Schnitzel! And other uses for breaded pork.

"Alright, I'm going to make lunch and blog it"

That's how I kicked off this post today, saying goodbye to a friend on MSN. Makes me realize that I'm kind of addicted to this thing. But hey, it's what you enjoy, right?

What I've decided to make today are some delicious pork cutlets, breaded, and served two different ways. But there's a definite technique to it - so we'll cover that first.

You'll need:

• "Fast-fry" pork chops, I got three from Market fresh for 3$. They're about half an inch thick. Alternatively, chicken breasts work well too. No bones though.
• Breadcrumbs (with some seasoning and salt added)
• Flour
• One egg, beaten to an inch of its life OR milk, because they use it for fried chicken in the south and it is delicious
• A LOT of little plates. You'll see why in a sec.

First, toss a chop in a zip-top bag (you may be able to see the brand I'm using. maybe they'll send me more). Freezer bags work best, as they are sturdy. Then, get a rolling pin, and beat that sucker down! A meat mallet works well too, as long as you use the smooth side. It should practically double in surface area, and halve in thickness, as seen below.

When you've got all your teen angst out on some poor unsuspecting pork chops, prepare your work station. You will need, from right-to-left:

• A plate for your meat (ooh, my bullet points are back to normal)
• A plate with flour, about an eighth of a cup
• A bowl, or deep plate with high sides, with milk or the beaten egg
• Another plate for breadcrumbs. Don't forget to season these fellas

First, flour the meat. Shake it off to remove excess flour. This gets rid of any weird floury pockets. Then, "dredge" it in in the milk, and shake off the excess. Then into the breadcrumbs. The flour picture is below for your reference.

Set these aside when done, and set aside a pan on medium-high heat with a neutral oil (Canola works well) with a high smoke point. What's a smoke point? Glad you asked! It's the temperature where oil begins to burn (and smoke), giving it an off taste. Some oils have a very low point, and thus are not too good for frying. Some have an extremely high point, and these are the best to use. Canola is around 464 degrees. (Thanks, Wikipedia. You save my life again.)

The beauty of these being so thin, is that once they're browned, they're done! Thicker pieces may burn when frying for that long, so that they're cooked through.

Now, for the serving suggestions:

Method 1: Schnitzel-ish: Serve naked, maybe with a bit of salt on top, and delicious spicy mustard on the side. I'm a big fan of Koslik's - Guelphites can get it at Ouderkirk and Taylor, Torontonians can get it ridiculously fresh (and sample all kinds) at St. Lawrence Market.

Method 2: (On the left) Parmigiana-esque: Probably better with veal or chicken (same recipe still applies) - cover in shredded mozzarella, with some parmesan to give it a tanginess, and bake. When cheese is bubbley and delicious, toss on some nice tomato sauce and enjoy! Also good on a bun with roast peppers, chilis, and maybe eggplant done the same way.

Enjoy! (sorry about the dishes)

SUPER SPECIAL GUEST BLOG: Sasha Sky! (!!!!)

So, as a result of current events in my life, I decided to go on a meat-fest with my wonderful friend Sasha (!!). We went and bought about 35$ worth of meat. And it's a stunner:

oooohnomomnomnomnomnom

We bought: sausage rounds (wtf?), steak, wings, ground beef, and peperrettes. deeelicious. Sasha decided to teach me a recipe:

INDIAN TACOS

As follows (Sasha in blue text):

First, you must make bannock. Sasha will take over for this. Sasha?

"I don't know, Marc. Don't do that."

"alright. 3 cups flour. 3 teaspoons baking powder. some salt. *pause* um. 1/3 cup of oil, 2/3 water. times two."

- so 2/3 cup of oil and about 1 and 1/2 of water (marc). back to sasha:

"i feel like this is a newscast. put all the dry stuff in the bowl first. mix it together. and then add the oil. actually, add half the oil and half the water, then add the rest and mix it in."

- she seems mildly annoyed. mix it so it's well integrated. no weird dry spots. (marc)

"you're funny. okay. grab a ballful, and flatten it. poke a hole in the middle. fry it up!"

