The Answer is Always Pork – Page 7 – Cooking and Eating in San Francisco

shrimp salpicon

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date June 9, 2014
3 Comments on shrimp salpicon

A few weekends ago to celebrate finishing another semester of graduate school for Jordan and launching version 2.0 of our app for me, we went up to visit our friend Katie. Katie and I were roommates in college. She was the first person I met at Georgetown and one of the big reasons I stuck around. She embraced my California quirks, somehow tolerated my insane homesickness and was generous enough to bring me along when she’d hang out with her older brother Chris and his friends. Georgetown was a much friendlier place because of knowing Katie, and there’s no way I would’ve made it through the first semester if we hadn’t met.

When we graduated, I moved to San Francisco to live with Jordan, and after year or two in DC, Katie also succumbed to California’s siren song. Now she works as a chef at the Boonville Hotel Restaurant, after working for a few years at the Philo Apple Farm, all just a few hours north of us in the Anderson Valley.

Our weekend in Boonville was perfect. I almost don’t want to write about it, and just keep it as a secret to savor all to myself, in case writing somehow makes the whole thing seem a little less magical. But this shrimp dish is too good not to share. So here goes.

We stopped in at the restaurant to say hi to Katie and tour the kitchen, ate an ice cream cone, went hiking in an old growth redwood forest, gave my new-old 4×5 camera a spin, were treated to the best of meals at the hotel, stared up at a star-filled sky while standing next to a fire, ate breakfast with new friends on a patio with breathtaking views, got a personalized tour of The Apple Farm and its many plants and animals, drank hard cider under a canopy of mulberry trees, sat in the sun tasting wines and catching up.

The weather was wonderful, clear and warm. Jordan and I spent two whole days off in a row together. There wasn’t cell phone reception. We got to hang out with one of our most favorite people and see the beautiful life she’s built for herself first hand. We left Boonville more relaxed than we’d felt in months, our bellies full and hearts fuller.

This shrimp dish was the first course of our meal at the Boonville Hotel. It’s a perfect dish for late spring or early summer when it’s starting to get warm and the corn is coming in. The charred flavor of grilled shrimp goes wonderfully with the creamy aioli, and that’s offset by the tangy vegetable salad. Grilled bread soaks up all the juices from the salad, and yet still has some chew to it. If you’re worried about the pickles being weird, they’re not. It all just works.

Shrimp Salpicon, adapted from the Boonville Hotel Restaurant
Serves four
For the shrimp
2 lbs fresh shrimp, peeled
1 lemon, zested
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons pimente d’ville or a pinch of paprika and bit of cayenne
salt

For the salsa
1 cucumber, diced
1 red onion, diced
2 – 3 bell peppers, diced
2 ears of corn, cut off the cob
1/2 cup cornichon, sliced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
juice from a lemon
salt and pepper

To assemble
12 slices of crusty bread
aioli, thinned with a little more lemon juice

Clean the shrimp and put them in a bowl. Add the lemon zest, oil, pimente d’ville and season with a pinch of salt. Cover and refrigerate.

Dice up the vegetables and put them in a big bowl. Add the olive oil and vinegar and stir to combine. Season well with salt and pepper. The salad should be pretty tangy and have extra dressing pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

Slice the bread into 1/2 inch slices. Arrange them on a baking sheet and brush with olive oil. Under the broiler or on a grill, toast both sides of the bread.

After your bread is toasted, grill the shrimp. We cooked ours in a cast iron pan over medium-high heat. At the hotel they cooked them on the grill. Do whichever is easiest for you, but be sure not to overcook the shrimp. They only take 2 to 3 minutes per side.

To serve, put a few slices of toasted bread on a plate. Mound the salad on top, making sure to pour some of the extra dressing onto the bread. Top with the grilled shrimp and drizzle the whole thing with aioli. Enjoy!

