Khao Phat Muu (Thai-style Fried Rice with Pork)

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

I love fried rice. I guess I love a lot of rice-based dishes - paella, risotto, etc.; I find them comforting and hearty and delicious. If you're not going to make pasta, you might as well go for rice! Yep, this gal loves her carbs.

This is another great, pretty simple recipe from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok; Joef is, once again, the person to thank for cooking this up. Like all of the recipes in this cookbook, the results are far better than anything you could order at (most) restaurants, and definitely better than delivery. Once you get over the slightly odd ingredient list (most of the ingredients repeat from other recipes in the book, so once you've stocked up once, you have a lot of options open up for you), it cooks quickly and easily.

So, for ONE (just double it and cook all at once for two people, or make it twice for extra-freshness):

1 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tsp Thai thin soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
Pinch ground white pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large egg, room temp
1/4 cup peeled small shallots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced with the grain
1 tbsp peeled garlic cloves, halved lengthwise and lightly crushed in a mortar
4 oz boneless pork shoulder, sliced against the grain into 1/8-inch-thick, bite-size pieces
2 cups cooked Jasmine rice (day-old is best, fresh is fine)
2 tbsp thinly sliced green onions, lightly packed
1 tbsp coarsely chopped cilantro, lightly packed
Lime wedges and cucumber slices, optional, for serving

Combine the fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and pepper in a small bowl and stir well.

Heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl it around in the wok, coating the sides of the wok. Crack in the egg when the oil starts to smoke, and cook without touching it until all but the center of the egg has set, about 15 seconds. Flip the egg and push it aside. .

Add the shallots and garlic and cook and stir them (but not the egg), until lightly browned, about 1 minute.

Add the pork, stir everything together well, and stir-fry - constantly stir, scoop, flip - until the pork is no longer pink on the outside.

Add the rice and stir-fry that with everything else, breaking up the egg a bit, for about 30 seconds. Add the fish sauce mixture, and stir-fry until the pork is just cooked through..

Turn off the heat and stir in 2 tbsp of green onions. Plate and sprinkle with remaining green onions, cilantro, and cucumber and lime if using.

Phat Si Ew

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

This is the second awesome recipe we tried from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok. This time, we cooked together, which was not only a hoot and a holler, but made the fast pace of the cooking a lot easier. I was kind of amazed at what we produced from this recipe. I don't know what I was expecting, but it looked like the Phat (which I usually see as "Pad") Si Ew you get in restaurants, and tasted…well, better! This is truly not a difficult recipe, and it's fun to make and delicious to eat. You'll need a wok, and if you have it, a wok spatula, which is kind of square-ish and slightly turned up at the sides. Ikea sells one for like $4. A mortar and pestle is also good to have (Ikea has a cheap one of those, too - $15!).

Probably the trickiest part was making the fried-garlic oil, just because you have to cut up so much garlic. You could also make a fried-shallot oil - you only need three shallots, sliced very thinly, and you follow the same process, except they cook a little longer - looks more like 10-20 minutes to get them crispy and golden brown.

His recipe calls for a few things to enhance the dish for serving, most of which are recipes in the book as well - fish sauce-soaked chiles, vinegar-soaked chiles, toasted-chile powder, and sugar. We didn't take the time to make and add these, but I bet they'd be delicious if you had them.

I was thrown off at first by how Ricker's recipes are organized. He breaks the recipe into sections - in this case, separating the ingredients and steps for pork and noodles; some ingredients then get repeated in both sections. But actually, this helps to break the recipe down and understand it better.

Finally, he recommends making this in single-serving batches. We cheated and made two batches at once, but the recipe below is to serve one. Just go ahead and double it - cooking two at once was fine.

Things go pretty fast once you start cooking, so having everything prepped, and having a helper, are great.

We started by making the fried garlic oil:
15 cloves peeled garlic, cut into about 1/8 inch pieces
1 cups vegetable oil

Set a fine-mesh strainer over a heatproof bowl.

Pour the oil into a small pan (oil should be about 3/4 inch deep). Put the pan over high heat and heat until a piece of garlic bubbles right away when added to the oil. Add all the garlic, and turn the heat down immediately to low. Stir once or twice.

