What's Cooking (Take Four)

[Jenise]

Karen, I've never seen a barley called 'soup barley'. Do you buy it with that name or is that your own name for a particular kind you like?

[Jenise]

Just got home with a beautiful hunk of white salmon. Will grill some for dinner tonight--exact preparation TBD--and cure the rest for gravlax over the weekend.

Jenise, we have a flour mill in Redding, not too far from my house that has Extra Plump Soup Barley. I love it, very tasty.
http://www.mooresflourmill.com/
As you will read, they do the milling here in Redding and have great products to explore.

I made a dish from a NY Times recipe last night. Like many of theirs, it was fairly quick, very easy, and really tasty. It involved tossing broccoli and the whole white parts of scallions and with a mix of gochujang, soy sauce, and veg oil. That was placed on a sheet pan and chicken thighs were coated with the remnants of the gochujang mix, put on the sheet pan, and it was all roasted. While that cooked, I tossed thinly sliced (mandolin thin) radishes with the thinly sliced green parts of the scallions with rice vinegar and sesame oil for a quick pickle. When finished, the chicken and vegetables were topped with the pickled scallions and radishes. It came out really well, with the chicken cooked perfectly and the broccoli having a little char on the ends of the florets. It was not as spicy as I thought it would be, but very savory. The broccoli was my idea; the recipe called for squash and turnips instead, but I don't like turnips and didn't feel like squash. Potatoes and carrots would be good in it.

[Jenise]

That sounds terrific, Mike, and I especially like your leaner/greener choice of broccoli over root vegetables.

I have a hunk of bone in pork shoulder that has been coated with salt, smoked paprika, cumin, garlic powder, dark brown sugar, salt, and ground black pepper. Browned on all sides in the slow cooker, then put in a bit of stock. I will have pulled pork tonight with BBQ sauce. Also, made mashed cauliflower with a handful of multi colored potatoes, unpeeled, 2 pats of butter, low-fat sour cream, and used some of the leaves of the cauliflower. Put it into the food processor to mix and added sliced green onions for a quick mix. OMG, it is delicious. I will be tossing in some young carrots into the slow cooker soon. I'm not making a sandwich with the pork, just eating it as is with the veggies.

[Jenise]

Just got home from the farmers market. Dinner will be a stir fry of Japanese eggplant in a chili crisp sauce on rice. I'm also going to go Alsatian and start a pot of various pork items that were in the freezer. Also in the works, a fresh gravlax made from white salmon to take to a wine tasting tomorrow.

I cooked a new bean, Good Mother Stallard Bean, a deep maroon, brown with cream coloring. It cooked fast in the slow cooker and gave a great pot liquor. Very tasty, with a creamy interior. Went well with my pulled BBQ pork. It was suggested to cook simply, using aromatics. I cooked in beef stock, added salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Mexican oregano.

Your Gochujang recipe sounds great, Mike. I discovered that product a couple of years ago and had fun using it. I loved it as an addition to slow-cooker meats for various uses.

For tonight's supper, I made Mushroom Goulash from the book Croatian Classics by Andrea Pisac. The recipe calls for 50 g. of dried porcinis along with a pound of fresh mushrooms (I used chantarelles), potatoes, onion, garlic, the soaking liquid from the porcinis, and sour cream. It's as straightforward as you'd imagine, and it filled the kitchen with a very nice aroma. The book recommended topping each bowl with chopped dill, and that worked well. I chopped the chantarelles pretty coarsely, and that was a good idea as their flavor would otherwise have been overwhelmed by the presence of the porcinis. It made for a very tasty meal, and it's the kind of thing that would be really good on a cold night. (And it would be great with a good syrah.)