-Emily

Tags Anderson Valley, bell pepper, Boonville, Boonville Hotel Restaurant, corn, cucumber, Philo Apple Farm, piment d'ville, salpicon, shrimp, summer, The Apple Farm

Recipes

bee suits and banana bread

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date May 22, 2014
No Comments on bee suits and banana bread

Last Saturday, we had the great fortune to participate in our first ever honey harvest! It was a food nerd’s dream day. We began with some pastries from the sublime French bakery B. Pattiserie and then spent the afternoon harvesting (and sampling) honey, ending the day with the best ramen we’ve ever had at Ramen Dojo in San Mateo. It was magical, and all thanks to our friend Russ. Russ works with beekeeper Kendal (and turns her excess honey into homemade mead!) and knew we’d be really into harvesting honey and learning about bees. And so he arranged for us to come down and help with Kendal with her honey harvest.

Kendal has three thriving beehives down in Palo Alto. Not only is she super knowledgeable about bees and beekeeping, she was a patient hostess, especially considering all of our questions and general clumsiness. I’m not going to pretend to have learned enough about beekeeping in just one day to give you any specifics, so I’ll just say it was a super fun day and definitely made me want to have a hive of my own someday. If you’re curious to learn more about beekeeping, I’d recommend you check out Kendal’s Bee Blog—I’ll sure be recruiting her whenever I decide it’s time to start my own hive.

After getting all of the equipment set up in the garage, we suited up and took the frames full of honeycomb from the top boxes of the hives. Kendal had put in a bee separator between the frames we were going to harvest and the rest of the hive so those frames wouldn’t have too many bees on them.

After checking the frames to determine which had the honey at the right stage to harvest, we shaved off the top layer of beeswax with a hot knife. The bees cap each little comb with wax so that the honey stays where they want it and so you’ve got to carefully open up the comb so you can extract the honey. This is pretty much what my face looked like the whole day. It was SO fun.

Then we put the honeycomb into the extractor. Basically it’s a honey centrifuge. Then the honey drains into a bucket through several layers of strainers to remove any impurities and it’s ready to bottle. It’s pretty much impossible to harvest honey without eating a lot of honey. So tasty!

Instead of pretending to know more things about bees, I’ll stick with what I’m a bit better at, food. Inspired by the honey all around me on Saturday, but lacking the motivation to make what I consider to be the one true monument to honey, baklava, I made this banana quick bread with honey and cinnamon sugar. And it was really good. Like most quick breads, this one is perfect with a scoop of ice cream for dessert and even better with a cup of coffee in the morning.

Banana Bread with Honey and Cinnamon Sugar Topping
11/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used bread flour because that’s all I had on hand and I’m a heathen. Turned out just fine)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
2 mashed ripe bananas
2 large eggs
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup honey
¼ cup water

For topping:
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp. packed dark brown sugar

Butter and flour a loaf pan, or butter and line with parchment. Preheat your oven to 350° F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt and baking soda. In a large bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Stir in the eggs, vegetable oil, honey and water. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir to combine. It’s advisable to run a spatula down the sides and scrape the bottom of the bowl. Mix the cinnamon sugar topping in a small bowl. Pour the batter into a lined baking pan and sprinkle evenly with the cinnamon sugar topping.

Bake for one hour, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Let cool on a rack for an hour and unmold. Slice and serve with a scoop of ice cream, dollop of whipped cream or as is.

-Emily

Recipes

olive oil ice cream | angel food cake

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date May 6, 2014
4 Comments on olive oil ice cream | angel food cake

Asking me to pick a favorite food is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. It’s hard. But press me long enough and I’ll probably say ice cream. Or pasta. Or green beans. Or sushi. It really depends on the day.

Indecision aside, ice cream is up there at the top of my list. It aways sounds good even if I’m stuffed. I like even the worst of ice creams. Wendy’s frosty or McDonalds vanilla cone, I’ll choke one down—if choke is synonymous to joyfully consume with a grin of happiness across one’s face. I love ice cream.