- before you make the bannock, i'd suggest heating up about a half-inch of canola or other frying oil to medium heat. (marc)

And that's that! Drain on some paper towels, and ogle the goodness:

ogle it....

Next up: prepare your ground beef (about a pound) with taco seasoning. We made it in a pot, and that was weird. But it worked! (Suck it!).

"actually, that's the lazy way. usually we make chili, so there's like, beans and stuff"

Whatever Sasha.

Make 'em like tacos - serve with sour cream, cheese, salsa, lettuce, and vodka.

actually, it's just water. dicks.

Now. look at the tacos . identify the tacos. smell the tacos. and the best part: eat the tacos!

Thanks Sasha! (!!!)

"just because" steak and 'taters

Goooood evening friends, I am one full mofo right now.

Why? Deliciousness happened.

Want to replicate it? Well then, you'll need some goodies.

• one big, beautiful steak (ribeye is the best)
• half an onion, cut into small chunks
• two glasses of wine (red, I used white though, and it was fine)
• one good size white or yellow potato chopped into medium chunks
• italian seasoning (look elsewhere, fool)
• good kosher salt and fresh black pepper
• olive oil

First thing! Heat a good pan to medium with olive oil, and toss in your potatoes. Add a good pinch of salt and cracking of pepper, and your italian seasoning (about a pinch). Cover this, and cook about ten minutes a side. Add some bacon fat/duck fat/other rendered animal for added goodness. Health? Fuck that, it's the french way.

While this is happening, heat up a good, heavy-ass cast iron skillet to screaming hot.

Prepare your steak as follows:

Get a good one - don't be cheap.

Salt and pepper the fucker liberally, and rub in some olive oil. Wash those meaty hands, and let it sit.

By now, you've got about ten minutes down on the potatoes, so flip em. Pan should be inanely hot as well. Drop the steak in, and cook about 2 minutes a side, and get a good solid crust on it. NOT a char. A crust. This is called the maillard reaction, and sciencebsscience it's tasty.

See? awww yeah.

Remove your potatoes from the heat, and ogle their crunchy goodness

ogle them.. mm.

Now, here's the tricky part. Remove the steak to a plate, and tent it with tin foil. Don't be forceful, just a light cover.

no need to be brash. be gentle, grasshopper

Let it rest for about five minutes. In that time, add the onion, a bit of salt, and one glass of wine to the cast iron pan. This will sizzle, steam, and smell fantastic. Reduce it down.

Plate the sucker, and shed a tear for how good it's going to be.

so beautiful

and what do you do next?

drink the other glass of wine and eat that sucker!

(thanks to De Luca for the potato tips, and everyone else for... they know what.)

Sunday afternoon double-post!

So, this school thing. I've got a paper due Wednesday, and a finance midterm the next day. What to do? Procrastinate and cook, obviously.

Today, I bring you the COMFORT FOOD DOUBLE POST (post post post post..)

For starters, breakfast. Well, not really, but it's what I ate for breakfast today.

French onion soup

You'll need:

- one onion, sliced thinly

- some red or white wine

- 4 cups of stock (veggie, chicken, beef, whatever)

- two slices of bread

- mozzarella or gruyere (only had mozz on hand today)

- one big bowl, and a good size appetite

Heat your oven up to about 425.

Put an 11x13 baking tray on the burner, and heat it up. Drop some butter and/or olive oil in, and get it nice and warm (melted and foamy, possibly browned butter). When ready, drop the onion in, and try and get it in a nice layer. Pour in the wine (about 1/2 to 1 cup), and cook it a bit on the heat. Put it in your preheated oven, and cook for about 20-30 minutes.

As usual, your apartment will smell amazing, and those 4am piano players upstairs will be jealous. While this is in the oven, get your stock nice and simmering. When it's out, deglaze the pan, and combine this whole mixture with your stock. Scrape off all the good burnt bits, thems good eating.

