MasterChef Tryouts Submission and Cast Iron Therapy Original Recipe: The Winston.

Yesterday I promised that my next post would be something to knock your socks off. Well here it is, my latest original recipe, the Winston. I’m not going to say this is a quick thing to do, and there’s a few different recipes involved in the making of this.

I’ll just lay out what the Winston is before I get too far into storytelling mode.

It’s an open faced sandwich with a buttered and grilled French roll, slathered with an aioli, which is topped with slices of grilled country style rib glazed with root beer barbecue sauce, slather with even more root beer barbecue sauce, and top all that with a generous pile of light and tangy honey mustard barbecue sauce.

What brought about the Winston? It was actually the dish I came up with to serve to the professional taster for the MasterChef casting call a few months back. While I haven’t been selected to be on the show (at least I don’t think so!) I can state this one awesome fact.

The taster went for seconds. Not trying to brag too much, but he didn’t do that for anyone else on my row! Ok, maybe I’m bragging just a little bit. But there you have it, not just from my opinion, or even my friends’ opinions, but also the actions of a professional taster.

Why the Winston? I wanted to showcase the ribs which has been a friend favorite, but in a way that mitigates the lack of impact of it coming straight off the grill, and I didn’t really trust the tasters to completely remove the last of good temperature from their calculations of how good a dish is. An open faced sandwich sounded like a good idea to me, and was met with hearty approval from my chums on Google+. I’d say the results show that their faith was not ill placed!

For those of you who are curious about the MasterChef tryout process, here’s a handy picture to get you started. This laminated piece of paper highlights what all the preparation, hard work and waiting comes down to in the end.

 

Turning Vietnamese Episode 4 - Cha Trung Hap

Hey Cast Iron Therafans, today we pay tribute to one of the most versatile of proteins, the egg. Boiled, an ingredient in baked goods, fried in all manner of ways, the egg is very broad in its ability to satisfy cravings. In this post, the treatment is a distinctly Vietnamese manner, steaming. This isn't necessarily the traditional way, as I doubt that in olden times Vietnamese farmers had Corelle dessert-cups, but hey use what you've got!

Cha Trung Hap is basically a Vietnamese meatloaf, with a slightly higher emphasis on eggs, cooked through a steaming method, rather than an oven. There's a fried variant as well, but let's pretend this is a healthier version.

The recipe is at the end, but first the picture breakdown.

This is the true base of the dish, a mixture of ground pork, garlic and onion is marinated with a healthy dosing of fish sauce. Yes, fish sauce is in everything in Vietnamese cooking. I suppose you could use salt if you're a coward.

Rice vermicelli is soaked in hot water until it is soft.

And chopped up into little pieces about so. I guess roughly 3/4 of an inch but it's hardly an exact science.



Mix into the pork.

Start cracking some eggs and beating them roughly. We don't want them blended too well here.

The pork is incorporated into the egg gently. I found that using two forks and smashing the pork between the tines to break it apart.

Set the corelle or other durable bowl into a larger pot and set into some water, and bring to a rolling boil, then lower heat to a gentle boil. This will cook for at least 20 minutes.

Here it is not quite done yet. You want the eggs to be fully cooked and set. A stab with a chopstick will not result in yolk coming out.

And here it is. Scoop out onto rice and enjoy.

Perhaps with some of the mustard pickles, mentioned in an earlier post. 

The rough and ready recipe:

1/2 pound ground pork.

1/4 cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, smashed.

4 tablespoons and 

4 tsp. fish sauce.

4-5 eggs

1 bundle of rice vermicelli (Not a whole package, they come in threes or sometime fours)

1. Mix ground pork, onion, and garlic, mix with 4 tablespoons of fish sauce let marinate for at least an hour or overnight in the refrigerator.

2. Soak rice vermicelli in hot water. Check every 5 minutes for a soft consistency, then remove to drain.

3. Chop vermicelli into small pieces. Mix with the ground pork mixture. 

4. Crack 4 eggs, beat lightly.

5. Incorporate mixture into eggs, and add 4 tsp of fish sauce.

6. If it looks like the eggs are just mixed into the pork covering it all, perfect. If you need an extra egg, go for it.

7. Put in a bowl that will fit in a larger pot and set in a few inches of water, safely under the bowl's edge. Put a plate or a lid on the bowl.

8. Bring to rolling boil, then a gentle boil. Check after 20 minutes. The dish is done when a stab no longer results in liquid egg coming from it.

Make time to Brine: Brined pork chops are (more of) a sure thing.

The pork chop, well executed, is a great meal, especially with some roasted vegetables and a good starch. However, pulling off a great pork chop isn't the easiest thing if you just go in with a pork chop, seasoning and a pan. Without a well honed technique, without proper preparation such a pork chop may end up overcooked, dry and less palatable than you'd like. Thankfully, there's one simple technique that makes a pork chop (and several other meats) have a much lower margin of error: brining.

By submerging meat in a liquid of salt and sugar, a cook is able to lock in more of the juices. As explained in 

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing "salt changes the shape of the protein in the meat or bird so that it can actually hold more juice than unbrined meat."

This same book provides the recipe I'm using for pork chops. This brine is for 4 thick pork chops.
We've got the mise en place:
pepper (1 tbsp)
 kosher salt (1/2 cup)
brown sugar (3/4 cup),
sage (4 tbps - it's supposed to be fresh..)
 and garlic, lightly smashed

NOTE: There's a good amount of sitting around and waiting time in this recipe, so this is definitely not an "I feel like this tonight, I'll start at 3pm" sort of thing. I'll admit it is a bit of a production.

All of the ingredients are combined into 2 quarts of water and brought to a simmer, stirring often.

Once the salt and sugar have been dissolved, let the solution cool, then put in the refrigerator to chill.

Once chilled, throw in your pork chops. Four thick chops go into the chilled liquid, then back into the refrigerator for 2 hours.

I put on some plastic wrap to prevent the chops from being exposed to air. After two hours, remove the chops, rinse them and put them in the refrigerator uncovered for at least an hour and up to a day.

I've decided to accompany the chops with mashed rutabaga and turnips.

Treat like mashed potatoes, bring to a boil in salted water, and check at 20 minutes and every ten or five minutes after with a fork. If a piece is pierced easily, then you're probably ready to mash it.

During the early part I added some powdered chicken buollion to give it that cooked in chicken broth feeling.

I put the nips into the vitamix. A masher will do as well.

The chops can be prepared either on a grill or by pan roasting. I opted for the latter.
I forgot to take the searing picture, but I seared the chops on each side, then slide them into a preheaded 350 degree oven.

New toy! Check it out! A probe thermometer let me pull them out at 140 degrees internal temperature. I may have let it get a bit over.

And there they are!

It may be hard to tell, but what I'm trying to show is how the chop is both perfectly cooked through and moist at the same time.

Happy cooking everyone!