Also on another non-food related note, I'm making it a new editorial policy to respond to any comments from my visitors by posting comments myself. I found myself enjoying reading the comment exchanges on other blogs, so I'm going to try that here too. So, please, comment away!
And now, we return to regular programming...
One of the best unanticipated benefits of participating in the Paper Chef event this weekend was the fact that I had almost all the ingredients I needed to make most of the recipes submitted to Owen and judged by Fatemeh. Although all of the recipes looked very good, I decided I was going to make Molly's roulade and Carpal Fish's ravioli with the left over ingredients.
I wasn't going to let a small problem like me not having either lasgna sheets or chicken interfere with my plans. The lasgna sheets could not possibly be substituted by anything else I had, since I didn't even have wonton wrappers in my freezer, so I decided to postpone making the ravioli until this weekend. Luckily, I had Niman Ranch's boneless pork chops, which I called as being a good substitute for chicken. I cut each of the pork filets into three thin slices and started following Molly's recipe... ...until she wanted me to roast my green garlic for 30 min in the first paragraph. I apparently missed this detail when looking through the recipe earlier. I was vastly too hungry to wait 30 min for the garlic, so I started to digress. Alas, within the first 5 min of prep work, I was already finding myself unable to follow instructions...
I took my chopped garlic and sauteed them in a pan with a dash of sake for 5 min to approximate what green garlic might do in 30 min in the oven. It was fragrant and wilted - close enough for me! I mashed this into the goat cheese, not even bothering to let the garlic cool as she suggests. Perhaps I was really just too hungry to follow instructions...
I totally forgot the whole pounding aspect Molly mentions until now and proceeded to slather on my goat cheese/garlic mixture on to the pork. I added my prosciutto on top of the goat cheese as recommended (see, I _CAN_ follow instructions! Ha!), and wrapped the pork around the cheese and prosciutto. Because I neglected to listen to her about cooling my garlic first, the cheese was a bit runny. Ops. Undeterred, I wrapped each piece of pork separately with kitchen string. I tried to see if I could overlap the pieces for one giant roll, but it was too cumbersome with the cheese oozing out from too many holes. I decided I'd go with the Pigs in a Blanket look, except the pig was the blanket here...
Since my oven takes forever to heat up and never reaches the temperature it is supposed to, I just cooked my Pig Blanket rolls in a pan on the stove. I seared the sides and then added a dash of sake and put the lid on the pan to 'steam' cook the pork. My end product looked like this:
For sides, I blanched my purple asparagus from the Berkeley farmer's market and made a brown rice pilaf with green peas and spinach. These asparagus had less of that 'green' scent that I like in asparagus. I think theses purple guys might be an easier version for non-asparagus lovers to enjoy the crisp texture of an asparagus, but for me, they didn't have anything special to justify the additional $1.50 cost per bunch over green asparagus. I did notice that my asparagus pee was a lot less potent that evening...
My thoughts on dinner: YUM! The salt of the prosciutto was an excellent match for the tender and juicy pork with the creamy dairy leaking through, taking the edge off the prosciutto for a perfect balance. The garlic gave the goat cheese a nice depth and appetizing scent. I'd never thought to wrap a meat with a meat myself with my somewhat limited imagination for home-cooking. It's interesting how a simple concept can escape unfamiliar minds...
This recipe was simple, flexible, and yummy. Great job, Molly!
And yes, careful readers will notice that I didn't make her sherry sauce. The pork smelled so good, I didn't bother making anything else. I'm not a very big fan of tart sauces on Western food that much anyway! And no, I didn't mean Western as in cowboy Western. I meant it as in non-Asian, Euro/American...
On a side note, boneless pork chops is almost an oxymoron to me, because pork chops in Japan has to have the bone to hold onto to be pork chops or else it's just pork filets.
1 comment:
hey Alice. I was being driven crazy by the blogger probs too. I started hitting my keybard key really hard, as if that was going to do me any good. it drove me crazy. So thank you for pointing me to the status page, where I think I will be able to find peace and solace in the future!
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