Simmer this for about 20 minutes, which will start to dissolve and break down the burnt goodness. When ready:

Turn your broiler on full whack, and move a rack close to it. Put your soup in a good, oven proof bowl (I have a particularly intense set myself, i recommend going for sturdy and everything-proof over fanciness). Put two slices (toast if you want) of bread on the soup, cover with grated cheese, and broil it till the cheese is GBD. Take it out (use an oven mitt, doofus), and be awe inspired, then eat it.

Next up, lunch.

SWEET POTATO FRIES

some hate them, I love 'em. Also, easy.

You'll need:

- one big-ass sweet potato (mine was over a pound, I think)

- italian herbs mix (yeah, it's easy. want to fight about it?)

- kosher/sea salt

- olive oil

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Take that sweet potato, and peel the hell out of it. Don't even bother washing it. Also, regular potatoes you can skip on peeling (in fact, I recommend it, for nutritional goodness), but NOT sweet potatoes.

Slice off the ends, and do half-inch discs of it. Then, take these and chop them into fries (if you need help with this, that's unfortunate for you). Toss these with olive oil and a good couple pinches of seasoning and salt.

Spread out aluminum foil over a cookie sheet (optional, but you'll hate it if you don't), and spray with some kind of cooking spray (don't cheap out on this stuff, kids. believe me. I know). Lay out the fries in a single layer and bake for 15 minutes, turn over, and bake for another 10. This is a bit laborious, but necessary so they aren't just burnt mush.

Tasty goodness. Plate 'em, and eat them with something to dip in on the side, like so:

That, as you may recognize, is the hot sauce I love dearly. After this shot was taken, I mayormaynothavecombineditwithsomemayo. Delicious. Also, don't ask about the movie on the right.

Enjoy!

Breakfast (and burritos! thanks Tressa!)

Thanks to a suggestion from one of my favorite readers, I now deter from my usual course of lunch items and provide you with an extra special all-stock-photo extravaganza (since i mainly blog about what i cook and eat, and i'm not making all of this food in this economy. also, lazy.)

breakfast

While you can generally scrounge up whatever for lunch or dinner, breakfast is generally the most important meal of the day. So I will provide you with some delicious options for your taking.

Number 1: Breakfast burritos

I am exceedingly excruciatingly fond of really really well cooked scrambled eggs, so that may impact this. However, our methods differ.

As follows:

1) Heat a skillet up to decent heat (mid-high), and put down 2 strips of good bacon. Cook to desired done-ness, but recognize that crispy, not chewy, bacon works best in a burrito or sandwich. seriously. I've had my share of sandwich related disasters.

2) When finished, lay on a sheet of paper towel, turn your stove down to mid-low, and pour out the bacon grease. Wipe down the pan with a little bit of paper towel, and put in some olive oil or margarine

3) Crack two eggs into a cup, with about a tablespoon of milk, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a smidge of dijon mustard. Scramble the crap out of them, and let your pan come down to a nice, light heat.

(serious business)

4) Pour into the pan, and immediately start stirring. This seems counter productive, but you'll be making amazing, delicious soft scrambled eggs. Do NOT overcook here, as these will seem less done than you think, but you want them lightly cooked rather than the kind you get in diners (like some places in downtown Guelph. Feh!)

(extra big for extra detail)

5)When finished, take these off the heat and into a bowl. Preheat your toaster oven to a baking setting around 400degrees. Don't have one? You'll be fine. Begin assembly of your burrito. I recommend the big tortillas for this one:

a) Put a very light coating of any condiments (ketchup, sambal oelek, dijon)

b) Grate (finely) some nice old sharper cheese, like a good old cheddar or gruyere

c) Put your eggs (still steaming hot), on the cheese.

d) Lay down the bacon (if using)

e) This explains the whole wrapping thing better than I ever could.

f) If in the toaster oven, pop it in until it starts slightly browning. GBD.

g) Serve with nice fruit, or tomato slices for maximum goodness.

Variations:

Cheesewise, cheddar will be a nice evenly balanced one. Gruyere will be stringy and a bit sharper, mozzarella more soft. All are good.