This ice cream was inspired by the orange olive oil cake that I made a few weeks ago. The ice cream follows the same general recipe as Bi-Rite’s ice creams: heavy on the cream, light on the other flavorings. It’s really wonderful. And as my custard was chilling, I mused… orange and olive oil would go really well with pistachios, and who doesn’t like ice cream topped with with crunchy bits? Thus pistachio brittle brittle was born. It was a good hunch. This is a really sublime combination. I’m only sad I can’t fit more than one batch of ice cream into my ice cream maker.

Whenever I make ice cream, I end up with a jar of egg whites in my fridge. They’ll languish there, maybe a tablespoon is added to a cocktail, and then a few weeks later I’ll toss the rest. It’s wasteful and a shame. And so, I decided to see if I could make a baby angel food cake out of the remaining egg whites. Turns out, you absolutely can! It’s about half the height of your traditional angel food cake, but no less delicious.

Orange Olive Oil Ice Cream with Pistachio Brittle
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup 1% or 2% milk
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 orange, zested
1/4 olive oil

In a medium bowl, whisk the yolks just to break them up and then whisk in half the sugar (6 tablespoons). Set aside. Put a plastic container in an ice water bath.

In a saucepan, heat the cream, milk, rest of the sugar and salt over medium heat. When the mixture is just about to simmer, whisk 1/2 cup into the egg yolk mixture. Then whisk in another 1/2 cup. Then add the egg mixture in with the remaining milk in the saucepan and stir.

Cook the mixture carefully over medium heat, stirring constantly until it is thickened. If it can coat the back of a spatula and hold a clear path when you run your finger across it, it’s ready. Pour through a mesh strainer into a plastic container. Zest the orange over the custard mixture and mix in. Stir occasionally until the mixture cools. Once cool, put in the refrigerator to chill for 2 hours or overnight.

Whisk the olive oil into the chilled base. Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions. Enjoy right away, or put back into the plastic container and freeze.

For the pistachio brittle
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup light corn syrup or tapioca syrup
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cup shelled pistachios
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons unsalted butter

A note on candy making: The first time I tried to make this brittle I used an organic sugar made from evaporated cane juice. It’s basically the more hippie/less processed variety you can buy at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Don’t do this! Your brittle will reach a point where it suddenly transforms from syrup to rock candy. There’s no way to coax it into caramel and it is a nightmare to clean. To make this recipe, you’ll need to get the super processed C&H or Domino Pure Cane Sugar that your grandma uses.

Line a baking sheet with parchment and then brush it with a light layer of oil. Combine sugar, water, corn syrup and salt in a heavy saucepan. Put the pan over medium heat and cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 280° F, about 20 – 25 minutes. Pay close attention once it reaches 250° F because it will get to 280 very quickly and you don’t want it to burn.

Stir in the pistachios and stir frequently as the nuts toast and the syrup browns. When the syrup is a mahogany brown, remove from the heat and carefully stir in the baking soda. Once that is blended, stir in the butter.

Pour onto the prepared baking sheet and carefully spread into a thin and even layer using a heatproof spatula. You’ll want to work quickly to spread it before it hardens, but be careful because the mixture will be very hot!

Let cool to room temperature for at least an hour and then cut into pieces to sprinkle on top of the ice cream. Store in a tupperware on the counter.

Baby Vanilla Angel Food Cake
2/3 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup cake flour, sifted
3 tablespoons warm water
5 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract (I bought vanilla paste online for a Thomas Keller recipe about a year ago. It’s basically just several scraped vanilla beans in a bit of alcohol with some zanthan gum to give it a gel texture. It’s wonderfully strong flavored and pretty great stuff)
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350° F. In a food processor, spin the sugar for about 2 minutes until it is super fine. Sift half of the sugar with the cake flour and salt and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixture or a large mixing bowl, add the egg whites, water, vanilla paste and cream of tartar. Whisk on medium high until stiff peaks form. This will take about 10 minutes. Once the mixture is looking meringuey, carefully fold in the flour mixture.

