Week Six: The Story

I know, I know, I know. It's the start of week seven.

BACK OFF ALREADY!

That was me, honing Chris Farley, by the way. I'm not even sure what skit or what movie but I felt very Chris Farley-ish typing it all angrily, in caps, like some modern day technological yell of frustration in the nooks and crannies of the blogosphere ethernet.

Something like that.

Stressed out fat-guy-in-a-little-coat fit of rage aside, I'll confess that last week's meal was a total farmer's market geek out. I truly felt like the parodied couple on Portlandia, the one at Gilt Club ordering chicken, going to great, great lengths to ensure it was raised local and humanely.

Mmm Chicory. Just like endive and
choke (frisee) lettuce.

That's because at least one component of each piece of the meal, save for the avocado, came from the Hillsdale Farmer's Market.

Sidebar -- I'm a bit distraught; I don't get to go to the farmer's market for another FOUR WHOLE WEEKS thanks to this weekend's Landmark Education forum in Seattle and then a much-needed vacation to the coast with Jason two weekends after that.  -- End sidebar.

Make sure to get your oil hot enough
before dropping these in.

Anyway. Dinner was more like a savory, comfort food brunch meal. I called back to my Southern roots, frying up a yellow heirloom tomato in bread crumbs seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper. That little fried baby sat as the boat (a raft if you will) for the farmer's market egg that Jason poached (Really...the suggestion that poaching a fresh egg is much easier than an older egg isn't a wives tail...it's WAY easier).

Who ever thought comfort food and
salad couldn't be one in the same?

The bacony cornbread, warm and perfectly moist, combined with the sweetness of the balsamic was a savory version of pancakes and syrup while the egg, with its broken yellow yoke, combined with the creamy avocado and salty hot tomato and crunch of spicy arugula for a salad that wasn't as healthy as could be but really, with the combined texture and tastes, it just really didn't matter.

The only thing that was missing was a glass of perspiring sweet tea.

Local, Portland tea, of course.

Culinary Concoctions Week Six: Balsamic Chicory Salad with Farmer's Market Bacon Cornbread and Poached Eggs

Woowee it's been a week which means, unfortunately -- or maybe fortunately, who knows...depends if you're the type of person who hates that I separate my recipe blog from my here's-how-it-went-down blog -- both blog posts are coming up today.

That's gonna affect my stats damn it.

Not that I geek out about the stats or anything.

Ahem. Anyway.

This week's recipe is in theme with how I've been eating lately: Entree salads (I mean, I've got to combat all the bacon fat somehow, right?). So here goes:

Balsamic Chicory Salad
Ingredients:
4 bunches chicory, peeled into individual leaves or stalks
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced.
2 TBSP balsamic vinegar
1 TBSP olive oil
salt and pepper
3-4 cups spinach/arugula, washed

Directions:
Heat oil in large saute pan over medium heat. Salt and pepper it. When hot, add garlic. Be careful not to let it burn! If you find your garlic is burning, lift the pan off of the heater and let it cool down a bit, constantly moving the pan around so the oil and garlic don't sit in one place. Add chicory. VERY quickly sprinkle with balsamic. Chicory only needs about 1-2 minutes, TOPS in pan. Remove, drain.

Add to spinach/arugula (Dressing optional; the balsamic drizzle adds enough moisture to the leaves as well as the soon-to-follow egg).

Ayers Creek Farm = The Bomb.
That's right, I said The Bomb.

Bacony Cornbread
Ingredients:
2 TBSP bacon fat or 6 pieces bacon, chopped
1 1/2 cups medium grind cornmeal
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups buttermilk or milk substitute (go for something super creamy here)
1 TBSP sugar
1/2 TSPN salt
1 egg

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk all dry ingredients together in medium sized bowl. Don't forget to sift your flour! Heat fat and/or fry bacon in a 10 inch ovenproof skillet. Beat egg with milk in small bowl. Add milk and egg to dry ingredients. Fold together then pour into the hot skillet. Make sure to mix well with bacon grease and/or bacon. Bake in over for 25-30 minutes. Enjoy the heck out  of it after!