Cook, stirring, until the garlic is light golden brown and crisp. It should take about 4-6 minutes. Don't rush it.

Pour the pan's contents through the strainer. Done! The oil keeps for about 2 weeks in an airtight container, and you can also save the garlic (not in the fridge) for up to two days.

And for the main event:
PORK
1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1 small clove peeled garlic, crushed into small pieces in a mortar
4 oz boneless pork loin or lean shoulder, thinly sliced against the grain into bite-size strips (about 1/8 inch thick)
1/2 tsp Thai fish sauce
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

NOODLES
6 oz fresh wide, flat rice noodles (you will buy these pre-cooked; we found ours in sheets and then cut them up)
1 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
1 tsp Thai black soy sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
Small pinch ground white pepper
1 tbsp fried-garlic oil (see above)
1 large egg, room temp
1 tbsp crushed garlic (in mortar)
2 oz baby Chinese broccoli, stems trimmed to 1or 2 inches and clusters separated (or regular Chinese broccoli, leaves coarsely chopped and stems thinly sliced)

Cook the Pork
Heat a wok over very high heat, add the oil, and swirl it around the wok, coating the sides. It should start to smoke just lightly - take it off the heat and add the garlic. Let the garlic sizzle, stirring a little, until it's fragrant but still white (about 15 seconds).

Wok goes back on the heat. Add the pork, stir well. Add the fish sauce, sugar, and stir and scoop and flip until the cork is just cooked through. Transfer the pork into a bowl.

Prep the Noodles
Separate the noodles. Put them in a bowl and pop them in the microwave for about a minute.

Cook and Finish
In a small bowl, combine the thin and black soy sauces, sugar, and pepper, and stir well.

Heat the wok over very high heat again. Add the garlic oil, swirl it around the wok to coat the sides. The oil will start to smoke lightly again - at this point, crack in the egg. It should spit and sizzle. Don't touch it until the egg starts to turn light golden brown around the edges. Then, flip the egg, not worrying if the yolk breaks. Push it to one side of the wok.

Add the noodles and cook about 15 seconds, prodding them so they don't clump together. Add the garlic and cook another 15 seconds, stirring to mix and break up the noodles and egg a bit. Add the broccoli and stir, scoop, and flip, until the leaves just start to wilt, about another 15-30 seconds.

Last, add the pork and the soy sauce mixture (you can put a splash of water in the bowl that held the mixture, and swirl it around and add to the stir fry to get all the sauce out). Stir, scoop, and flip, letting the egg break up, and mixing everything together to absorb all the flavors, about another minute or so.

And you're done!

Thai-Style Pork Ribs (Sii Khrong Muu Yaang)

(from Andy Ricker's Pok Pok)

My family knows me well, and I got about five new cookbooks for Christmas this year, all of them awesome. One is Pok Pok, a Thai cookbook that at first completely intimidated me. I tend to feel more comfortable with recipes with limited, easily-recognized ingredients. But where's the fun in that? I think this cookbook might be turning me around. It is really fantastic, different, fun. We've made two dishes from this book in the past week, and they've both been incredible, and not really that complicated when it comes down to it.

Now, in fairness, Joef made these ribs. 100%. I didn't even really help. I just enjoyed the amazingly delicious result. He marinated the ribs the day before, and then grilled them the next day for about two hours. Yes, that's a lot of prep; yes, it's absolutely worth it.

Ideally, you'd grill these over a charcoal fire. All we had to work with was a gas grill, and they still came out great. If you can't find some of the ingredients, you could probably do regular soy sauce (vs. "thin"), although it is a little different, use medium-dry sherry for the Shaoxing wine, use regular black pepper, etc. But if you can find the right ingredients, so much the better.

