Cookbook of the Gods

Hey family! Long time no cook, eh? Except no, I've totally still been cooking. My "cookbook" has gone from being a nice, self-contained binder to a mishmash of cookbooks and bookmarks and Pinterest pins and it's time to clean things up. I'm organizing them blog-style so I can easily add pictures and tags. The world is full of food blogs, so it isn't really meant for fame and fortune, but I figured friends and family might have a passing interest. To that end:

Cookbook of the Gods

Posole

We made posole tonight and it was delicious. Kind of chili-like but different enough to be worth the separate  recipe. Also, it's pretty much not spicy at all. The spiciest thing involved is smoked paprika, so it's great for southwestern flavor without the heat. We got our recipe from the Bon Appetit website, who got it from the Heard Museum in Phoenix. It makes a lot of soup.

If you follow the link, they want you to roast the pork all special-like, but we made pulled pork last week in the crockpot so we just cooked extra pork and took some out (before adding the barbecue sauce) and saved it. Worked great. Also, from what I read you can use any meat you want, so leftover chicken or beef would probably taste great, too.

Recipe:
If you want to slow roast your own pork, you need:
2 pounds boneless pork
1 Tbs ground cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 red onion, sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Just put it together and roast at 275F for 5 or 6 hours (or crockpot on low for 6-8 hours). Shred and cool. Totally fine to make ahead.

For the soup:
1/4 cup vegetable oil (less is fine)
1/2 red onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 plum tomatoes, diced
6 cups chicken broth
1 28-oz can pinto beans, undrained
1 28-oz can white hominy, drained
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a big pot on medium-low and saute the onion 5 minutes or so. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes or so, add diced tomatoes and cook 2 minutes or so. Add broth, beans, hominy, crushed tomatoes, oregano and cumin and bring to boil. Turn heat to low and simmer 30 minutes. Add pork and simmer 30 minutes more. Salt and pepper to taste before serving.

You can add some shredded cheddar and fresh cilantro before serving. It's also great with tortillas or crusty bread for dipping.

Teriyaki pork bowl

Again, hardly qualifies as a recipe, but hey.

1. Make slow cooker pulled pork according to this recipe. 

2. Instead of the barbecue sauce of your choice, use the teriyaki sauce of your choice.  I used Kona Coast Orange Teriyaki marinade.  It was perfect.

3. Serve in a bowl on top of steamed rice.

4. Top with any or all of the following:

green onions, chopped as thin as you can
black (roasted) sesame seeds
pineapple chunks

This was ridiculously tasty.

Tomatoey beef stew

I modified this so heavily from the recipe I based it on that I won't even bother to link to the original.  Here's what I did.

Ingredients:
1 yellow onion
lots of baby carrots (a couple of handfuls at least)
lots of new potatoes (a couple of handfuls at least)
1 pound stew beef
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp celery seed
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
6 oz can tomato paste
2 cups or so beef broth
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup red wine
1 tbsp olive oil

1. Cut the potatoes in half.  I found a bag of mixed-variety new potatoes - red, white, and blue, actually.  The variety was nice.  Don't peel.  Don't cut too small.  Place in the slow cooker, arranged around the edge of the pot.

2.  Cut the carrots in half.  Put in slow cooker, arranged around the edge of the pot.

3. Cut the beef into chunks and coat with flour.  Brown in a skillet or wok.  Transfer to the slow cooker, spreading evenly over bottom of pot.

4. Pour the wine into the pan you browned the beef in and stir until the bits of flour are all taken up.  Pour into pot.

5. Chop onion into chunks, place in pot on top of beef.

6. Sprinkle thyme, Italian seasoning, celery seed, W sauce over veggies and beef in pot. 

7. Pour tomatoes (don't drain) and tomato sauce over what's in the pot.

8. Add enough beef broth to almost cover ingredients in pot.  More or less according to how soupy a stew you like.

9.  Cook on low for about 8 hours.

10.  Serve with good crusty bread.

This came out pretty good.  A little more acidic than I would have preferred, so it's worth fiddling with the flavorings.  But still pretty satisfying.

SUNOMONO

When I was growing up, my mother used to thinly slice cucumbers and onions, mix them together with some apple cider vinegar and sugar, and serve them as a freshly pickled salad for dinner.  Of course, your Grandmother Munroe had never heard of "sunomono" but I did after marrying Dad.  I have a favorite cookbook that is no longer in print called Japanese Country Cookbook.  Years ago, Carol Gardner recommended it to me.  In it, I found a very basic and simple recipe for sunomono dressing with just three essential ingredients: 6 T vinegar, 2 T sugar, and 1 tsp. shoyu (soy sauce).

If you use rice vinegar, keep in mind that it is weaker than other vinegars and you may have to use more to get the proper acidity.  I usually use the apple cider vinegar that I love and grew up on. (The only thing I use white vinegar for is cleaning!)  Adjust the ingredients to meet your taste preferences (I usually add more sugar, about 3 T instead of 2T) and experiment with using it on other fresh veggies if you like.  At some point in time, Dad and I started adding toasted sesame seed to the mix and we like it that way, too.  We always used yellow onions but  the only onions we could get in India were red ones that are a bit sweeter and we developed a taste for them.  Experiment and come up with something you like.  It seems better when it sits for a few hours or overnight.

Peel the cucumbers?  We did!  If you buy an English cucumber, you don't have to worry about the seeds and may not bother with the peeling either.  Make it your own and enjoy!

Tapenade

This is basically a recipe from allrecipes, a little modified.

Ingredients:
3 cloves garlic (peeled, but whole)
1 cup (a little more) kalamata olives, pitted
2 tbsp capers
3 tbsp fresh italian parsley
juice from 1 lemon (fresh squeezed is best)
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Put the garlic in your food processor and chop it.

2. Add everything else and chop it.

3. Careful, you want it to come out chopped, not pureed.

Eat on crackers, bread, raw veggies, etc.  Particularly good paired with brie.  This recipe came out quite strong tasting, between the capers and the fresh-squeezed lemon juice.  Bottled might mollify that a bit, but we liked the intense flavor.

I'm sure everybody's French aunt has her own home recipe for this, but this one was amazingly easy and tasty.

Five-Spice Pork with Snap Peas

We got this out of Fine Cooking magazine, which is our new favorite. It's a crockpot dish and really easy.

1/2 cup cooking sherry*

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 Tbs Sriracha or other hot sauce

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder

2 lb pork, cut into 1-inch pieces

1/2 lb sugar snap peas, trimmed

Mix together everything but the pork and snap peas to make the sauce. You can mix them right in the crock if you want. Then stir in the pork, cover, and cook on low for 6 or 7 hours or on high 4 to 5. About 10 minutes before serving, stir in the snap peas and let them soften up just a bit. Serve with rice or bread. Feeds two adults and 3 kids with a bit to spare.

I used Tabasco instead of Sriracha and the dish wasn't spicy at all. The magazine also recommended low-sodium soy sauce but we didn't have any so we used regular and I didn't feel like it turned out too salty. I also think this would be awesome with some broccoli thrown in. 

*You could substitute with apple cider or add honey to vinegar; just use something with flavor (not plain water).