And to put it all together:
Slice cornbread and put it on the bottom of the plate. Top with spinach followed by chicory. Finish with poached egg, salt and pepper to taste.

Culinary Concoctions Week Six: The Ingredient

So...math equation for you all:

(Work Stress + Life Stress) (Lack of sleep + Middle-of-the-week Tummy Woes)  = Me cooking, but not writing about it.

I can't believe how I've fallen behind with blogging this week! Dang it!

So...with that, a brief on this week's ingredient, chicory.

Jason and I went to (surprise, surprise) the Hillsdale Farmer's Market on Sunday and raided Ayer Creek Farm's stand, meddling our way in between women stockpiled with parsnips, salad greens and slices of winter squash boasting the boldest orange hue I've ever seen, to pick up a few bunches of chicory.

"I have no idea what to do with these," I confessed to Jason, whose eye was wandering to the one pound bag of ground cornmeal (that yes, he subsequently purchased).

So, come Sunday night, I did my research:

Chicory, a/k/a blue sailors, coffee weed and succory, is a bushy perennial herbaceous plants that's cultivate for salad leaves. However, it's roots are also used, baked then ground and used as a coffee substitute.

In the US, real chicory is often confused as curly endive. They're not one in the same. However, chicory leaves also include raddichio (a/k/a choke lettuce), sugarleaf and Belgian endives.

Ahhhh it all makes sense now.

To really geek out with ingredient research...I found that the chicory plant is one of the earliest plants cited in recorded literature. Horace mentions it in his own diet: "As for me, olives, endives and mallows provide substance." While I loathe olives, at least that gives me a starting point for creating a recipe.

Moreover, Lord Monboddo described the plant in 1779 as the 'chicoree,' which the French cultivated as a pot herb (No, fellow Portlanders, not a pot pot herb). Rather, chicory is, and has been since the Napoleanic Era, used in coffee or as a coffee substitute. And of course, even the Egyptians used it for the same purpose.

Recipe starting point number two...complete.

More about the recipe tomorrow!

Culinary Concoctions Week Four: The Ingredient

Hello Swiss chard. Silverbeet. Perpetual spinach. Spinach beet. Crab beet. Seakale beet.

Mangold.

I like that last one the best I think.

However you call it, chard is one of the vegetables synonymous with wintry comfort foods, even if its peak season is between July and August. That's just one of the great things about Portland -- it's freaky deaky  growing climate allows for thick, luscious vegetation to grow year round. And I love it.

Of course, chard isn't native to Portland. Nor is it native to Switzerland, despite the name, which simply comes from the fact that it needed to be differentiated from French chard. Why someone decided with Swiss is unbeknown to me still (Let's face it; sometimes I'm lazy with my research). It is, in fact, native to the Mediterranean region, first traced back to Sicily (Like all good things -- heck, it's called God's Kitchen for crying out loud!) and it's been around for freaking ever. Aristotle actually wrote about it during the fourth century BC.

Yeah; it's that bad ass of a vegetable. But here's how I came upon it for this week's ingredient:

Sunday's farmer's market gander left me with a slew of goodies. While the carrots, carrot honey (Yes! Carrot honey!!), farm fresh eggs, sunchoke (More on that baby next week) and slew of baked goods (Darn you Baker and Spice; my waist line is not enjoying the pies, lemon tarts and slices of garden bread and crumb cake) were awesome grabs, I was mostly excited about the gorgeous rainbow chard I picked up: A thick fan of NBA-basketball-palm-sized leaves of dark green held together with stalks of bright reds and oranges.

The richness of the colors just blow my mind. And it's no wonder; they're so vivid and bright because chard is freaking chock full of vitamins and nutrients; just one serving has over 700% of your recommended daily value (RDV) of Vitamin K, over 200% of your RDV of Vitamin A and just a hair over 50% of your RDV of Vitamin C.  It's no wonder it ranks second only to spinach as one of the healthiest and most nutrient-rich vegetables.