So, here's Andy Ricker's fantastic recipe for about 20 "riblets" (drool):

6 tbsp honey
2 tbsp Thai thin soy sauce
2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
1 tbsp finely grated ginger
1/2 tsp Asian sesame oil (try to find brands that are 100% sesame oil)
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1/8 tsp ground Ceylon or Mexican cinnamon
Pinch grated nutmeg
2 lbs pork spareribs, cut lengthwise across the bone into 2-inch-wide racks (ask your butcher to do this for you)
2 tbsp hot water

Start by marinating the ribs for at least two hours, and as long as overnight. Whisk 2 tbsp of the money with the soy sauce, wine, ginger, sesame oil, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg together until the honey dissolves. Put the ribs in a large Ziploc bag, pour in the marinade, get the air out, and seal it up. Put it in the fridge.

Once the ribs have marinated, you're ready to grill. Prep a baste - stir the remaining 4 tbsp honey with the 2 tbsp hot water until the honey dissolves, and set aside.

Prep your grill to cook at 200-250 degrees. Ideally, you want to cook your ribs over indirect heat. If you're using charcoal, push the coals to one side of the grill and shape them into a mound. Place the ribs, meat side up, to the part of the grill opposite the charcoal. If possible, rotate the grill top so that the open vents are directly over the ribs. Cover the grill.

Slow-cook the ribs for 2-2.25 hours, flipping them occasionally and rotating them 180 degrees when flipped. You might need to add more charcoal to maintain the temp. They should end up a mahogany color, crisp, with slightly charred edges. In the last 30-45 minutes of cooking or so, you can start brushing the ribs with the honey mixture every 10 minutes or so.

When they're ready, take them off the grill, let them sit for about 5 minutes, and slice them into individual ribs. Devour!

(You can oven-bake these, too. Preheat the oven to 250. Put the ribs on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 2 hours, rotating the sheet a couple times. Increase the heat to 300 degrees, and brush with honey every 10 minutes, about 30-60 minutes more.)

Pork, Plantain, and Mixed Bean Stew

(heavily adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty)

I seem to have once again added pork to a vegetarian dish...but I swear this would've been just as good without it. Hey, I added plantains, too - that's definitively not meat. So there you go.

Both were good additions, actually, depending on what you're going for. In my case, Joef issued the challenge of making something with Plantains, Pork, and Peppers. I found a recipe for "Mixed Beans with Many Spices and Lovage" in Plenty that seemed flexible, and came up with this dish. It's hearty, flavorful, and delicious.

A note on fava beans, another reason I wanted to try this recipe. They're yummy and pretty, and they are a pain to prepare. There's a whole double-shelling, parboiling process (see link below). That being said, it's worth giving it a try.

For four:
3 tbsp olive oil
2 boneless pork cutlets, cubed
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
Pinch of ground cloves
1 manzano pepper, sliced thin
A few Thai green chiles, chopped
Salt and ground pepper, to taste
1 14-oz can chopped tomatoes and juices
1 tsp sugar
1 1/2 cups sugar snap peas, halved at an angle
1 cup green beans, sliced at an angle
Shelled fava beans, as many as you can stand to shell...
2-3 plantains, sliced into thick rounds
2 tbsp chopped lovage, or cilantro, or tarragon
Rice

Heat the oil in a large, deep frying pan, and brown the pork on all sides. Add the onion, manzano pepper, and Thai chiles. Sauté on medium heat and stir around a from time to time until they start to soften, then add the garlic and cook for another minute. Next, add the tomato paste, all the spices, and some salt and pepper, and stir and cook for another minute or so.

Next, add the tomatoes, sugar, and all the peas and beans. Stir to mix, then bring to a boil. Lower heat and cover (or partially cover, depending on how thick you want it) for 15-20 minutes, until the sugar snap peas are cooked through, and still crunchy. About halfway through cooking, add the plantains - you want them to soften and take on flavor, but not turn to mush. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the lovage-or cilantro-or tarragon just before serving. Serve over rice.

Brine-Cured Pork Chops with Balsamic Glaze

Thanks to a couple of great cookbooks, I've discovered a whole new way to prepare pork chops - brining! Now, I'm sure this is old news to most cooks out there; I may be late to the game, but at least I showed up! You basically give the chops a salt and herb bath for a good half a day, or at least a few hours, and it tenderizes the pork and keeps it nice and juicy when you cook it. It works great for pan-cooking the chops, or grilling.

