Things to Do with an 8lb Pork Butt: Part Two

We’ve certainly be hearing that the recession is over, but I for one have yet to personally experience that first hand so in the meantime I’m going to continue advocating pork butt. I mean, I bought an 8 pounder last week and it fed three adults for several dinners and as many lunches—and cost only $40, at Whole Foods no less. Of all our meals, my favorite was this incredible Carnitas Salad with Warm Cherry Tomato-Jalapeño Vinaigrette we had on Friday night. The inspiration came from the Jimtown Store Cookbook, which features a similar salad, but I think a copy editor was asleep at the wheel since several ingredients and steps are missing from the recipe as printed (but in general, this is one of my very favorite cookbooks). Never mind! Here’s our version, based on what we had in the fridge and a few blanks filled in, and it was fantastic.

Carnitas Salad with Warm Tomato-Jalapeño Vinaigrette

Serves 4 as main course

1 lb leftover carnitas from enormous slow-roasted pork butt

1/2 lb green beans, trimmed

1-2 poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded, deveined, and chopped

3/4 lb red-skinned potatoes

1 yellow pepper, finely diced

1/3 cup red onion, diced

1/4 cup scallions, chopped

1/4 cup corn oil

1 jalapeño, seeded, deveined and finely chopped

1 lb cherry tomatoes

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1/3 cup chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

Bring a medium pot of salted water to boil. Add green beans and cook until beans are tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and transfer to bowl of ice water. When cool, drain and pat dry.

In another pot, cover potatoes with cold water and bring to boil. Lower heat and cook, partially covered, until potatoes are tender, about 15-20 minutes. Drain and cut potatoes into chunks.

While potatoes are boiling, make vinaigrette in a skillet. Heat oil over moderate heat, add tomatoes and jalapeño and cook, stirring once or twice, for 4 minutes. Add vinegar, cilantro, salt and pepper, and bring to simmer. Cook, stirring once or twice, another 3 to 4 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine all vegetables, pulled pork and toss with warm vinaigrette. Serve. Leftovers of salad are great rolled up in a tortilla with avocado slices for lunch the next day!

Warm Calamari Salad with Spinach and Chorizo

Lured by the thought of two of his favorite ingredients—chorizo and squid—commingling in a single dish, on Saturday night Mr. Foodinista undertook a recipe from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, by Suzanne Goin. It’s a favorite cookbook of ours, given that it comes from the restaurant where we got engaged! However, I’ll be the first to admit that one can usually bank on using an annoying number of pans with one (or three) too many steps. However, this salad is so freaking insane that it’s worth it. I scaled waaay back on breadcrumbs (her recipe had us making a cup, which was too much). Also, we omitted the black olives since Mr. Foodinista is not a fan…

Warm Squid Salad with Spinach, Chorizo, and Black Olives

Adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques

Serves 4-6

2 1/2 lbs small squid, cleaned

2 lemons, zested

2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons sliced flat-leafed parsley

1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs

3/4 cup, plus 1 tsp olive oil

3/4 lb Mexican chorizo, casings removed

1 1/2 cups diced onions

1 tablespoon minced garlic

5 ounces baby spinach

1 cup cilantro leaves

1/2 cup sliced scallions

1 cup chopped pitted Nyons olives

6 tablespoons sherry vinegar

Cut the squid bodies crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick rings, and leave the tentacles whole. Season with lemon zest, 1 tablespoon thyme, and parsley. Refrigerate for a few hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toss breadcrumbs with 1 teaspoon olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon thyme. Spread onto baking sheet, and toast until golden brown, about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a large sauté pan over high heat for 2 minutes. Swirl in two tablespoons olive oil and wait about a minute. Crumble chorizo into pan, and cook 1 minute. Add the onion, garlic, and remaining thyme. Sauté 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until chorizo is cooked and onion is translucent and starting caramelize. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, toss together spinach, cilantro, scallions and olives. In a small bowl, whisk together sherry vinegar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and 6 tablespoons olive oil. Set aside.

