imafoodblog.com

This past Sunday the imfoodblog.com staff was treated to an extra-special outing to Cochon555 at the Mandarin Oriental hotel here in Washington DC (with special thanks going out to our friends at www.foodbuzz.com!)

Cochon555 is a culinary competition to raise awareness for heritage breed pork between 5 chefs, each given 5 whole heritage breed pigs (oh and 5 vineyards). All our regular readers know that we love our pork, so we were all extremely excited to have the chance to attend.

The chefs/restaurants participating were:

• Brian McBride of Blue Duck Tavern
• R.J. Cooper of Vidalia
• Nicholas Stefanelli of Mio
• Jamie Leeds of Commonwealth Gastropub &
• John Manolatos of Cashion’s Eat Place

How do five of DC’s finest chefs prepare five whole hogs? Jump with me to find out!

(Here’s a hint: Deliciously)

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I love Chinese food. I have many childhood memories of a lazy Sunday with my family complete with Chinese take out for dinner. Unfortunately, Nick does not share my affinity, so I don’t get to eat it too often anymore. That is probably just as well, since for the most part the food is pretty unhealthy.

However, I have begun to dabble in some simple Chinese inspired recipes. Besides take out fried rice and spring rolls, this is the only way that Nick will eat this type of food.

There are so many wonderful flavors in this cuisine that I don’t normally use and I like that by making it myself I can eliminate some of the fat and preservatives that you get when you order out.

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For the third installment in my week of the lemon, I give you Blueberry Lemon Soufflé Pancakes. (Here are the other lemon related posts in this series: Lemon Poppyseed Muffins, Almond Lemon Yogurt Cake (TWD), My Favorite Ultra Lemony Yogurt Cake, Whole Lemon Tart & Pasta Frolla Dough).

Normally, weekend breakfasts in our house are lox bagels (we stock up on lox and bagels whenever we visit my parents in NY) or eggs, and I do try to keep it on the healthy side. It is rare that we eat pancakes, or French toast, or bacon. So when we do decide to eat some pancakes, we always make luxurious pancakes from scratch. My current favorite pancake recipe is for these lemon soufflé pancakes that I found here on My Recipes, despite the ridiculous preamble story that they wrote. Check it out if you want a good chuckle. Listen up single ladies, according to My Recipes, this recipe is all you need to snatch yourself up a husband.

These pancakes are soufflé like because whipped egg whites are folded into the batter and they fluff up while cooking in the pan. You can actually see them rise and puff up if you watch closely (provided you have not deflated the egg whites). These pancakes have a great lemony freshness from the lemon zest and juice (any citrus flavor you like would probably work in these). This time I folded in fresh blueberries, which gave great bursts of sweetness. (I don’t think I need to preach about adding fruit into pancakes). I have made these with and without fruit, and they are equally as delicious.

I also like to warm up my maple syrup before I serve it. This is not necessary, but I think it adds a nice touch to a breakfast like this. Sometimes I add some fresh or frozen fruit to the syrup and let it simmer to infuse it with some fruity flavor as well.

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We like bacon around here. In fact, who doesn’t like bacon? Chances are, you have bacon in your fridge right now - store-bought bacon. It’s packaged in clear plastic so that every time you open your fridge you have to look at it and think, “hmm, I could use some bacon crumbles in this salad.” Bacon has a tendency to make everything better, and let’s be honest here, bacon is great stuff. We have, however, a couple of problems with the bacon-like junk available in most grocery stores. First, few foods are more highly processed than mass produced bacon. It is usually prepared in a huge factory that is focused primarily with churning out as much bacon as possible. This means that every shortcut is taken during the processing to produce the most bacon in the shortest amount of time. Truck loads of pork bellies are shipped to a plant, where they are skinned and trimmed to a uniform shape, then “pumped” with a curing solution designed to cure the meat as rapidly as possible. They then go through a “thermal processing” (yes, that’s the technical term) then they are chilled, pressed and sliced. It all sounds very clinical, because it is. The result is a bright pink meat, that is always unpleasantly slimy when you open the package.

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(FYI - There is a sausage inside here^)

After battle brioche I was left with over a pound of unused brioche. I decided to try something I have always wanted to make, but have not: “Pigs in a Blanket” and what better blanket is there than a supple, buttery brioche blanket? I decided to make this pigs in a blanket recipe as my first foray into the subject.

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This week’s Craving Ellie in my Belly is Sage rubbed Pork Chops with Warm Apple Slaw. The recipe was chosen by Jen of Jen B’s Cooking Carveout Breach of the Recipeace

I have often leafed through Ellie’s book and contemplated making these. However, for the longest time Nick would not eat pork chops. I think he was traumatized by the tasteless rubbery pork chops he ate as a child. However, we have recently begun buying excellent pork chops so he is happy to eat them now. I was pleased to see this recipe chosen.

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OK, OK. I know you’ve never heard of Minestra Con Le Cozze E Salsiccia, neither did I until I did a literal translation of the ingredients into Italian. I’ve always thought of this soup as an Italian soup because the inspiration for creating it came from Italian wedding soup. They share some common characteristics: both are made with greens like kale (or escarole or spinach), and they both contain ground pork - meatballs in the IWS case and sausage (as the name suggests) in this case. No aspect of assembling this soup requires a level of culinary aptitude beyond being able to use a knife and the stove, but do allocate an appropriate amount of time, about 2 hours (with probably 15 minutes of hands-on time) to make it.

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