Add in some other things, like herbs to the eggs, tomato slices (salt and peppered) in the wrap,caramelized onions, sauteed spinach, or other veggies make a nice add-in.

Number 2: Yogurt and granola

1) Put fruit (blueberries, raspberries, cut up strawberries) in a mug/cup (1/2 to 1 cup)

2) Lay on a good bit of yogurt. (same-ish as the berries)

3) Drop a few heaping spoons of granola

4) Don't be delicate, and mash them all together and enjoy.

(if it's not this pretty, you're doing it wrong. or you don't work for good housekeeping magazine)

Variations:

Before the granola, blend that sucker up

Toast the granola by putting it in a hot dry pan, for added crunchiness and flavour

Number 3: Hangover delight

Tomato juice, LOTS of hot sauce, and some horseradish.

Variations:

Vodka.

Enjoy!

pizza? ohnomnomnom

Okay. So this is the latest post after months of not posting - basically, I've lived at home for a few weeks, and barely cooked. So to start writing again, I figure I can write about the best home-made pizza I've ever had.

If you know me, you know I cook A LOT of pizza. With a lot of weird things. But it's still sort of kind of pizza. Here's the basic recipe:

- Good dough, about fist size
- Good sauce, about half a cup (cook chilis, garlic,and crushed tomatoes together for eons - there's a good sauce)
- Good mozzarella cheese, about... a heaping half-cup grated.

Heat your oven between 450 and 500 degrees.
Spread out the dough BY HAND - but not too much, or else it gets messy. Get it really thin.
Ladle on sauce, spread it around
Put on cheese.

Here's where it gets tricky.

Put it in the ludicrously hot oven, aiming to not get your eyebrows singed.
Cook until the bottom is well done. I mean nice and well done - like this:


(side note:this is known as a "pizza upskirt" shot. google it. i dare you.)

THEN
Take out, turn your oven broiler on full whack. Put the rack close to the broiler (the top element)

Put your pizza in and watch the cheese and top crust go all beautiful and golden brown and delicious. This is pretty critical if you have thin crust pizza, so you don't have to cook it to black on the bottom to get some colour on top.

Take out, let rest, and then eat the whole thing in one go like I did before I posted. So no pictures. Sorry folks, next time. Anyways.

VARIATIONS:

Put some genoa salami on it - either on top or under cheese, depending how you like it (crispy or hidden.

Saute spinach, lots of garlic, and sauce, then top with that in lieu of sauce. Don't do this before a date (smelly breath + spinach in your teeth = no kiss goodnight)

THE MARC SPECIAL - caramelized onions, blue cheese, and crispy (burnt) bacon with everything else. This turned into pizza soup once, but IT WAS STILL GOOD. (even if a certain someone's mom thinks I'm a loser.)

OR toss some cheese curds or old cheddar in with the mozzarella. makes it a bit tastier, I find.


That's all for now. (hopefully) more to come soon!

Comfort food for a rainy southern ontario day

I figured I'd toss this one in too, one of my favorite recipes for when Guelph is being Guelph.

French Onion Risotto

• 2 red onions
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 4 cups beef stock
• olive oil
• butter
• parmesan/asiago/some kind of good hard cheese
• mozzarella
• herbes de provence (thyme, basil, savory, whatever, really)
  

Caramelize the onions in the butter, olive oil, and more salt than you might think necessary. This takes time. Be patient. You'll know it's done when it smells amazing and the onions are reduced to barely what they used to be, and the neighbors are no longer mad at you for the smell of onions cooking for hours.

Reach for your herbes de provence shaker, or cut up some fresh herbs from your herb garden (it's like, fifteen bucks for all you need for a summer. do it.) and toss them in, cook a little while, then add the rice.

Sloooowly (a ladle at a time) add in the stock. In the meantime, spread out your parmesan on some parchment paper, toss it in the toaster oven until it gets all brown and crispy. Set aside.

When all the stock is added, toss in a few small hunks (about a half cup worth) of mozzarella, and stir to combine/melt in.

Serve with pieces of the browned cheese on top, and feel better about the crappy weather outside.