In Praise of Le Creuset

The Single Most Expensive Kitchen Item I've Ever Had

...and it's worth every (discounted) dollar! (Although my pot is orange, not blue.)

If you've been to the blog-next-door, you know that this is what I asked Benjie to give me for Christmas. I've wanted to start collecting Le Creuset for about 4 years, but could never justify the cost--even when I'd see it on sale in Marshall's or TJ Maxx.
(FYI--if you like this brand and see it at these discount stores, snatch them up! You still come out ahead, compared with the Outlet Store; this same size oval pot costs $140 or so there, and I got it for $100.)

But this year my long-suffering pan--the one I use for almost everything except stir-frying--died when the handle fell off. (We still haven't thrown it away or stopped using it; Benjie likes to poach eggs with it.) But it's no good for large items or long cook times.

In the month or so since I got the pot, I've cooked with it at least once a week. Our new favorite pork dish cooks easily and beautifully in it. It's also sufficient for my 3-hour spaghetti sauce (although really I need the 6.75 l pot for this, just to make stirring easier!).

I love that Le Creuset has great customer service (based on feedback), and I can see myself toting this pot with me for the rest of my life.

I hope to be able to scrore a slightly larger pot and a skillet some time in the future. I don't see the need to possess all Le Creuset's products--as beautiful as they are, I think you only need what you cook with on a regular basis; anything else is just a dust magnet and space hog.

Irish Beef Barley Soup

I picked up a book at Borders last month--New Soup Recipes or something like that. I love soup as a full meal--it's easy, and it's lovely when the weather is chilly.

I decided to make this soup today. It's not like I've never made Beef Barley Soup before--I love this combination--but it's the first time in forever that I've made it with stock from scratch.

I complained to my friend Leah when we chatted this afternoon and the soup was still cooking after 3 hours about not using packaged stock. But when I tried it about 30 minutes later, it was clear that the homemade stock made so much of a difference.

I hated the recipe though; instead of specifying how long it would take to boil the beef bones, meat & onions in water for the base, the book said "simmer as long as necessary". WTF!

With the lack of precision, I decided to play the recipe. I boiled two meat bones, half an onion, about 3 lbs of sirloin (which I had originally intended for more steak but decided I couldn't bear the smell of beautifully seared meat again this week), some carrots & celery stalks. After about an hour of simmering and skimming scum, I removed the meat, strained the veggies, poured in 1/2 a cup of pearled barley and a cup of yellow split peas. I also added carrots, a finely chopped leek, chopped celery and returned the meat to the pot.

I decided it was done when I was starving and the meat was tender. It's lovely!!

This is also the first meal Teo's enthusiastically received for a while.

MMMMMMM.....

I've tried this recipe for steak twice already, and it's absolutely lovely.

Next time, I might skip the rosemary since it costs so much (unless I have a plan to make roast pork within 2 days). The garlic is lovely, though.

I followed Jaden's advice about letting the steak sit in the salt for 30 minutes since I had thin, girly steaks.

We don't have a grill but we do have a cast-iron grill pan which cooks nicely but is a biotch to clean.

Roast Pork with Rosemary & Garlic

(Hat tip to Mr. Bittman!)

Summer is still too hot for having your oven on for more than 30 minutes but if you're going to get something this yummy, it's worth it! The recipe is practically foolproof.

Preheat the oven to 450.

Take a 2-3 lb boneless pork loin and roll it around in a mix of salt, pepper, crushed rosemary, 3 heads (or more, if you like) crushed garlic, a tablespoon of brown sugar, a qtr teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Place on a rack, in roasting pan, and roast for 15 minutes. Baste the pork with .5 cup of stock or wine and roast for another 15 minutes (lowering the temp to 325). Repeat the basting every 15 minutes till the pork has cooked for at least 90 minutes. (In my experience, another 10 minutes on top of this won't hurt.)

Reduce the liquid at the bottom of the pan and serve with couscous.

(Try to get a piece of pork loin with some fat on one side. The crispy fat is absolutely lovely!)

Sukiyaki

Using this recipe, more or less. (I added vermicelli noodles and lots more "sauce" than called for since I like soupy sukiyaki.)

It's Benjie's new favorite thing! (Teo seemed to like it but he expended an awful lot of energy trying to eat the slippery noodles on his own.)

I would've added a raw egg before eating it, but I didn't want to risk Teo getting salmonella or e coli. I didn't put an egg in Benjie's bowl since he eats 2 eggs a day as it is.

I struggled with the sauce. I saw other recipes that called for seaweed broth but in the end was pleased with the beef broth-sugar-shoyu blend I came up with. I put some mirin in, too.

Pancit Titanic

Nope, not because it was the biggest batch of pancit I'd ever made. I call it Pancit Titanic because it was a complete disaster.

(I've only made pancit twice. The first time it was delicious.)

I was using this recipe again--it served me fine a few months ago!

This time, I found annato seeds and so fried them in the oil for the color.

I think my big mistake with this recipe was the kind of noodle I used. I guess there must be several grades of vermicelli noodles because these were too fine (the last time I made pancit I know I used vermicelli too)--instead of absorbing the stock and plumping up a little, they stuck to each other and made a mushy mess!

Taste-wise, the pancit was still edible, but texture is too important to neglect and the texture of this dish definitely brings the whole dish down by an entire scale.

Hainanese Chicken & Rice

I haven't cooked anything new in ages--been subsisting on standbys (3-hour bolognese, beef & peanut noodles, etc.). This week I had a hankering for Hainanese chicken--though to be honest I think what I most wanted was the gingery concoction typically served with it!

I found a whole bunch of recipes for this dish online and some of them were wildly different. I settled on this one since I had most of the ingredients.

The trickiest part was making the rice--I didn't rinse it in a strainer. Then I only sauted it for 2 minutes before adding the broth! It came out a bit too sticky but still tasty.

I made two sauces--one with just garlic & ginger (used bottled, mashed ginger to make life easier) and some stock, and the other was the chili-ginger-garlic combination from the recipe. (I only used one teaspoon of chili sauce and even that was a bit too hot!)

The cucumbers were also not cooperating. I originally bought what I thought were cucumbers in WF, only to find when I cut them up that they were zucchini! I made a trip to TJ's from the pool to get another cucumber.

I completely forgot to take pictures. I was too hungry to remember the camera after spending the latter half of the afternoon wading after Teo, who insists on wading in full sunlight!