Spoon batter into an ungreased tube pan. Cook 25 minutes, until a tester inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool upside down on a cooling rack for an hour before unmolding from the pan.

-Emily

Tags angel food cake, bi-rite, brittle, cake, candy, dessert, ice cream, olive oil ice cream, pistachio brittle, recipe

Recipes

bucatini with fava beans and creme fraiche

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date April 29, 2014
1 Comment on bucatini with fava beans and creme fraiche

Last Tuesday, our friend Katie came to visit. Katie and I were roommates in college and it’s accurate to say that during our first year at Georgetown we subsisted on a diet of Thomas bagels, Zatarain’s instant red beans and rice and Haribo gummy bears, and usually all of them in one sitting. Thankfully, we’ve gotten past those horrifying dietary habits, and somehow I write a food blog and Katie cooks for a restaurant.

These days, Katie lives up in Boonville, CA and cooks for the Boonville Hotel. Boonville is just two hours North of San Francisco in Medocino County, but we’re not able to get together as often as the short distance would suggest. And so it’s a real good thing when I get an out-of-the-blue text from Katie saying that she’ll be in San Francisco for the day and would I be around?

There is nothing I like more than having someone over for dinner, and even more someone who’s happy to just sit down, shell some beans and chat about all matter of things while I sauté up a shallot. Not everyone can dig into big and important life questions while the other person flits from stove to sink, stirring this and washing that, but Katie doesn’t seem to struggle. We’re a good match.

Which brings me to pasta. This pasta comes together gracefully. You can carry on a conversation and still put a meal on the table in about thirty minutes. There’s nothing fussy about it, but looks and tastes like you did a whole lot more work. In case your market doesn’t have fava beans, you also could swap them for spring peas or asparagus cut into bite-sized pieces. I’m planning to do just that later this week. This recipe makes enough for three people as a main course.

Bucatini with Fava Beans and Creme Fraiche
12 oz fresh pasta, bucatini if you can find it, but any long noodley one will do
2 lbs fava beans, shelled
1 shallot, diced
2 tablespoons butter
3 oz creme fraiche
salt and pepper
parmesan, for grating on top

Put a pot of salted water to boil. Take the fava beans out of their pods. When the water is boiling, blanche the favas for a minute or two, until they turn bright green. Scoop them out of the hot water and into a bowl. Then peel off their outer skin. Keep the water boiling to cook the pasta in later.

In a large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the shallot and sauté for a few minutes to soften. When the shallot is soft, add the favas and sauté a minute or two more. Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling water. Cook the pasta 2 – 5 minutes, depending on its shape.

When the pasta is cooked al dente, scoop it from the water and add it to the sauté pan with the fava beans and shallot. Still over low heat, add the creme fraiche and stir to distribute. Easiest sauce ever. When it’s looking all saucy and delicious, scoop onto plates and garnish with a little grated parmesan.

-Emily

Tags asparagus, bucatini, creme fraice, dinner, fava beans, pasta, peas, recipe, spring, vegetarian

Recipes

passionfruit panna cotta

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date April 22, 2014
No Comments on passionfruit panna cotta

The first time I ever had passionfruit was at an Argentine ice cream chain called Freddo. It was my first week with my host family and my host mom Josefina took me and my host brother out for helado as a treat. She suggested I order the maracuyá and since the menu of 40+ flavors was completely overwhelming, littered words I couldn’t hope to decipher before I had to place my order, I followed her lead. I had absolutely no idea what I’d ordered, but one bite and I was hooked.

Over the next year, I invested a decent amount of time testing helado de maracuyá at heladerias all over the city of Buenos Aires, while Jordan sought out the best dulce de leche granizado alongside me. After a year of diligent taste testing, Freddo, the place where I had that first fateful scoop of maracuyá, ended up on top, but we’re more than willing to continue the experiment if anyone wants to sponsor a trip.

