when we all must look ourselves in the mirror and ask: Am I, in fact, Tammy Zooo?  And if you are the type of person who answers no solely due to your own inadequate spelling ability, then I will remind you that no matter how many layers you may claim to have, I am very, very good at chopping onions.  Seriously, I have a lot of practice.  Do you know how many onions come through our doors every week? (Answer: MANY, though technically the kitchen has just one door).  There is literally nothing that makes Catherine happier than a well-chopped onion.  (Incidentally, it used to be that nothing brought more tears to my eyes.  But then she bought me onion goggles.)

In any case, whoever may stare back at you when you look into the mirror, one thing is for certain.  You, yes you, are currently reading this blog.  That makes you special, and at Vongsafood, specialness does not go unnoticed, or unrewarded.  And so, just as a special treat, I have decided to let you in on how I came up with this special treat.  Attention!  Below you may find some real insights into my creative cooking process.

Xan's Marshrooms:


Ingredients:

• 15 leftover turkey butts
• 4 squares of leftover unsweetened baking chocolate you bought one time by accident
• several handfuls of powdered sugar
• Leftover coconut sugar coating from Sweet Potato Balls recipe (see below)

Instructions:

• Put the butts on a plate in the freezer.  Completely forget about them until at least an hour later.
• Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in the microwave, heating repeatedly for 15 second intervals.  When the chocolate is bubbling and lumpy from overcooking, you are done.  Grab a few handfuls of powdered sugar directly from the bag*. Mix the sugar into the chocolate to cancel out the unreasonable bitterness of completely unsweetened chocolate (this will not actually work for any feasible amount of sugar, but imagine how bad it would be if you didn't do anything).
• Remember that you left something in the freezer, like, over an hour ago.  Congratulations people, your butts are now rock hard and you didn't even have to go to the all night gym. Unfortunately, as is often the case, quick-gotten gains turn into even quicker-gotten losses.  In just 20 minutes, the butts will be mostly restored to their former softness. 
• Dip the cold butts into the melted chocolate and then dredge in the coconut mixture.  Put back on the plate and serve to your delighted guests**.

*Portioning by hand is a bad idea for some ingredients, but you should really give it a try with powdered sugar.  You absolutely will not make a mess all over your counter and any surface within a 10 foot radius.  Trust me, it works!
**The only person who will actually like these is Tammy, for reasons that are surely obvious to you by now, provided your name isn't actually Tammy.  This was empirically verified tonight when she gave them two thumbs up.  Needless to say, this rating was at least twice as high as any of our other raters.


Now, I know you're eager to make yourselves some marshrooms.  But as is evident from the recipe, you will first have to make these sweet potato balls which, incidentally, also require leftover turkey:

Crispy coconut sweet potato shell on the outside, gooey marshmallow center.

Disclaimer:  Turkey butts have been known to expand to astounding diameters when subjected to high heat.  The sweet potato shells that housed them were at least three sizes too small.  Here's a more representative picture:




To be honest, I wasn't particularly impressed with the tastiness of these guys.  Too much nutmeg, for sure.  I don't know if I would make them again, but I think we can all agree that the concept, at least, is fantastic.

In any case, it's good to be back in action!