Pork Patties

I have a bad habit of cooking like I have an army residing in my house.  Truth be told, it is just me.  Thankfully, I am all about the leftovers.  Sometimes though, I am able to catch myself before cooking too much food but not before I've purchased it.  When I was shopping for the pork pie I bought two pounds of ground pork but only used one pound.  Into the freezer went the extra pound.  The other day I decided to pull it out and make pork patties.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork
6 strips bacon
1 sprig thyme
2 sage leaves - chopped
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt

Take the 6 strips of bacon and chop them up using a food processor.  You can just finely chop the bacon, but it is faster and a bit more thorough when done via the food processor.

mmmmm, yummy :)

Combine all the ingredients, thoroughly mixing them together.  I recommend just getting in there with your hands.

Divide mixture into four equally sized patties.

Pan fry or grill until thoroughly cooked and the juices run clear.

Living in an apartment with no balcony, I went the pan fry route.  Because my patties were fairly thick, it took about 10 minutes per side.  I flipped several times to avoid burning the outside before the inside cooked through.

Dress as you please.

As I was eating my fabulous pork patty, I felt that it reminded me a bit of a breakfast sausage.  I think the combination of the bacon with the sage and thyme give it more of a sausage taste over the mild flavor pork normally has.  Personally I loved it, but that's my own humble opinion.  Also, I should stress that anyone planning to pan fry these might want to consider making them smaller.  Make 6 or 8 patties versus the 4  that I made.  Unless you want a thick patty, to which I say, crack on!

The Great Greek Chicken Escapade

Oddly enough, while I was in high school, I excelled at English and found myself in the AP English class my senior year.  At one point we were doing a Greek mythology section and to cap it we were all assigned a food dish and Greek god/goddess.  We were to make our dishes, dress up, and attend an end-of-section feast at our teacher's house.  My dish was Greek Turkey.  I followed the original recipe to the letter but have since adjusted it to my own taste.  Don't ask for the original recipe because this was *cough* 17 *cough* years ago in the dark ages of AOL and Prodigy dial-up connections.  My teacher just handed me a sheet of paper with the recipe on it.  What became of it is anyone's guess.  What I can tell you is that whether you use my recipe or go to Google or Pintrest for other versions, it will make your entire house smell like food nirvana.

For today's kitchen adventure however, we start with a substitution.  We are doing Greek Chicken.  I am a single lady and as much as I enjoy cooking for an army, the average turkey is a bit much, so a smaller chicken it is.

Greek Turkey Chicken

 

Ingredients:

 

1 oven - set to 350F

1 roasting pan

1 whole chicken - 8 - 10 labs
3 lemons (plus 1 optional squirt of lemon juice concentrate)

6 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp oregano

1 stick butter

 

Preheat oven to 350F.

 

Wash bird inside and out, then place in roasting pan.

 

Put 1 Tbsp of oregano and 4 whole garlic cloves inside the bird.

Cut lemons in half.  Now, here you have a choice - be neat and juice them into a bowl or do what I do.  Squeeze out juice from lemons onto bird and dump 1 Tbsp of oregano onto it as well.  Rub down the bird.  Take 2 of the used halves and place inside the bird.

Take the other 4 halves and place 1 into each corner of the roasting pan.

Place the bird in the oven.

On stove top melt butter, add 2 cloves of garlic - crushed, and the optional lemon squirt.  This is used for basting.

My preferred basting schedule is as follows:

• After first 30 minutes - baste with butter mixture
• Then, baste every 15 minutes for a total of 1 hour - baste with butter mixture
• Then, baste every 30 minutes until bird is done - baste with own juices.

If you are heavy handed with the basting brush and run out of butter before my suggested end time, don't worry about it.  By the time you run out, there should be plenty of buttery lemony goodness in the roasting pan to use.

I absolutely adore this recipe.  For me, it is simple and easy as long as you have several hours set aside for cooking.  It smells amazing and because the primary flavorings are lemon and oregano, the turkey chicken has a light fresh taste.