Oddly enough, water starts breaking chard down almost immediately. That's why, when storing it, you want it to be nice and dry and in a cool place. You also don't want to wash it until cooking as, like I said before, exposure to water encourages spoiling. And I think anyone who has been forced to muck out the vegetable drawer in desperate need of cleaning knows that there are few things as disgusting as rotten leafy greens (I think a rotten tomato just barely trumps the foul odor and brown vomit-inducing sliminess of rotten greens).

That said, when it does come time to cooking chard, it's typically best to remove the stems and center ribs of the leaves as they can be super hard to eat and thus super hard to digest. Braising is the best. Sauteeing chopped chard is another option. Eating it raw? Goooooood luck. You'll be chewing for days.

Culinary Concoctions Week Three: Candied Radish Chips with Vanilla Ice Cream and (You guessed it) Bacon Caramel

I knooooooooow. It's WEDNESDAY and I haven't blogged all freaking week.

It's killing me (Or doing much worse things to me according to my work pal Johnathon -- yeah, you know what I'm talking about mate).

So finally, while the boy cooks up an amazing dinner for me, I'm sitting and blogging about the recipe I'm finally getting around to making.

While they're not black radishes, I am using the lovely red and purple bunches I got from the farmer's market nearly two weeks ago to make a dessert.

Or, to hopefully make a dessert. I know you can bake radishes but can you make them candied and sweet?

Only the following story (ie; tomorrow or Friday's blog) will tell. For now, the recipe.

Candied Radish Chips (With Vanilla [soy] Ice Cream and Bacony Caramel)


Ingredients
2 bunches of red, purple or black radishes
3 TBSP cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch or two of cocoa powder

Directions
Mix dry ingredients together. Wash and pat dry radishes. Remove stalk and root ends. Using a mandolin, thinly and evenly slice radishes. Coat with sugar mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes on foiled or parchment-covered cookie sheet. Flip, bake for another 5 to 10 minutes, or until crispy.

Serve warm, like mini biscotti or wafer cookies, with vanilla ice cream and warmed bacon caramel.

PS If it doesn't work or I alter it, I'll of course, let you all know. Wish me luck!

Culinary Concoctions Week Two: Starting From Scratch

So...I couldn't find black radishes at the farmer's market on Sunday.

I know, I know. SUCH a disappointment.

In all reality, I do think they were there; I just arrived too late. The vendor, from Ayers Creek Farm, who was supposed to have it really had sold most of his products by the time we arrived. Luckily, we managed to gather kohlrabi as well as one of the gnarliest vegetables I've ever seen: celeriac.

Celeriac, which has been dubbed as the vegetable octopus though is also known as celery root, turnip-rooted celery and knob celery is native to the Mediterranean region. The first evidence of its cultivation has been linked to Egyptian graves circa 1100 BC. The Greeks called it selinon and it's mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. 


Speaking of The Odyssey, I recently submitted a poem dubbed Odysseus to a literary journal called Line Zero. It was chosen for publication. That's right. I'm being published! As a poet.

Okay, self plugging promotion and unbelievable random tangent aside...

Celeriac can be eaten raw or cooked. It's tough, furrowed outer surface usually needs to be sliced off, as opposed to peeled (I can only assume by how gnarly and nobby this thing is that my $2 peeler from IKEA won't last), though, I have a hunch that celeriac could be roasted, just like bell pepper, with it's skin on to produce a creamy, rich delicious starch.

After all, celeriac acts very similar to potatoes and can be served in the same fashion; mashed, pureed, fried, baked or roasted. I imagine it'll make killer soup too.

I think I'll be using the celeriac tomorrow night in a roasted vegetable medley. I've yet to decide. After all, I did arm myself with two purple and two green kohlrabi. Also known as the German turnip, kohlrabi can be eaten raw or cooked. When cooked, the texture is similar to broccoli stalks or cabbage heart and a young kohlrabi stem can be as crisp and juicy as an apple.

While I couldn't find black radishes, I did pick up a fresh bunch of red radishes which will find their way into this week's dinner menu too. For now, I'm going to keep noshing on the fresh lox and cured meat while staring longingly at the goat milk cheese we picked.