The flavor of passionfuit is heavenly. It’s in a league of it’s own—tropical, tart, sweet and totally mesmerizing. It’s not a flavor that you come across often here in the continental US, but it’s incredibly popular in Argentina and Brazil. Everything from ice cream to cakes, mousse to cocktails gets a welcome injection of tropical paradise. I decided to take a page out of that playbook for this dessert. The combination of milky custard with sweet-tart passionfruit is phenomenal. Panna cotta is really the perfect canvas. Desserts with gelatin are somewhat scary since you don’t know if they’ve worked and set until hours later, but the texture of this panna cotta is divine and it comes together without a hitch.

Panna Cotta with Passionfruit Syrup, adapted from the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook
1 1/4 oz package unflavored gelatin
1-inch piece of vanilla bean
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 lemon, zested

Put three tablespoons of cold water in a medium bowl and sprinkle with the gelatin. Set aside to soften. Lightly brush 8 ramekins with vegetable oil.

Slice the piece of vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Add to a saucepan with the milk, cream, sugar and lemon zest. Bring to a simmer over medium low heat. Remove the pan from the heat and let the mixture cool to about 130 F, about the temperature of hot water from the tap. Pour about 1/2 of the hot cream mixture over the gelatin. Stir until the gelatin is fully dissolved. Pour back into the cream mixture and stir well. Strain through a mesh strainer into a bowl.

Fill the ramekins and let chill for four hours or overnight. To remove from the ramekin, run a knife around the edges and turn upside down onto a plate. You can also dip the ramekins in hot water to loosen the panna cotta from the mold. Serve with several spoonfuls of passionfruit syrup over the top, or substitute passionfruit for grapefruit supremes, strawberries or peaches.

For the passionfruit syrup
1-8oz package of frozen passionfruit puree*
1/2 cup sugar

Put the passionfruit puree in a saucepan and warm to liquify. Once liquified, stir in the sugar and warm just to dissolve the sugar. Pour into a glass jar and store in the fridge. Use on panna cotta, yogurt, ice cream, or add to smoothies or sparkling water. It will keep 2 weeks in the fridge, but trust me, it won’t last that long.

*We get our passionfruit puree at Evergreen Market, a market specializing in South American foods in the Mission. Check in the freezer section of your favorite Latin market for pulpa de fruta maracuyá. Good chances are you can secure some and change your life forever.

-Emily

Recipes

liberty, justice and oysters for all

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date April 13, 2014
1 Comment on liberty, justice and oysters for all

Yesterday we celebrated our third annual Oysterfest. It’s a special thing when the stars align to bring together group of people whose shared love of raw mollusks is so steadfast that they are compelled to purchase 200 oysters and eat them all, sitting on a back porch in the San Francisco sunshine*. To repeat this celebration of the ocean’s bounty on the regular, now that’s how you know you’ve stumbled upon an exceptional group of folks—25+ oysters a person is nothing to scoff at. It’s on days like Oysterfest that I can’t believe my luck. To live in this beautiful city with such wonderful friends and exceptional food, I’m living the dream.

If you happen to have a group of friends similarly dedicated to the celebration of oysters and live in the Bay Area, it is easy (and surprisingly affordable) to secure a few bushels of oysters for your enjoyment at the Alemany Farmer’s Market from Point Reyes Oyster Company. Throw your bushels of oysters in a cooler, pour a few bags of ice on top, and get ready to shuck.

oysterfest-2014-9

The best way to shuck an oyster (and minimize the amount of shell shrapnel you ingest) is to insert the tip of the oyster knife in the hinge of the oyster, apply firm pressure downwards at a 45 degree angle until the knife tip goes into the oyster and the oyster releases the suction holding it’s shell shut. The two halves of its shell will loosen and you can more easily run your knife around the edges to free the oyster from the shell. Detach the oyster foot from the shell, apply your condiments and enjoy!

Classic Mignonette
1 small shallot, minced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste

In a small bowl or jar, mix together the shallot, vinegar and salt and pepper. Let sit for the flavors to combine. Serve a small spoonful over a raw oyster.