Heat two large sauté pans over high heat for 3 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to each pan, and wait 2 more minutes (pans need to be very hot to sear squid). Divide squid between pans, and season with salt/pepper. Cook 1-2 minutes, without stirring, allowing squid to sear. Stir with wooden spoon, and cook another minute or two, until squid is opaque and just cooked through.

Return chorizo pan to high heat, and add squid, stirring well to combine and coat well.

When mixture is hot, add it to bowl of spinach. Turn off heat and add vinaigrette to pan and heat quickly, until just hot. Pour 3/4 hot vinaigrette over spinach and squid. Season w/ salt and pepper. Toss to combine. Add more vinaigrette if needed. Arrange salad on platter and scatter breadcrumbs over the top. Seriously, it’s worth the effort.

That is, until you have to wash all those pans…

Salade Californiçoise

My sister, Claire, makes the best salads, and for those of you who order salads and don’t actually make salads, this is actually kind of a feat. Tonight Claire riffed on classic salade niçoise, with an inspired California newcomer, the avocado. We used cherry tomatoes from our garden—and green beans, lettuces and eggs from our neighborhood farmer’s market. Also, in true California style, we gave the carbs a miss and skipped the potatoes. You’ll also note the absence of the namesake niçoise olives, mostly because Mr. Foodinista is not an olive fan, but they would’ve been great. Finally, what makes this recipe is Ortiz Spanish canned tuna in olive oil. Proportions are at your discretion, though personally I like a generous serving of tuna and egg.

Salade Californiçoise

Mixed greens

Cherry tomatoes, halved

Haricots verts, blanched

Ortiz Spanish tuna in olive oil

Hard-boiled eggs, sliced

Capers, drained

Avocados, sliced

Salt & pepper, to taste

For vinaigrette:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar
• 1 tablespoon minced shallot
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

To make dressing, whisk together oil, vinegar, shallots, and mustard. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Toss enough dressing with mixed greens to coat, reserving some dressing to toss with blanched green beans. Divide greens among plates. Top with canned tuna, dressed beans, sliced eggs, avocados, tomatoes and sprinkle with capers.

And if you have a glass of blanc de blancs Champagne handy to toast your sister, do that too.

Summer in a Salad

Earlier this week I made mention of a pretty rocking dinner party with our friends Lizzie, Matt M., Katie, Matt A., and my sister, Claire. In addition to madcap high jinx involving blanc de blancs, spectacular single malts and a bet in which Katie & Matt’s season Dodger tix were on the line (you’ll have to ask Katie about the outcome of that tennis match that next morning), we also ate food. Lizzie put together a totally fantastic salad—a riff on The Hungry Cat’s Heirloom Tomato and Watermelon Salad with Feta, Basil and Arugula. I mean, look at those tomatoes! She coarsely chopped up heirlooms, watermelon, fresh basil and crumbled feta and tossed in a bowl with fleur de sel and pepper:

At the dinner table, we passed a bowl of peppery arugula, and then piled the tomato salad on top. Oh my god – this salad has it all, sweet, tart, salty, savory—yum. It was also the ideal companion to a grilled heritage pork chop with French feta salsa verde (heavy on basil, Italian parsley and marjoram) and grilled fennel.

Update, when blogs collide: Over at DESIGNwatcher.com, Lizzie is talking tomato salad, too…

Keep Your Composure

What you see before you is a Composed Salad of Roasted Broccoli, Romaine, Chickpeas and Walnuts from the July 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living. Martha suggests either tossing together in a bowl for a traditional presentation, or arranging on a platter for a composed salad. Which is exactly what my sister-in-law Kate did at our in-laws’ last week. If you click on the above recipe, you’ll see that this salad is a hell of a lot of work but well worth the effort—easy for me to say since I wasn’t the one doing the cooking! (Also, Kate made it look deceptively easy, which is crazy considering she was also juggling the soccer schedules of three kids under the age of nine.) The garlicky sweet candied walnuts are amazing, and a perfect complement to the tangy goodness of the goat cheese puree. I love the comforting note of roasted broccoli, and the chickpeas in a sherry vinaigrette are fantastic. Actually, any of these elements on its own would be superb. Served as an ensemble cast, they are sublime!