Recipes to follow tomorrow!

PS: Read this sweet article from NPR if you want to geek out more on celeriac.

Bacon Caramel

I'll admit -- and if you know me and are familiar with most of the cooking I do these days -- using bacon grease in my sweet culinary concoctions isn't unfamiliar territory.

It's far, far from.

What started with smoky molasses cookies quickly morphed into bacon cornbread, bacon pumpkin muffins, bacony no-bake cookies and, as of recently, bacon caramel.

Yes, that's caramel made with bacon grease in lieu of butter.

I know, I know; it's not what one would call healthy.

Blame Christmas. Or rather, blame Jason and Clara for shoving Christmas spirit so far down my throat that I went on a baking and holiday cooking frenzy, whipping up my regular batch of cookies plus recipes for hot cocoa, chai tea and caramel.

Now, the caramel didn't begin as bacon caramel. Considering the popular coffee-caramel duo (Not a personal favorite of mine, but I get how the flavor profile works, not to mention the fact that having caramel, thanks to the hefty amount of whipping cream it requires, would make my stomach flip flop like my dad's on a ferris wheel.), I first thought up of coffee flavored caramel, using instant coffee (Real espresso would have been so much better but a girl without an espresso machine has to compromise).

That first batch didn't work out...not so much because of the flavors, but because, when it comes to making caramel (Actually when it comes to making most things), I was too impatient with the sugar (1 1/3 cup sugar and 6 TSBPs water). When making caramel, you've got to really let the sugar (derrrr) caramelize; it takes about 8 or 9 minutes of constant boiling, while occasionally brushing the sides with a wet pastry brush to really get the sugar where you want it.


Not only will its golden color be indicative of its readiness, but when you pour in the cream (2/3 cup) and fat (1/3 cup), it'll bubble up and release lots of steam (My poor right hand is currently ailing from a hefty bout of bacony-caramel steam).

Unfortunately, with that first batch of coffee caramel, I didn't get that bubbling steam. All I got was a little bit of melting...which meant that the caramel didn't thicken up, leaving me with a syrupy coffee-flavored syrup.

Hands on my hips, I realized my mistake and began again...

Yes, that's a 2 cup pyrex of bacon grease

...and that's when I saw it, sitting so complacently and innocently on my counter. Beckoning with its halo of smoky, saturated fat deliciousness...one of three coffee cup containers of bacon grease that Jason had been saving for me.

Cue light bulb in my mind.

Thus bacon caramel was born. Unfortunately, nobody got to actually enjoy that batch, save for a mere finger lick, thanks to a gang of TSA bullies who used their jerk-headed might and big muscles and weapons and super scary threats to confiscate the jar of bacon caramel I made for Jason's parents, wrapped in a nice Christmas ribbon and all, from Jason's death grip vice (He offered to eat it to prove that his girlfriend's Christmas gift to his parents wasn't actually a homemade bomb). All 16 ounces of bacony sweetness into the trash.

Bastards.

The batch that didn't work out. 

But today friends, today was a glooooorious day. As anyone might expect after reading the above prologue, today was bacon caramel-making day. Much like the coffee caramel, I lacked patience with my sugar and ended up with more of a bacon caramel simple syrup that didn't thicken up. Rest assured, it won't go to waste; Jason's taking it to the coffee shop tomorrow with him to experiment with lattes and macchiatos...so for any Portlanders who read my blog and are curious in this concoction, maybe juuuuuuuust maybe you can con him into whipping up a bacon caramel latte.

Okay sidebar: Speaking of new latte flavors, we went to Baker and Spice today after the farmer's market and had a maple latte. They make their own maple, in barrels and everything. Oh man aliiiiiiiive it was delicious. End sidebar.

The batch that did. 

Luckily, rounds two and three of bacon caramel worked out perfectly. Thick, luscious, golden brown caramel. Two batches with a little honey and two batches with a little dark molasses; the latter which is the apex, thus far, of bacony caramel goodness.

