ashe blogs

I am a little bit in awe of myself right now. Today I aced my final exam for my rivers class (at least, I’m pretty darned sure I did) AND managed to cook not only a respectable dinner, but one of the best things I’ve cooked in MONTHS.

For background, I’ve been obsessed with our local Whole Foods’s Kalua Pork since catching a whiff of it several weeks ago. Theirs is basically a Hawaiian-style pulled pork, with pineapple. I already had dinner-making plans, so getting some hot off the food bar was out of the question that night. But I haven’t seen it since, and tragically there’s no way for me to know when it’ll be back on their rotating menu.

“Obtaining otherwise unattainable food” is a prime motivation for my cooking… it explains my fascination with Moroccan cuisine, my interest in artisan ice creams, the Teresa’s copycat balsamic pasta of a few weeks ago. And so Kalua Pork got added to my backlog of recipes to try. I bought a pork shoulder, with intentions of cooking it for dinner tonight. Only problem? Final exam. From 6 to 7:30 PM, prime dinner-making time.

Determined to still have a better-than-takeout dinner, I threw the pork in the crockpot this morning and set about pondering how to season it. All the recipes I googled for Kalua Pork were just… salt and liquid smoke. Which sounded downright boring. I didn’t trust it to produce anything smelling like the Food-of-the-Gods I remembered.

AND THEN I FOUND THIS TACOS AL PASTOR RECIPE from Closet Cooking. Pineapple? Check. Also, gobs and gobs of spices and flavor. Not Kalua Pork… but the Kalua Pork can wait.

I didn’t have: guajillo chiles, ancho chiles, or chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. BUT I had Penzey’s ancho chile powder, chipotle powder, and adobo seasoning. Good enough.

Having no idea how much dried chile powder corresponded to fresh, and no particular inclination to look it up, I winged everything. It was just me and the spice jars, dancing around the crockpot.

THIS. THIS IS HOW COOKS ARE MADE.

Since it was a little bit fatty and moist coming out of the crockpot, I threw it in a skillet and browned it retroactively. Great idea. And then I tossed it into a quesadilla. AWESOME idea.

If I may boast, I now make better Mexican food at home than I even know where to get around here… I haven’t had flavors like this since I was in Texas.
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Uncharacteristically, I snapped wide awake at 7:30 AM this past Saturday. (I normally sleep like a brick, and rouse groggily.) So it was off to the farmer’s market with me! And I had a field day. I came home with cherries, garlic scapes, broccoli, zucchini, onions, green beans, a giant bunch of dill, fresh tilapia from Superior Fish, and the challenge of using it all before it goes bad. Especially the dill.

So far I’m off to a good start with the cooking. Sunday’s lunch was a simple but stellar affair: the fresh tilapia marinated with dill, garlic scapes, and lemon peel, and sauteed in olive oil; the green beans steamed. I made a giant tray of cherry brown butter bars for my choir’s board meeting, then launched into making the remainder of the dill disappear. Half went into dill dip for the Fourth of July; another quarter into compound butter for future fish. But I still have a ton left! Any ideas? I don’t pickle, and don’t intend to start, but other crazy ideas are welcome.

“To know the products of the Antica Dolceria Bonajuto is to know an infinity of flavours unknown to most — ancient flavours unchanged by the passing of time.”

So reads the copy on the website of the oldest chocolate factory in Sicily.  Their recipe is directly descended from the chocolate of the Aztecs, as it was introduced to Europe in the 1600s.  If I’d known such a chocolate existed before happening upon it at Zingerman’s, I would have had to seek it out.  Instead, I was lucky enough to spy the word “cinnamon” on that bright red label in the midst of dozens of chocolate bars.  Cinnamon makes everything better, so I was already tempted.  When I pointed it out, the salesperson I’d been talking to insisted upon getting me a sample, affirming its excellence but warning that it would be nothing like any chocolate I was used to!  With a disclaimer like that, I was thoroughly intrigued.

She was right—it was completely unique among chocolate bars, and I’ve tried a lot of chocolate.  The texture was powdery with a rich and strong dark chocolate flavor, along with the irresistable crunch of half-dissolved sugar and a cinnamonny finish.  Only three ingredients are listed on the label: sugar, cinnamon, and cocoa mass (which is to say, ground cocoa solids & cocoa butter).  These have been blended and pressed into molds while still semi-solid, at temperatures much lower than chocolate-makers typically use today.  To think that this is what chocolate tasted like until one Mr. Lindt of Switzerland invented the conching process in 1879!  Silky-smooth chocolate as we know it is a mere hundred and thirty years old.

That said, this Antica Dolceria Bonajuto bar is so good that I’m not altogether sure our modern silky-smooth chocolate is an improvement… we finished the last nibbles of the precious cioccolato last week, and I’m still craving it intensely.  I’m not sure when I’ll be in Ann Arbor next, but I’ll be stocking up.

Ever since discovering Morgan & York, we’ve had our eye on a bottle of their Aceto Balsamico Maletti.  We sampled it on one of our visits for Sweet Gem truffles, and never forgot it.  It is fantastic.  It is thick and rich like balsamic syrup without the bother, and without the excessive sweetness.  We didn’t buy it the first time, because $35/bottle balsamic gives one pause, even for all-too frequent buyers of $10/bar chocolate.  But a couple salads and one batch of conchiglie balsamico later, we knew we had to have it. And then there was the waiting, because it took me a good three trips to Ann Arbor to remember to stop by.

Speaking of things unforgettable, my boyfriend’s favorite thing to order at Teresa’s in Princeton was always a lovely dish called Conchiglie Balsamico—shell pasta in a balsamic cream sauce.  As I’ve never seen it on a menu anywhere else, it demanded reverse-engineering.  And we tried it a few times in a few different ways on the rare occasions we cooked together on vacation, and never quite got it right.

A couple months ago, I decided to try again.  First hit on Google for “conchiglie balsamico” revealed a post on the blog Traveling Without a Map.  To my amazement, I found not only a recipe, but the online home of a Princetonian I had at one time known decently well.  (I will call her M, as her blog does.) It’s a small Internet, after all!

The Conchiglie Balsamico was wonderful the first time.  But last night I made it again, precious Aceto Balsamico Maletti in hand, and it was absolutely spectacular.  The best part was being able to drizzle a few drops of the pure balsamic over the plated pasta for an extra punch of flavor, and have it come out being exactly the right texture.  Such is the power of Really Good Balsamic.

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