If you are wondering about sides, I am a huge fan of the sweet potato.  I would also suggest roasted fingerling potatoes.  Fingerlings roast up pretty quick and can therefore be done while the bird rests.  For greens, whatever is in season is always the most flavorful, but otherwise some salted green beans can add some nice crunch to the meal.  I went with salad on this particular occasion.



Easter Creations

While my last post had a bit more originality, this post features the results of dessert ideas I snaked, in their entirety, from the wonderful world that is Pinterest.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to make a dessert for Easter dinner.  Now, this was actually a pretty big deal for me.  When it is holiday time I still head to my mom's for multiple days.  So, in my mind, this relieves me from the responsibility of bringing my own dish - I am arriving with my mom, therefore whatever she makes counts for me as well.  This is a total copout.  I'm 34 years old perfectly capable of bringing something even if I am staying at my mother's the night before.  However, no one in the family has called me out so I just go with it.  The last few Easters have been the sole deviation.

The first Easter was a Bunny Butt Cake.

It definitely took hours to prepare but, it was too cute to resist.  Plus, I liked doing something crafty and cooking with my mom.

The second years we did Lemon Meringue Nests.

Why on earth I selected this I will never know.  I hate meringue.  We used to have lemon meringue pie at Poppy's every once in a while.  I would push the meringue right off the pie.  I remember being yelled at for being wasteful.  I did not care.  I refused to eat it.  I do however, remember fully enjoying these nests.  What was really helpful was tracing out the circles for the nests.  Free handing that would have just been ugly.  We used green colored sugar paper as our grass to complete the look.

Last year was cupcakes.

So simple, yet still so fantastic.  I dyed some shredded coconut to make a nest for the jelly beans. For the cupcakes with the peeps, I spread a thin layer of frosting to hold the peep in place and then piped more frosting around it to create the next look.

My Great British Bake Off Obsession

Thanks to PBS I recently discovered the greatness that is The Great British Bake Off.  I watch it before Downton Abbey on Sunday nights and I binge watch old episodes and clips on Youtube.  Oh, Youtube, you destroyer of all my evening plans! So, it's really GBBO that we all have to thank for my return to blogging and this time blogging about food.  I watch the show and all I want to do is recreate the dishes they make.

Sadly, PBS Food does not have every GBBO recipe however, it has some, including the recipe from Season 5 for Kate's plum, apple, and rhubarb pork pies.  Now, when you go grocery shopping on January 30th in New England it is unlikely that you will find rhubarb.  So we are already wading into the world of recipe adjusting.  Add that to not finding boned pork shoulder (no, I had no desire to spend an hour cutting around a bone, I'm too lazy for that) and wanting to get rid of the puff pastry in my freezer versus making hot water crust pastry and you have a not even remotely like Kate's pie result.  However, I don't care.  Why?  Because I am making a recipe inspired by Kate so I have decided it counts.  And, I have never made a meat pie so I get that added challenge element to the whole deal.

So, welcome to my Fruit and Pork Pie Concoction

Ingredients

Oven preheated to 400F
9" pie dish
1 gala apple - peeled, cored, diced
6 pitted prunes - chopped
1 1/2 oz superfine sugar
1 lb ground pork
2 strips bacon - chopped
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. ground mace
1 sprig fresh thyme - leaves picked and chopped
1 sage leaf - chopped
1 bay leaf - chopped
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. sea salt
2 sheets puff pastry

Because I couldn't find superfine sugar I used regular granulated sugar that I then put into my coffee grinder.  You don't want confectioners so be mindful not to grind the sugar for more than a pulse or two.  I am also a prep first cook second person, so all my ingredients were measured out and ready to go before I moved over to the stove.

In a sauté pan over medium heat cook apples, prunes, and sugar.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 - 10 minutes.  You want all the excess liquid evaporated.  (For those of you who watch GBBO, you know Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood's utter distaste for soggy bottoms!)  Set aside in bowl to cool.

Now, on to the meat.  Cook the bacon first then just before desired crispness add the ground pork to brown.  Just before that is done add the spices.  Mix to just incorporated, drain excess liquid, then add to fruit mixture.  Squish the two mixtures together then transfer to prepped pie plate.

