tenderpoke.

This was something I made while the O'Neills were here, it worked out very comfortingly with a mango-lime salsa, roasted garlic mash and those runner beans. It looks/sounds a little bit fusion-y but I think at least the pork is very close to an actual Surinamese recipe, though the Dijon may be pushing it a little bit. This would also work pleasantly on seafood as well.

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pork tenderloin with soy, mustard, ginger, habanero.

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup Dijon mustard
1/8 cup soy sauce
1 medium scallion, chopped fine
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 to 2 tsp Surinamese piccalilly
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
salt and pepper to taste

4 small pork tenderloins

Combine everything except pork in a saucepan and gently heat until sugar is melted. Pour over pork and marinate for at least 4 hours, or possibly overnight. At dinner time, pour marinade into a saucepan and gently simmer for at least 10 minutes while pork cooks. Bake/broil pork for 10-15 minutes and let rest for 5-10.

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cherry bomb.

This Saveur article is what restarted my thinking about escabeches, well that and the temperature. It's finally hot here, so the idea of eating something vinegary out of the fridge sounds even better than usual. Maybe I'll eventually write down this turkey escabeche I made Friday night (oregano, habanero, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar, garlic, onion), but yes it may have to wait.

While I was poking about on the Saveur website I started looking at their picnic recipes, since etc what I said before about the temperature, and found this interesting-looking rice salad, also timely b/c Mara came into a bunch of cherries (that's what I said) and I've got kale and basil and spinach sitting around wilting and so I am making it right now. I'm unsure about the artichoke and cherry combo, that part sounds drug-induced, but will give it a try. Preliminary tasting results very positive (everything except cherries, almonds, and artichokes). Other items on the menu: Ottolenghi's smashed garlic cucumbers and that ol' beet carpaccio with feta. And maybe something with shrimp. We gwine be stinkee in our damn mouf.

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And later: cherries provided a beauteeful visual contrast but as suspected were unnecessary and/or distracting in terms of taste. They are now off macerating somewhere instead of participating in this recipe. Artichokes on the other hand were a great addition and almonds would probably also work nicely, but it was also great without them, this ended up being really one of my favorite things I've made recently.

kale and brown rice salad with basil and cherries.

1 cup loosely packed basil leaves
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1 and 1/2 tbsp raw/turbinado sugar

2 cups cooked brown rice
1 cup frozen chopped kale, drained
1 cup loosely packed fresh spinach leaves, chiffonaded or roughly chopped.
4 to 8 artichoke hearts, rinsed well, drained and quartered
1/2 cup toasted almonds, slivered or roughly crushed
1 cup or maybe even 2 cups cherries, pitted and halved, or quartered if you have time and patience

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he all growed up.

Above: Poppy's 9/11 birthday party, with both exploding and non-exploding cake.

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Used to be a time when I'd "borrow" things from my parents' cookbook library, like "permanently". Then came a time when I'd wonder why they had so few cookbooks. Now's the time when their cookbook shelves are a-heavin' again and I'm finally, just now, this year, old enough to not steal any of their shiny new books.

I'd had my eye on their copy of Steven Raichlen's Barbecue Bible for a few years now, because even though it looks horribly generic and cheap on the outside, it's actually chock full o' smart, useful recipes for just about every fucking thing you'd ever want to do on a grill. Lots and lots of interesting Indonesian and Malaysian things, a host of unusual Caribbean things, and even some Iranian and Afghani things I'd never seen or heard of before. Plus dozens of useful, accurate, authentic salads, sides, rubs, sauces, marinades, etc etc etc. I think it's a great book.

So this year I decided that I'm a big boy now, time to man up, so I bought one used on Amazon for 10 bucks. I made something nice out of it in Phoenix a few weeks ago, a coriander-grilled cod with a fresh northern Thai relish of tomatoes, basil, fish sauce, and lime, simple but great. And tonight is a non-grill adaptation, this French Antillean thing below.

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panga with french west indian caper sauce. 

4 catfish or cod or other firm white fish fillets

marinade
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp black pepper
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Scotch bonnet/habanero pepper, minced

sauce
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp EVOO
1 tbsp capers
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 1/2 tsp minced Scotch bonnet/habanero
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large shallot, chopped

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hee, burrito.

Above: tostones waiting to be made into a jibarito. Below: the finished product. Delicious, but if there was one non-essential element it was the tostone. Corn or flour tortillas would've been just fine. We'll do the mojo marinade again though.

Also? Belgian salve/bastion in place, we leave Monday.

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mojo.

1 head garlic
1/2 tsp salt
10 grinds black pepper
1/2 cups orange juice
2 tbsp lime juice
1/4 cup minced onion
1 tsp oregano
1/4 cup olive oil

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kick against the pricks.

I think I was even thinking to myself the other day, last week, that there are very few more damaging human emotions in the long-term than disillusionment.

I decided that as a sort of positive resistance to this situation, as a sort of salve/bastion, I would make a jibarito. Mojo-marinated steak, guac, pickled onions, aioli, and some kind of cheese on two garlic-salted tostones. I'll just make small ones, hopefully they'll still help.

And also maybe we'll go to Belgium.

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el jibarito.

2 green plantains
coconut oil
garlic salt

1 cup mojo
some skirt/hanger steak, pounded flat

pickled red onions (onions sliced thin and marinated in vinegar, sugar, salt for a few hours)
guac (1 avocado, 1 lime, one garlic clove, salt to taste)
cheddar or hirtenkase
lettuce in some form
diced tomato
garlic mayo
chopped cilantro
sliced scallions

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saturday night.

Understandably, Saturday began with some Hammock Time. Followed by some White Sangria Time, some Sierra Nevada Time, and eventually some Paella Time. And then of course some Playing Until 5am Time. The cumulative effects of which completely negated the positive effects of the original Hammock Time.

durian day one.

Friday began innocently enough, with an admirably responsible number of beers at Charlie Mopps, which will always be known to us as Taco Mac, because back when it was called that, we were some of their most regular customers of all time, personalized mugs, brass nameplates on the bar, etc.

It's easy to see how it happened: for eight years Taco Mac was right down the road from our office, they had 300+ beers to choose from, and so understandably this is the bar where I spent most of my twenties, and where much personal drama occurred, but almost exclusively the good kind. Here's kind of what it used to look like:

















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Returning to The Present: For some reason, after successfully reaching the idyllic back porch, manly amounts of Scotch were consumed by some members of our party. By 9pm Steve's Panamanian wife Mary had whipped up something I'm pretty sure she can make in her sleep, pollo asada with black beans and rice (eaten with generous pours from a bottle of habanero sauce), and then we spent the next couple of hours trying to revive a miscalibrated Steve (bottom left), miraculously succeeding around 1am and then playing for several hours, until we were all quite miscalibrated.