My mind's already racking up tweaked recipes....paprika and chili pepper for a smoky spice, the oh-so-loved sea salt, maple sugar, bourbon...

The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately my bacon grease supply is not. And that only means one thing.

Bring on the bacon!

Culinary Concoctions Week Two: The Ingredient

Since I want to write more than just once or twice a week, I'm going to begin blogging three times a week during  this year-long cooking project of mine:

1. To introduce next week's ingredient (You know, for educational purposes)
2. To share the recipe (Also for educational and sharing purposes)
3. To lay out the play-by-play of cooking, with photos taken by Jason (For sharing and narrative purposes)

So next week's ingredient, as long as I'm able to find it at the farmer's market this weekend, is going to be black radishes.

Allow me to geek out:

Part of the brassicaceae or cruciferae family -- which takes its name from the New Latin word Cruciferae which, as my UP alumnus might have guessed, means cross-bearing for their criss-crossing leaves -- black radishes typically come in two varieties; the Black Spanish Long and the Noir Gros de Paris. Go figure I'm using a root plant native to Spain and France.  They grow best in winter, after sowing during June through September, because their white, firm and compact flesh will keep fresh most of the winter without entering a state of vegetation (Ha -- vegetables vegetating; seems like some kind of Buddhist practice, huh?) or becoming hollow.

I mean, who really likes a hollow radish, right?

Exactly.

The black radish is rich in vitamin c, which is why they're fantastic for winter time consumption, especially when you're living in the Pacific Northwest where the common head cold is just lurking around the corner of your favorite non-Starbucks coffee shop, waiting to latch onto you. They're also high in vitamin B and sulfur, which is the culprit for it's strong flavor. Furthermore, black radishes carry a serious punch of fiber and water which aids in digestion (Which, after three weeks of Vicodin and OTC cold head meds, could be of use).

To eat them,  you have to peel the skin because that's the most pungent part of it all; I'm assuming the strength of the sulfur would be akin to eating the skin of ginger root...not the same flavor profile but packing the same, "WOAH MAN!" reaction.

Not that I've eaten ginger root peel out of sheer curiosity or anything.

Okay fine. I'll give you a full Amie-palate review of black radish skin (By the way if that doesn't sound like a solid emo band name, I don't know what does.)

That said, let's hope Sunday's venture finds me buying black radish from the farmer's market.

Wish me luck in the Portland January rain! (Caveat: Even if my black radish pursuit IS a total wash, at least I get to A) Drag the boyfriend along with me after a two day hiatus and B) Savor my favorite treat at my favorite Portland bakery: The garden bread at Baker and Spice. As my mother would say, yum-a-dum-dum.)

PS -- On a side note, I never really thought I'd get to tag a blog with 'Vicodin' more than once. Shows how much I know.

Week One: The Story

Yesterday at work...well, it sucked. A nice little training exercise with my three superiors found me in the mode of scaredy-cat anxiety girl who can't handle the pressure of real time, on-the-fly criticism on how I conduct myself.

In other words, I totally broke down into panic tears three minutes into the training exercise.

Damn it.

There wasn't much to do or much that would really make me feel one hundred percent better except escaping into the kitchen where things, no matter how crazy my world is, always make sense.

Last night, in my kitchen --- okay, in Co's kitchen --- things made sense. Glorious, delicious sense. I'll admit, I love his kitchen; it's hard not to, with steel counter tops, a gas stove, sharp knives that elicit that cool, metallic ting when you release them from their magnetic home, and space...lots of glorious space for me to shimmy and shake as I dice and saute and, on occasion, fall into the boy's arms for an impromptu dance session.  And with a kitchen I love that much well, again, it's not hard for things to make sense.

That's one of the aspects of cooking I love the most --- that I can completely erase the stress of a day and fall into a rhythm of consistency where I have total control: peeling, washing, dicing, seasoning, stirring...

The whole works, really (And no, I'm not a control freak, I swear). It's my place, one of a few sanctuaries I have to be my creative, nerdy, awkward self.

Okay, I've digressed.