Vietnamese Chicken Salad

Vowing to make use of the prolific Vietnamese cilantro in our herb garden, last night I took a page out of Mai Pham’s book Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table to make this Hue Chicken Salad (ga bop). I was apprehensive about serving it to my husband on several levels, not the least of which had to do with the fact that this dish has zero guilt factor, which all too often correlates to zero pleasure. Not to mention that “we’re having salad for dinner” doesn’t usually elicit an enthusiastic response. Additionally, Vietnamese cilantro is quite pungent, sort of like cilantro on steroids so it’s a love it or leave it flavor. The herb is also enjoyed by Vietnamese Buddhist monks to stave off sexual urges, also like steroids, and assist in their celibate lives. But I digress.

Above is the Vietnamese cilantro—or rau ram as it’s known in SE Asia—which has taken over our herb bed. I love how fragrant and pretty the leaves are. I let Tiny G play with a sprig in the garden while I was picking herbs to bring inside. Much to my surprise, my husband TOTALLY flipped over dinner and has requested that it go into regular rotation. It’s so flavorful, with a bit of heat from the chilies and exotic intensity from the rau ram.

But I may have told a teeny white lie about serving a guilt-free dinner. Mai Pham’s excellent and healthy recipe follows with a slightly less angelic suggestion from yours truly. The recipe virtuously has you boil half a chicken in salted water. She suggests serving ga bop on a bed of butter lettuce leaves. I ended up reserving two cups of the water from the chicken to make basmati rice, which adds to the sin factor with a hint of chicken fat, but gives just the right note of depth to the rice.

HUE CHICKEN SALAD (GA BOP)

(Adapted from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, by Mai Pham)

Sea Salt

1 organic chicken leg and breast, scored for faster cooking
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt or to taste
1 teaspoon sugar
2 ½ tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 small yellow onion, sliced paper-thin, rinsed (about ½ cup)
2 Thai bird chilies or 1 serrano chili, chopped or to taste
1 cup loosely packed rau ram (Vietnamese Cilantro) leaves or mint leaves
1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup basmati rice
Fill a pot with 2 quarts water and bring to vigorous boil. Add 1 tablespoon sea salt and chicken and bring water back to  boil. Reduce the heat and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from  heat and let the chicken sit in the pot, covered, for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. Reserve two cups of boiling liquid for rice.

While chicken cools, bring two cups broth to boil. Add 1 cup basmati rice, return to boil, and then reduce heat to simmer. Keep covered and continue to simmer for 20 minutes.

In a medium bowl, combine lime juice, onions, chilies, rau ram and oil and toss gently.

Remove and discard the skin and bones from the chicken. Hand shred the meat into ¼-inch thick strips and transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the black pepper, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon sugar and gently massage into the chicken. Gently fold into onion and rau ram mixture. Serve over rice.

Cherry Tomatoes and Bocconcini

We have a ton of basil—both sweet and purple—so I’ve been using it almost every night. This super easy salad has been in heavy rotation. Grab a box of cherry tomatoes, a tub of bocconcini (small balls of buffalo mozzarella) and toss with aged balsamic, salt and pepper and fresh basil. We have a “Black Cherry” tomato plant, and I can’t wait for the cherry tomatoes to ripen to use in salads and on pizzas and tarts!