Whiskey Smash
2oz whiskey
1 oz fresh lemon juice
0.75 oz lapsang simple syrup
4 – 5 basil leaves (or mint)
2 strawberries, sliced

For the lapsang simple syrup, make 2 cups strong lapsang tea and mix with 2 cups turbinado sugar. Stir to dissolve and keep refrigerated. In a cocktail shaker, place sliced strawberries, lemon juice, simple syrup and basil leaves (slapped). Muddle. Add whiskey. Fill shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 8 – 10 seconds. Double strain into an old fashioned glass. Garnish with sliced strawberries and a slapped basil leaf.

So make yourself a cocktail, grab an oyster knife and shuck your friend an oyster … or twenty.

*The day usually starts off sunny and 65° F, but come 4 pm, the fog is rolling in thick and it’s time to bust out the jackets and blankets.

Ps. Last year’s Oysterfest and several phenomenal hot sauce recipes to accompany your oysters.

-Emily

Recipes

asparagus tart

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date April 9, 2014
No Comments on asparagus tart

Spring is here and so are the asparagus! Though we really didn’t experience much in the way of winter this year in SF, I still can’t help but be happy it’s spring. The other night we had the most heavenly asparagus at our friends’ house. Among their many talents, Russ and Kelly have an impressive green thumb. They have a garden plot near their place in Potrero Hill and we were lucky enough to sample some of their freshly harvested asparagus. Sweet Demeter, it was the best asparagus of my life, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some more.

So on Sunday before Jordan headed out for work, we went down the Civic Center Farmers Market and picked up two beautiful bunches of asparagus. While these weren’t quite the caliber of Russ and Kelly’s, I was still pretty pleased. Hurray for spring! Hurray for asparagus!

I decided to turn one of the bunches into a simple tart. The inspiration was from an old issue of Sunset magazine—a phyllo and tomato ‘pizza’ that I used to make at my mom’s house in the summers, but hadn’t made in years. I had some phyllo sitting in the freezer from another so-so experiment, and so this was a snap to throw together. It takes about 10 minutes to assemble, about 20 bake and then you’ve got a beautiful tart to show for your efforts. For a crust that is almost no work, this one is deliciously flaky and satisfying. And, bonus fun fact, phyllo dough is vegan … until you slather it in butter. Easy, fresh and delicious!

Asparagus Tart with Creme Fraiche
1 bunch asparagus (if you can snag ones that are the thickness of a pencil, that would be perfect)
8 sheets of phyllo dough (defrosted either on the counter for a few hours on in the fridge overnight)
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup creme fraiche
salt, pepper
parmesan, for shaving on top
a few lemon wedges, for serving

Preheat your oven to 425° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Wash and pat your asparagus dry.

In a small dish, melt the butter. Spread one sheet of phyllo dough on the baking sheet. Brush the entire sheet lightly with butter. Top with another sheet of phyllo. Continue brushing with butter and layering with the rest of the sheets.

Once you’ve stacked the phyllo, spread an even layer of creme fraiche in the middle of the dough, leaving a 1 1/2″ border along the sides. Arrange the asparagus evenly in a row. Fold the phyllo dough up around the asparagus and brush the border with the remaining butter. Sprinkle the asparagus with a little bit of salt.

Bake the tart for 20 – 25 minutes, until the edges are golden brown. Remove from the oven and top with some black pepper and shaved parmesan. Add a squeeze of lemon if you’re feeling feisty.

-Emily

Ps. This op-ed about food and health by Mark Bittman from this week’s New York Times is fantastic. Butter is back, and all I can say is 1000 times YES.