I was quite pleased with how dinner turned out last night. While I couldn't find many maitake mushrooms, I supplemented with luscious chanterelles, sauteeing them with garlic, white onion, a splash of soy sauce a squeeze of fresh lemon juice before adding in quinoa and chicken broth.

While that finished cooking, I opted for the broiler to cook the halibut -- which was creamy white, flaky and cased in a beautifully silver and blue skin that just begs to be fried (Yes I'm stoked there's still about 1/2 a pound leftover. The man who sold us the fish must be into big portions, considering he suggested a 1/2 a pound per person). After cutting four lovely white pieces of fillet and dousing them with a light coating of vegetable oil, salt and pepper, I broiled those babies on high for four minutes on each side.


I'll admit, here's where my teeny tiny snafu occurred: For a meal that I timed out near perfectly for plating -- spinach finished a minute before the fish was done -- something went amiss: The quinoa, though it had been soaking for over twenty minutes, was still far too al dente to be enjoyable. Five minutes after turning the heat up, nothing.

And that's when I realized....the downfall of the gas stove...the fire was out. Nothing was cooking. So, unfortunately, the spinach may have been a bit cooler than it should have been and the fish, a bit drier than I would have liked.

Nevertheless, the meal paired nicely with the pinot gris Jason picked up for dinner and luckily for me, neither he nor Co had any complaints (Save for the cast-iron-pan-in-the-dishwasher disaster that we just barely avoided).

I'm still debating on next week's ingredient. I'm hoping to find inspiration at the farmer's market on Sunday.

Any suggestions?

New Year's (Non) Resolution

Back in mid November I came across a contest in The Oregonian's FOODday section that hooked my eye. Basically, you write down a cooking resolution for 2011 with the chance to win tickets to see Michael Pollan speak at my alma mater, the University of Portland.

Shoot yeah I was game.

So I entered a quick blurb:

"As a cook stretching my culinary prowess and local-food knowledge, I pledge to make a new meal each week using a local, seasonal ingredient that I've never used before."

I forgot all about it until Grant Butler, an editor at FOODday emailed me asking my location within the city.

I forgot all about it yet again until a friend sent me a photo of my resolution in the newspaper (So much for being an avid newspaper reader, eh?)

And so now, here I am, on the second of January, and I feel, well...a bit more than obligated to follow through on this resolution.

Obligated...yet excited.

So, with each new meal, expect a new blog post.

Today's was just...the primer; the appetizer if you will to inform you that January's ingredients will be:

Rutabaga
Black Radish
Fenugreek
Mushrooms (Lion's mane, oyster or enoki; depends what I can find at the Hillsdale Farmer's Market next Sunday).

I'm not sure what'll be first; I'm thinking that, since I've got a 1 1/2 pound fillet of fresh halibut resting nicely in my fridge, that it'll be something that'll accompany the subtle, meaty flavor of the fish.

Week one recipe, photos and review to follow...

Aunthood

So holy cow I'm an Aunt. That's right; my brother and his wife Amber gave birth --

Wait.

Scratch that. Try again.

My sister-in-law Amber gave birth on Tuesday to a nine pound eleven ounce beautiful baby girl who she -- and now my brother can come back into play -- and my brother named Kairi Nicole.

That makes ME an aunt -- and of course, this new life in my family is all about how me. Aunt Amie.

Cue girly squeal. I finally got to head up to Tacoma for a quick day trip to see her and the new parents and man oh man oh man.

As I was telling my friend Matty, there's absolutely nothing like a teeny tiny little hand wrapping itself around your finger...and not having even cover a fourth of the length of your finger. It gives you a feeling that totally just eradicates everything sucky that's going on in the world because you've got this adorably innocent and gorgeous little person who's just content to do nothing but rest in your arms, wrapped in a fuzzy pink swaddle and just hold onto your finger.

It was at that moment when Matty sounded that it seemed like I was ready for my own.