This particular recipe features shallots sauteed in balsamic vinegar - it's a pungent combination, and delicious with the pork. The recipe is adapted from this fantastic cookbook my parents got me last Christmas, that I'm practically reading like a novel - Williams Sonoma's "San Francisco: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World". It gives a great overview of food in the Bay Area, then recipes! Not 100% sure what makes this a Bay Area recipe, but hey! It's delicious, so I'll buy it.

BRINE: from Fred Thompson's "Grill Master: The Ultimate Arsenal of Back-to-Basics Recipes for the Grill":
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper
6 cups water

In a large bowl, combine water, vinegar, sugar, thyme, pepper flakes, salt, and pepper, and stir until sugar and salt dissolve. Submerge pork chops in brine, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for as long as possible.

CHOPS:
2-4 center cut pork loin chops, about 1 1/2 inches thick
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup minced shallot
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp minced fresh sage

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Remove the chops from brine and pat dry.

Place a large frying pan (big enough to hold all the chops in a single layer) over medium-high heat until hot, then add olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. When the oil is hot, add the chops and reduce heat to medium. Cook until the bottoms are browned, about 10 minutes. Flip and cook until the chops are no longer pink at the bone, about 10 more minutes. Put the chops on a heatproof platter, and keep in the oven to warm.

Pour off any pan fat and return to medium-low heat. Add 1 tbsp of the butter. Once the butter melts, add the shallot and cook, stirring until it has softened. Add the vinegar and bring to a boil; boil until it has reduced by about half. Add chicken stock and sage, raise the heat to high, boil, scrape up any browned bits in the pan, and reduce until it's about a 1/3 cup of liquid. Remove from the heat and add the rest of the butter; swirl it in, but don't stir it.

Return the pan to low heat, add the chops back to the pan, and cook for a couple minutes, turning the chops in the sauce. Spoon the extra sauce over the chops to serve. (Good with rice and sauteed greens.)

Pork Scallopine with Marsala

This recipe comes from my dad, who recently shared some of the ways that he likes to prepare that most inexpensive (yet still tasty) of meats, pork. He often turns them into scallopine, dusting them with flour and cooking them up with olive oil, butter, and a little something to deglaze the pan and give you some sauce.

Here's how he put it:
You can buy boneless pork cutlets (usually loin) for about $3-4 lb., sometimes less. The cutlets are about 1/4 thick. You simply pound them to make scalloppine, lightly dust them in flour, then fry them quickly in a little butter and olive oil with s&p [salt and pepper], move them to a platter, deglaze the pan with some Marsala (a dry sherry would work too), return the meat to the pan, and serve them up.

And that's pretty much it. It's a similar (almost identical) recipe to Lemon Chicken, one of my favorite dishes. You use Marsala/dry sherry instead of lemon, and pork instead of chicken. It's even more similar to lemon chicken the way I made it (confession time!) - I didn't have Marsala or dry sherry, so I just went ahead and used lemon anyway. But I've had it with the Marsala, and that's how I'd recommend making it.

I served mine with some pearled couscous with basil from a box (ahhhh!). This whole meal, which cost about $6.00 and was enough for dinner and full leftovers (or, would feed two for dinner), took about 20 minutes to make from prep to serving. And it tastes great. So there's really not a good reason not to make it!

Roughly 1 lb boneless pork loin, sliced into 1/4 inch scallopine
A plate of flour for dusting
A few pours of olive oil
1/2 tbsp butter
Salt
Ground black pepper
1/4 cup or so Marsala or dry sherry (or, if you must, juice from 1 lemon)

Line up your scallopine next to one another. Cover in wax paper and pound with the bottom of a small saucepan. Dust the scallopine in the flour, shaking off the excess. Set aside.

Heat olive oil and butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until the butter melts and bubbles. Add a little salt and pepper. Add the scallopine in batches, turning each piece once so that each piece cooks through. They cook really, really fast. Seriously. Remove and do the next batch.

When you're done cooking the scallopine, add the Marsala to the pan - it will sizzle like mad - and scrape up the oil and any trimmings from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon or spatula (leave them in there, just stir it up a little so it makes just a little sauce) - i.e., deglaze the pan. Turn the heat down and add the pork back to the pan, stirring around to coat. Serve!