Tags asparagus, dinner, easy, lunch, phyllo dough, quick, spring, tart

Recipes

citrus olive oil cake

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date April 1, 2014
3 Comments on citrus olive oil cake

This recipe comes by way of my friend Alexa. The other night over drinks, I mentioned that I was in a bit of a cooking funk and she immediately texted her mother for a recipe to pull me out of it. Some friends, I tell ya, they just get it. This cake is one of her mother’s go-to recipes and after making it, I completely understand why. Perfumed with citrus and Grand Marnier, it is just the right amount of sweet. The olive oil starts to take it to a savory place, but you’re brought back into sweet territory just in time. It’s the perfect cake for people who “don’t like dessert”—not that you should be friends with those people anyway…

After reading through the recipe, I noticed that it called for Grand Marnier. For those who don’t know, Grand Marnier is an orange-flavored cognac liquor that while tasty, is also very expensive. Usually, I’d just skip the Grand Marnier and call it a day. But, I figured that I ought to embrace my duty as a food blogger and actually determine 1) if 1/4 cup of Grand Marnier makes a difference in taste and 2) if that extra cost actually makes the cake better. Testing ensued!

The Method: Firstly, you can purchase tiny, tiny bottles of Grand Marnier at BevMo for $5 (still spendy, but not terrible for the wealth of information it would provide). In the interest of scientific integrity, I made the batter as if I was making just one cake up until the very end and then separated it out into two bowls. To one bowl I added 1/8 cup Grand Marnier and to the other I added 1/8 cup citrus juice, taking care to stir them equally. I then poured them into the prepared baking dishes and baked them side by side for the same amount of time.

The Findings: In a blind taste test, Jordan was able to correctly identify the cakes, but he also found both equally delicious. The Grand Marnier does indeed add a deeper, spicier, slightly boozy flavor, but the cake with just citrus juice was still really damn good. Strangely, the cake with the Grand Marnier also rose a bit more—the jury is still out on why. I slightly preferred the cake with Grand Marnier because it was a bit more complex with a more subtle citrus flavor, but honestly, don’t drop the cash on Grand Marnier if you don’t already have it lying around. If you do, by all means, throw it in. And bring me a cup in a mason jar.

Citrus Olive Oil Cake, from Celeste Mallot and adapted from Food 52

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 1/4 cup milk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tablespoon grated orange zest (I used a combination of meyer lemon and orange)
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup Grand MarnierPreheat the oven to 350° F. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan or two loaf pans.

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, slat, baking soda and baking powder. In another bowl, whisk together the olive oil, milk, eggs, orange zest, orange juice and Grand Marnier (if using). Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined.

Pour into the prepared pans and bake for one hour, until the top is golden and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let cool on a rack for 30 minutes and then run a knife around the edge and invert the cake onto a plate. Let cool for a few more hours if you can stand it. Enjoy for dessert (or for breakfast, I won’t hide from the truth).

-Emily

Recipes

rattlesnake

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date March 25, 2014
2 Comments on rattlesnake

I’m not sure I have much to say other than this is a damn good cocktail, and sometimes you just want a good cocktail. It’s a take on a whiskey sour, swapping the simple syrup of the sour for more complex maple syrup. Trust us, it’s a better match.

Bourbon and maple syrup compliment each other oh so well. A bit of lemon juice brightens it up and the egg white gives you that glorious foam. You can skip the egg white, but I wouldn’t. I’m no scientist, but something tells me the alcohol must kill salmonella.

Rattlesnake
2 oz bourbon or rye (our house bourbon is Buffalo Trace; Willett is a damn good rye, but not for everyday as it is a bit pricey)
0.5 oz maple syrup
0.75 oz lemon juice
1/2 egg white
dash of peychaud bitters

In a large glass, combine bourbon, maple syrup, lemon juice and egg white. Add ice. Shake for about a minute to really get those egg whites frothy. Strain into a cocktail glass. Top with a dash of bitters. Cheers!