Herb Salad

What can I say? I love this herb salad, and I make some version of it a couple times a week. It’s especially good at providing a bright counterpoint when you’re serving something heavier like pasta or risotto, or alongside potatoes dauphinoise. The inspiration comes from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Yountville. Keller uses herbs that are more subtle in flavor, and the vinaigrette is light and refreshing (note: it uses canola oil instead of olive oil; red wine vinegar instead of balsamic). Or to quote Keller himself on Epicurious.com:

This salad is all about freshness. Use plenty of freshly picked fines herbes: parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil; harder herbs, such as savory, rosemary, and marjoram, would be too strong. Finish it with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Bouchon Herb Salad

Adapted from Thomas Keller’s Bibb Lettuce Salad

Head of Butter (Bibb) Lettuce

Tarragon, chopped

Italian parsley, chopped

Chives, chopped

Chervil, chopped

Canola oil

Red wine vinegar

Dijon mustard 

Salt and pepper, to taste

Lemon juice, fresh squeezed

Cut off core of butter lettuce, and then tear up leaves and place in bowl of cold water to refresh them and remove any dirt, then lift out and spin-dry in a salad spinner.

To make vinaigrette, mix three parts canola oil, one part red wine vinegar, and a dollop of dijon mustard in a blender for 15 seconds. 

Place the leaves in a bowl. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, chives, and 1 tablespoon each of chopped parsley, tarragon, and chervil. Then toss gently with 2 tablespoons of vinaigrette and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.

Let’s Do Brunch

Today had to be one of the most beautiful days of the year, starting with a perfect sunny morning at All Saints in Beverly Hills and progressing to the BEST BRUNCH EVER a few miles east at our friends Booth and Adam’s house. Every last detail was gorgeous, starting with these stunning raspberry Sferra hemstitched table linens. (I have to admit, I came home from brunch and ordered some monogrammed in azure.)

Booth and her sister, Kathleen, had gotten us all chocolate bunnies and Easter baskets from the original Sees Candies on La Cienega. Even Tiny G got a basket! Oh, and those placemats (below) are amazing—baroque silkscreen on thick brown paper—picked up on Booth’s last trip to Milan for the fashion shows.

Also, how pretty is this spring bouquet with pale pink tulips and roses and purple hyacinths and kale?

Now for the food. Kathleen made a totally indulgent strata (a savory bread pudding) with sausage, roasted red peppers and mushrooms. Oh yeah, and cheddar cheese. Holy smokes, it was good. Click here for recipe. 

Booth made an herb salad, riffing on her favorite from Ladurée in Paris. This one was comprised of butter lettuce, dill, sage, basil, and a dressing of olive oil, fleur de sel and lemon juice. Amazing. And a great counterpoint to the richness of the eggs. Adam made satisfying and delicious Rosemary Garlic Buttered Potatoes. And we washed it all down with Piper Heidsieck Champagne. 

For dessert we had my grandmother’s cinnamon buns, which are fodder for another post. It’s noteworthy to add that her recipe states: “to die FOR and FROM.” 

After which we all dispatched to our respective locales for an Easter nap. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Lunch for $15 or Less in Downtown LA: New Moon

My friend Max, who is a DA in the Bay Area, gave me a great idea. Since he couldn’t give me any advice about dealings inside the courtroom, he had some for outside the jury box, namely lunch. So for the duration of my jury service, I’ll be looking for cheap eats that cost less than $15 (which is what they “pay” you for jury service; I’ll actually be donating my fees). Thanks, Max, great idea!

Today I met one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world for lunch since she works a stone’s throw from the courthouse. We hopped on the DASH bus at Second/Spring (it only costs 25¢!) and cruised down to New Moon on Spring/9th. Back when I used to work in fashion, she and I used to grab a chicken salad here, and then head across the street to browse at the now-defunct fashion bookstore in the New Mart, or visit one of the showrooms in that building. Once we got trapped in an elevator at the New Mart, and I started hyperventilating. She whipped out a large volume on Dior: The Early Years that she’d just purchased, and started reading aloud. It was instantly calming, not to mention fascinating. The next 45 minutes flew by.

But back to New Moon. It’s seen better days (but haven’t we all?). But the service is super friendly, the Original New Moon Chinese Chicken Salad is still good (and huge, huge portions so get a small unless you’re sharing) and I love the wontons they still bring out at the beginning with the sweet dipping sauce. We got an order of potstickers, a large original chicken salad and two Arnold Palmers, for which the total bill before tip was $22. Throw in a well-heeled clientele to boot.