Baby Bok Choy with Cashews

Sometimes the simplest things are the most enjoyable. My mother whipped up this quick and easy baby bok choy dish the other night. It was so good I made her make it again the next day so I could watch with pad and pen in hand. This is hard on mom actually, as she never makes anything the same way twice, and she never measures (obviously not a baker). I make her weigh things. "How much bok choy is that mom?" She looks at me as if I've just asked her how many miles there are to the moon. I get the kitchen scale down from the cabinet. Why cashews? Because that's what we had on hand. Almonds would work too. If you want you could jazz it up a bit with a little freshly grated ginger and a shake of chili pepper flakes.

Baby Bok Choy with Cashews Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 cup chopped green onions, including green ends
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 pound baby bok choy, rinsed, larger leaves separated from base, base trimmed but still present, holding the smaller leaves together
• 1/2 teaspoon dark sesame oil
• Salt
• 1/2 cup chopped, roasted, salted cashews

Method

1 Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan on medium high heat. Add onions, then garlic, then bok choy. Sprinkle with sesame oil and salt. Cover, and let the baby bok choy cook down for approximately 3 minutes. (Like spinach, when cooked, the bok choy will wilt a bit.)
2 Remove cover. Lower heat to low. Stir and let cook for a minute or two longer, until the bok choy is just cooked.
3 Gently mix in cashews.
Serves 4.

Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce

The best thing about knowing how to make an easy blender hollandaise sauce is that once you get the hang of it, you can make the most simple of vegetables into something quite elegant. Case in point, these steamed asparagus. I like asparagus any which way, but drizzle a little (or more than a little) hollandaise over them? Oh my.

Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce Recipe

• Prep time: 5 minutes
• Cook time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of asparagus (about 1 lb)
• 10 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 stick plus 2 Tbsp)
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (skip if using salted butter)
• Pinch of cayenne

Method

1 Prep the asparagus. Break off the tough ends with your fingers. Bend the asparagus spears near the end and they will break naturally where the spear is no longer tough. For an elegant presentation of the spears, use a vegetable peeler to peel off a very thin layer of the outer skin of the lower two to three inches of the asparagus spears. Prepare a large, shallow pan (with a cover) with a half inch of water and a steamer rack.
2 Prepare the Hollandaise sauce. Melt the butter in a small pot. Put the egg yolks, lemon juice, salt and cayenne into a blender. Blend the eggs for 20-30 seconds at medium to medium high speed until lighter in color. Turn blender down to lowest setting and slowly drizzle in the hot melted butter while the blender is going. Continue to blend for a few seconds after all of the butter is incorporated. Taste the sauce and add more salt or lemon juice if needed. Keep warm while you are steaming the asparagus.

3 Bring the water in your steaming pan to a boil. Place the asparagus on the steaming rack. Cover. Steam for 3 to 5 minutes, until tender, but still a little crisp, definitely not mushy. The timing depends on how thick the asparagus spears are.
Plate the asparagus. Pour Hollandaise sauce over them.
Yield: Serves 4.

Apple Cranberry Stuffed Pork Roast

Are you familiar with Cook's Illustrated? It's a magazine and a website from the same people who create the PBS show America's Test Kitchen. It's the only cooking show we watch with any regularity, and we read each issue of the magazine from cover to cover. What I love about the magazine is that they go into great deal of detail about the how's and why's of various cooking methods; I always learn something new. (What I don't love about the magazine is that they tend to overcomplicate things, just for that n-th degree of perfection.)
This apple cranberry stuffed pork roast recipe is based on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated (Sept 07). We absolutely loved it; I've been eating the leftovers for days. The filling is essentially a sweet sour chutney, made with brown sugar, vinegar, dried apples and cranberries. Though pretty much any chutney would work in this recipe. The roast is "double butterflied", filling applied, meat rolled up and roasted. The acidity of the chutney-ish filling tenderizes the pork roast from the inside. The original recipe calls for grilling the roast with soaked wood chips but you can easily make this roast in the oven. The recipe also uses dried apples, which can be a little hard to find. I think next time we may try making this with peeled, diced, fresh apples.

Apple Cranberry Stuffed Pork Roast Recipe

Ingredients

Filling

• 1 cup apple cider
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large shallot, peeled, thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 cups dried apples (packed)
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 Tbsp yellow mustard seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Pork Roast

• 2 1/2 pound boneless center-cut pork loin roast (short and wide - about 7-8 inches long and 4-5 inches wide)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

1 Before starting on the pork, put the pork roast in the freezer for 30 minutes to make it easier to cut. While the pork is chilling, you can make the filling.
2 Bring all the filling ingredients to simmer in medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook until apples are very soft, about 20 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve, reserving the liquid. Use a rubber spatula to press against the apple mixture in the sieve to extract as much liquid out as possible. Return liquid to saucepan and simmer over medium-high heat until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, set aside and reserve this liquid for use as a glaze. Pulse apple mixture in food processor, about fifteen 1-second pulses. Set aside.