-Emily

Recipes

how the sausage is made

Post author By The Answer is Always Pork
Post date March 18, 2014
No Comments on how the sausage is made

Writing a blog is a pretty handy way to make life look pretty perfect. You get to immortalize the best moments and hide the ugly bits… usually by virtue of not mentioning them at all. In the case of a food blog, hiding ugly bits usually means it looks like you eat like a king. Today on The Answer is Always Pork we’re here to debunk that myth and show you how the sausage is made.*

*At least our sausage. Who knows, maybe all those other bloggers do have perfect lives/eat like kings and we got the short end of the stick?

Sometimes this food blogging thing is easy. The dish tastes great, I’m able to get a decent photo, the words flow freely. But most of the time, at least one of the following things happens: a dish turns out weird/bad/boring, it’s dark outside by the time we eat and my overhead tungsten lights make even tasty food look like death on a plate, in the rush of getting dinner on the table I forget to take a photo of the final dish all together, I stare at my computer screen failing to come up with something that will convince you that this is a recipe worth trying.

A lot of dishes are left on the cutting room floor. To call them failures seems a bit harsh, mostly they’re just pretty meh. But, meh isn’t something I really want to write about or subject you to. There are plenty of recipes on the Internet that have meh on lockdown, and my SEO could never compete.

And so for your reading pleasure, some of my most recent mehventures:

Salmon wrapped in phyllo that was delicious, but it’s essentially impossible to know when the salmon is actually cooked, which is rather terrifying for most home cooks, especially when you’ve got 5 guests sitting at your kitchen table.
Granola bars that were supposed to be studded with chocolate chunks but instead I prematurely added chocolate to the dry ingredients, added the warm wet ingredients to the dry and melted the chocolate completely. Somehow I also thought it was a good idea to add a banana to the mix. It wasn’t, it was weird.
Hot wings that were heaven, but the photos are terrible, and who eats hot wings when it isn’t the Super Bowl anyway. Maybe next year?
A mushroom pasta that sounded good, turned out ok, but a bit on the dry side. Dry casseroles are such a disappointment. Mostly it was pretty dull, and I’m not sure I can summon the will to finesse it.
Soft baked eggs in phyllo cups that absolutely tickled me with their adorableness in person, but I couldn’t get a good photo to save my life. Tragedy.
About 7 different smoothie recipes, none of which turned out better than this one that I’ve already shared with you all. We still drink that one every morning.
An omelette filled with mustardy bread crumbs that gave me a panic attack each time I made it because all that cooking happened so quickly. Plus, what is more impossible to photograph than omelettes? Except for maybe cassseroles? Lord help me.

Some good, some bad, most need work. We eat a few misses, and a lot of in-progresses. Pretty much every recipe that makes it to the blog I’ve made at least twice, usually more like three or four times, until the stars align and it goes from just dinner on the table to something you people deserve to hear about. Oh the pain of the creative process…

Now to keep things real honest, there are many nights where I combine a few Trader Joe’s ingredients with some random CSA veggies and call it a day. And because if some other food blogger was divulging her cooking reality, I’d want the nitty gritty details, here’s what that looks like. Wrap whatever you’ve got in a tortilla (chicken, cheese, beans, rice, veggies—any combination will do ya), pour some enchilada sauce on it, bake it 30 minutes and boom: dinner. Steam a few TJ’s pork gyoza, sauté up whatever veggies you’ve got lying around with an onion, throw some soy sauce on it at the very end and ta-da: dinner—just try and remember to put on the rice. Bake some TJ’s falafels, spread some hummus and tzatziki on a pita, top it all with some random veggies, hallelujah, you’re fed. These aren’t masterpieces (and I’ve got Mexican, Chinese and Persian grandmas rolling in their graves), but they’re healthier and cheaper than take out. We’re real people fighting the good fight, just like you are, and that fight is fueled by Trader Joe’s.

Today is Sunday, which is usually my cooking day (or it least it was when I wrote this). I’ve got a few projects in the works and I’m hoping I’ll break out of this funk and come up with something good—some signs point to yes? Fingers crossed, no guarantees. I might have a recipe for faux-enchiladas for you next week.

Xo,
Emily