Dear god no. I might already love this teeny baby with more gusto than I ever thought I could have for kids but I am by no means up for having any of my own. I'm totally down with being the cool Aunt Amie, the psuedo-hippie (To my family's standards anyway) who has a psuedo-shaved head, wears sandals in the rain, walks and bikes everywhere (Yeah...getting my bike fixed. Woot woot) and prefers acupuncture over western medicine. I'll be the family member she can escape to. I'll buy her lots of cool stuff and teach her the ways of Portland: Good coffee, good beer and good food.

See...the fact that I want to teach my five day old niece about coffee and beer CLEARLY shows that I am so NOT ready for motherhood. Aunthood should suit me well.

Congrats again to my brother and Amber.

Culinary Adventures of a Saucier

Okay...it's time to humbly brag about my latest culinary adventure: Sauces.

If I were a chef, I'd be a saucier (Pronounced sauce-ee-ay). At least, that's where my cooking prowess shined through on Sunday. Even though hot July temperatures warmed up the apartment to a toasty 90 degrees, I spent the majority of my afternoon in our teeny kitchen, sweating over (but not into) steaming sauce pans making two very different yet pretty dang good sauces.

The first was just my typical tomato sauce for a farfalle (bowtie) noodle "lasagna" I made for Clara's friend. I spent a solid 45 minutes dicing onions, garlic, shallots, basil, parsley and chopping tomatoes, bell peppers an mushrooms. Next, I sauteed my aromatics (plus salt, pepper and chili flakes) until the apartment teems with an olive oily-garlic aroma before dropping in two jars of Trader Joe's plain tomato sauce and once can of diced tomatoes, turned down the heat to medium-low then letting that baby simmer for a solid three hours. When it comes to tomato sauces, the longer, the better.

The second sauce is what I'm most proud of (I sort of have the consistently delicious tomato sauce down. Sure, sometimes I make it a titch too salty or tad too runny but those occasions happen about as often as Valentine's Day...once a year, and I'm typically the only one who really rues it), mainly because I totally made it up all on my very own.

The previous Sunday I had purchased a package of bone-in pork chops from Zupan's ($4.36 for 5 ounces of high-quality, lean protein per person? How could I pass that up?) and wanted to use them for dinner for Walker and myself. We still had a ton of berries from our Saturday trek out to suburbia to the Beaverton Farmer's Market that neeeeeeeeeded to be used. So...what did I do? I made a savory sauce for the pork, of course:

Blackberry Mint Red Wine Reduction
1 1/2 pints blackberries
1/2 bottle of cabernet sauvignon
2 cups vegetable or pork stock
1/3 white onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Aromatics: Mint, rosemary, tarragon, finely diced
2 TBSP rendered bacon grease
Salt, pepper

Heat bacon fat in medium sized sauce pan. Once melted and giving off smoky aroma, add aromatics, garlic, onion, salt and pepper. Sautee until you get the heavenly smell of garlic, onions (which should be translucent) and mint swirling in your nostrils (Mixed with the smokiness of the beacon, these aromas are to freaking die for). Add berries. Sautee and coat the berries with aromatic bacon grease, but don't let the berries caramelize...coast them just enough to them sigh, for about two minutes. After two minutes, add wine and stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and let simmer until the sauce reduces to a near-syrupy consistency. The berries won't totally break down, which is good, because it gives your sauce a bit of a thickness.

I was a bit afraid that the sauce might be too sweet but, surprisingly, the smoky flavor of the beacon grease, the savory stock, the full-bodied wine and the refreshingly savory profiles of the aromatics harmonized nicely together and served as a nice sauce for the pork chops which I left very simple: Sprinkled with salt and pepper, I performed a quick sear on both sides, about two minutes each, before finishing the chops in the oven, topped with some sauce and mint sprigs. Grilling the chops would have added another smoky profile to the palate which, indeed, would have been divine.

At any rate, I'm pretty happy with this sauce because it's one of the first I've ever made without first scouring my cookbook, Epicurious or the Food Network for hours, looking for inspiration. And it turned out to be a success (Well, according to Walker anyway).

The next big culinary test is quickly approaching...cooking a once-tried (though ravely reviewed) menu, not for two, but for 15 people. Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun.

To be continued...