2 Preheat oven to 350°F or prepare your grill for indirect heat. You will be "double-butterflying" the pork roast. Lay the roast down, fat side up. Insert the knife into the roast 1/2-inch horizontally from the bottom of the roast, along the long side of the roast. Make a long cut along the bottom of the roast, stopping 1/2 inch before the edge of the roast. You might find it easier to handle by starting at a corner of the roast.

Open up the roast and continue to cut through the thicker half of the roast, again keeping 1/2 inch from the bottom. Repeat until the roast is an even 1/2-inch thickness all over when laid out.

If necessary, pound the roast to an even thickness with a meat pounder.

3 Season the inside of the roast well with salt and pepper. Spread out the filling on the roast, leaving a 1/2-inch border from the edges. Starting with the short side of the roast, roll it up very tightly. Secure with kitchen twine at 1-inch intervals. Season the outside of the roast generously with salt and pepper.
4 Place roast on a rack in a roasting pan, place in oven, on the middle rack.
You can also grill the roast, using indirect heat either gas or charcoal. If you are using charcoal, use about 5 pounds of coals, bank them to one side. Preheat the grill, covered. Wipe the grates with olive oil. Place roast, fat side up, on the side of the grill that has no coals underneath. Place the lid on the grill, with the vent directly over the roast. If you are grilling with gas, place all the burners on high for 15 minutes to heat the grates, brush grates with olive oil, turn off the middle burner, place roast fat-side up on middle burner. If you are grilling, turn roast half way through the cooking.
Cook for 45 to 60 minutes, until the internal temperature of the roast is 130 to 135 degrees. Brush with half of the glaze and cook for 5 minutes longer. Remove the roast from the oven or grill. Place it on a cutting board. Tent it with foil to rest and keep warm for 15 minutes before slicing.

5 Slice into 1/2-inch wide pieces, removing the cooking twine as you cut the roast. Serve with remaining glaze.

Serves 6-8.

Albondigas Soup

Albondigas soup is a traditional Mexican meatball soup ("albondigas" means "meatballs" in Spanish) that my mother has cooked for our family for almost 50 years. It is our version of comfort food. What makes the flavor of albondigas soup distinctive is the chopped mint in the meatballs. I once complained to a Mexican chef about the lack of mint in his cookbook's albondigas soup recipe, and he looked at me with surprise and said, "my mother puts mint in her albondigas!" You can, of course, skip the mint, substitute with a little fresh oregano or some cilantro, but to me, the soup's not the same without it. You can also vary the vegetables added, depending on what you have on hand and what's in season.

Albondigas Soup Recipe

If fresh mint is not available, you can use a couple teaspoons of dried mint from herbal mint tea. You can also vary the vegetables depending on what you have on hand. Spring peas in their pods instead of shucked peas, for example. Or you could add some chopped fresh zucchini or corn. My mother often puts a couple extra tablespoons of chopped fresh mint directly into the soup. Feel free to substitute ground turkey for the ground beef, we do it often.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 3 quarts of chicken stock or beef stock OR water OR a mixture of both (we usually use half stock half water as the meatballs will create their own stock)*
• 1/2 cup of tomato sauce

• 1/2 lb of string beans, strings and ends removed, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced

• 1/3 cup of raw white rice
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/4 cup of chopped fresh mint leaves
• 1/4 cup of chopped parsley
• 1 raw egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• A dash of cayenne (optional)

• 1 1/2 cup of frozen or fresh peas
• 1 teaspoon of dried oregano, crumbled, or 1 Tbsp fresh chopped oregano
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

*If using prepared stock, be sure to use gluten-free stock if you are cooking gluten-free.

Method

1 Heat oil in large heavy-bottomed pot (5-qt) over medium heat. Add onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook a minute more. Add broth mixture and tomato sauce. Bring to boil and reduce heat to simmer. Add carrots and string beans.

2 Prepare the meatballs. Mix rice into meat, adding mint leaves and parsley, salt and pepper. Mix in raw egg. Form mixture into 1-inch meatballs.

3 Add the meatballs to the simmering soup, one at a time. Cover and let simmer for 1/2 hour. Add the peas towards the end of the 1/2 hour. Add a few pinches of oregano and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and a dash of cayenne, to taste.

Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro.

Yield: Serves 6-8.