Friday Food: A Pork Triple Play

Friday

Short version: Ram chops, mashed potato cake, green peas

Long version: I tend to get very repetitive in cooking, especially with meat. So when I pulled a bag of ram chops out of the freezer, I did what I've been doing with them every time lately: marinate in salt, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar, then fry and finish with a sauce of the old red wine I'm still trying to use up. And cream. Sometimes I use cold butter.

Always good. And we don't have them often enough that anyone is tired of this yet.

The potato cake was the previous night's leftover smashed potatoes--which were not universally popular due to their texture--that I mashed further, mixed with an egg and some grated cheese, and then fried in a skillet with a lot of tallow. I couldn't flip this over whole, so I just sort of flipped sections of it until there were quite a bit of browned spots. It was still pretty soft, though. Everyone loved this. Much more popular than the smashed potatoes.

Before . . .

After . . .

And after on a plate.

Saturday

Short version: Irritating pork, butter-swim biscuits, sorta slaw

Long version: I had a very, very large pork shoulder in the freezer that was taking up way too much room. It was going to relatively cool this day, and also the next-day's birthday boy had requested the rice pudding that takes hours in the oven, so I decided to cook that giant hunk of pork.

And then I regretted it.

The first thing that happened was the rice pudding boiled over a bit and dripped onto the oven floor. Rice pudding is the WORST to get in a hot oven. So much smoke, so much mess.

Then, the pork was too big to fit in the deep casserole dish with a lid, so I put it in my biggest Pyrex casserole* and covered it with foil.

This never works well. I can never get the foil to stay tight. Maybe I don't use enough, I don't know, but it always ends up getting pushed away from the sides and then the liquid evaporates too quickly. 

This casserole was too shallow, which meant the liquid kept bubbling over the side and onto the floor of the oven. Which was already kind of mess from the rice pudding mess. There were just clouds of smoke coming out of the oven. I had to actually turn it off to let it cool a bit so I could clean it out. 

I also decided at that point to move it into the deeper dish I prefer to use, since the meat had shrunk a little. It was still just a bit too big for that dish, but I just found a spot where I could cut a small piece off next to the bone and kind of wedged it all in there.

And then I had two giant, greasy dishes to wash. YAY.

I also had to pour the liquid from the one dish to the other, and that, of course, ran down the outside of the dish and got all over the counter and dripped onto the floor.

Some day I'm going to be cooking, like, three small pork chops, and this sort of thing will no longer be a part of my life. And I'll miss it, right? Right.

Anyway! I made the biscuits because the oven was on anyway for the pork and I had a batch of yogurt that my children complained was lumpy. I make one and a half of this recipe in a 9"x13" pan, which uses up a lot of yogurt (in place of the buttermilk).

The slaw was a last-minute thing I made up. Just half a shredded garden cabbage with a shredded carrot, the last of some mustard vinaigrette on the counter, onion powder, and a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt. It was even less creamy than the coleslaw I typically make, but actually pretty good.

Sunday

Short version: Birthday sausage, pasta with not enough pesto, still-frozen peas, brownies and ice cream

Long version: The July birthday boy always wants pasta with pesto for his birthday dinner. This is handy, since I always have basil in the garden in July.

Except this year, the grasshoppers want to eat the basil. I actually made the pesto a few days earlier, because I noticed grasshopper damage and was afraid if I waited there would be none left at all by Sunday.

The plants were already pretty small, so to get any basil at all, I had to carefully harvest just a few leaves from every plant. I stretched this just a bit with some lamb's quarters (a weed sort of like spinach), but it was still a very small amount of pesto. The plants had grown back just a little by Sunday, so right before dinner I harvested a few more leaves of basil and made another miniscule batch of pesto. This was still not enough for the amount of pasta my kids want to eat, but it was the best I could do.

I had two packages of the Albuquerque-purchased Italian sausage left, so that helped to mitigate the pesto disappointment. 

The birthday boy had only asked for ice cream for his dessert, but when I asked if he would like some brownies maybe too, he said yes. Poppy wants to enter brownies into the county fair this year, so I had her make them while I was in the kitchen. She did a good job, although they were slightly overbaked.

She put all the candles in, too.

Monday

Short version: Pork, roasted potatoes, corn, fresh bread with jam, later ice cream

Long version: Always a lot of pork left from a pork shoulder, which I suppose somewhat makes up for the irritation in cooking it this time. I had baked bread just before dinner, so while the oven was still hot, I left it on and put in a skillet of the par-roasted potatoes from the freezer, along with the pork and frozen corn.

Since I had four bread pans hanging around waiting to be washed, I put the pork in one and the frozen corn in the other to put in the oven.

I neglected to get a photo of the full pans, so here's the aftermath.

Then everyone had fresh bread with butter and the strawberry jam I had made the day before.

And THEN, since we had eaten early because I just made dinner when the oven was already on, everyone had some ice cream at about 7 p.m.

Tuesday

Short version: Pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, potato chips, more ice cream

Long version: I made some buns the day before when I was baking bread, and heated the rest of the pork with half store-bought barbecue sauce and half things I added to the pot to approximate more barbecue sauce--ketchup, molasses, vinegar. I do this because the store-bought barbecue sauce I get is too spicy for me and Poppy straight.

I had made the coleslaw the day before with the last of the garden cabbages, so it was a very easy meal.

Poppy and I had been in the village earlier in the day, so I let her go into the tiny store and pick out a bag of chips for dinner. She chose cheddar and sour cream.

A very summery dinner.

More ice cream because the two younger boys and A. had been down the hill building a stone wall for seven hours and needed to replace a lot of calories. Also, it was hot.

Wednesday

Short version: Ram enchilada casserole, raw radishes, pureed calabaza

Long version: I found a small bag of already cooked ram meat in the freezer that I wanted to use up. I also had some leftover corn, pureed calabaza in the refrigerator, and the last of a can of refried beans that needed to be used.

I put all of that in a casserole with corn tortillas, cheese, and (homemade) enchilada sauce.

I forgot to drain the canned tomatoes I made the sauce from before I pureed them, which made for a rather wet casserole. The tortillas pretty much just disintegrated. Oh well. It tasted good, anyway.

Thursday

Short version: Leftover casserole, pulled pork, and calabaza at home, barbecue meatballs and potatoes on the road

Long version: A. took the younger three kids to Colorado so one son could attend a livestock judging camp. They were going to stay in a hotel this night, and then camp the next night. I had made barbecue meatballs and boiled potatoes for them to take. I wrapped it all up in aluminum foil so it could be heated in the campfire, but A. ended up just dishing it out onto the paper plates I sent and heating it up in their room's microwave.

Traveling food.

The eldest child home with me had the leftover casserole. I had the pulled pork and calabaza.

Refrigerator check:

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

* I replaced the 15"x10" one that exploded.