The pie plate:

Grease and flour a 9" pie dish.  Roll out thawed puff pastry on floured surface and roll to appropriate size.  Transfer to pie dish.  Check for holes and cracks.

Once the mixture is in the pie dish, roll out the second pastry sheet.  Brush with egg wash and place on top of pie. Crimp edges together.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until top is golden brown, in 400F oven.

The prunes give the mixture a nice burst of sweetness.  The ground mace gives a really good flavor to the meat, but be careful.  Too much and it will take over the dish and not in a good way.

All in all, a successful foray into the world of meat pies!



The story behind the name

Growing up, Sunday always meant dinner at Poppy and Auntie's. We would walk in the front door and the first smells of dinner preparations would hit us.  My brother and I would try to guess what the meal would be.  We had no other choice but to guess because daring to enter the kitchen meant dodging flying spoons and being yelled at to get out. Sunday dinner was a sacred ritual and we all had our place - Poppy in the kitchen and the rest of us in the living room.  Eventually my mom or uncle would brave the trip in order to bring us all drinks - ginger ale for the kids and jug wine or manhattans for the adults.

Dinner, of course, always began with appetizers.  Poppy had a chip and dip set that, if it was out, signaled potato chips and onion dip.  On special occasions it might contain cocktail sauce and the bowl would be rimmed with shrimp, but that was rare.  I am now the proud possessor of that chip and dip set.  Poppy would usually put out his own stumbanad.  Don't ask me the real spelling because I have no idea, I just spell it like I say it.  Just think Italian giardiniera or sottaceti, but Poppy's blows those right out of the water.  His was green olives (pit still in), carrots, and celery.  It would be so hot after a few pieces it would make your ears leak.  That stuff was the best.  There would be other offerings on the table, but those are the two staples that are ingrained in my mind.

After about an hour we would finally be allowed into the dining room.  Dinner could be anything, but roasted chicken drumsticks and thighs with green olives were pretty standard and so was spaghetti with sausage and meatballs.  One of my favorites was blue crab.  Poppy would do his own crabbing, so if he brought in a good haul, to the dinner table it went.  But, the hands down whole family favorite was gnocchi.  Poppy made his own - potato, flour, and egg - and it was the best.  We referred to them as "sinkers" because that is what they did - they sunk to the bottom of the serving bowl and they sunk to the bottom of your stomach.  Each piece was amazing pasta perfection.

At our largest, there were 10 of us around a table that really could only seat 6 adults comfortably.  My cousin and I would play the poking game until someone yelled at us. The goal would be to poke in just the right spot that it made other person yell and fall out of her seat.  I can't imagine why that was viewed as disruptive! I always took extra olives from the salad for the sole purpose of putting them on my fingers.  After an hour or so of dinner table chaos we went back to the living room where more chaos ensued.  There would be toys and games pulled out of every corner, a couple of us might even disappear to my uncle's old bedroom to color at his desk.  Finally one adult would have had enough and plastic sandwich bags would get pulled out.  Oh yes, no trip to Poppy's would be complete without a bag of candy for the road.

On Poppy's mantle were two coveted candy dishes - one with M&M's, the other with Hershey's Kisses.  We would dive for those things like rats to cheese.  Our parents judged the size of the bag to make sure none of us would get too much of a sugar rush before bed.  Even as adults, walking in there we made a beeline for those candy dishes.  Now, I am the possessor of the Hershey's dish (at the moment only filled with mints) and, if I remember correctly, my cousin - the dinner table partner in crime - has the M&M's dish.

So that was Sunday, our Sunday until we were all teenagers and making dinner for us all became too much.  But, Sunday remained visit day with dinner downgraded to just snacks and the time went from 4 PM to 11 AM.  Even after I moved away, if I was at my mom's on a Sunday I would accompany her to Poppy's.  Sunday, in my mind, will always be dinner at Poppy's - dinner together, dinner with family.  That is its definition.  That is Sunday's in the kitchen.