Food Porn

Managed to steal Jason's computer to use his iPhoto so enjoy these pictures of past meals.

This was the chicken salad sandwich I had made with yogurt-mayo sauce, celery, radishes, raisins and the root vegetable mash on the other piece of the French bread. I'm not that happy with the photo, but the lighting in our kitchen is nonexistent.

I was really excited when going through all the pictures I had on my camera because I also stumbled upon pictures of a really delicious roast chicken dinner I had made a few weeks ago:

Roast chicken is now one of my favorite things to cook because first, it is one of the most economical and tasty things you can cook. Most people buy chicken breasts packaged, which first of all I don't understand, because it is almost impossible to keep moist but additionally, you pay more for four chicken breasts than you do for an entire chicken. Also,I love roast chicken because it feels really comforting and wonderful when you smell it and it's something I associate with coming home to a warm and bustling house after a cold winter day (even though I know that my mother, in her entire life, has never roasted a kitchen. Blame the oversaturation of American television I was exposed to as a child). The way I am cooking roast chicken is incredibly easy - all I do is rub it down with olive oil, salt, and pepper and throw it in the oven at about 450 degrees over some vegetables. One of my favorite vegetables to use when doing this is parsnips, which caramelize really well and take on this incredible sweet flavor that goes with the savoriness of the juices from the chicken. Sometimes, as I did in the picture above, is just roast the legs, thighs and wings and I save the breasts for poaching, which is the only technique that keeps breasts really moist and tender. Finally, I throw the carcass in a pot with a mirepoix (traditionally carrots, onion, and celery but I like to also include garlic and sometimes leeks or parsnips) and make a tasty stock for soup or just to freeze to have stock on hand later.

The side dish is just roasted asparagus, tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and with a little lemon juice squeezed over it at the end. Simple but delicious.

Finally, these are from a meal I made when my mother sent me up to Boston with an entire pork tenderloin. Pork is a meat that I am only recently learning to appreciate because it's supposed I usually associate with the ground bits that are often throw into a lot of bad Chinese dishes but I've had better variations of it and I have really come to appreciate it, especially when it is cooked so it's slightly pink in the middle. I know some people are deathly afraid of uncooked meat but I don't think there's a worse travesty than overcooking a piece of meat. I say, the bloodier, the better and if I could, I'd eat the cow still moving.

I was a little intimidated by the giant slab of pork tenderloin so I consulted Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything where I found a great recipe for roasted pork loin with a garlic rosemary rub. I just tweaked his recipe slightly, using the herbs and spices I had on hand: garlic minced into a paste, rosemary finely chopped, some cumin, salt, pepper and I included some great chili powders that I got for Christmas (courtesy of Jason, who also bought me some other really great kitchen supplies, but that's for another post). I threw the whole thing in the oven for about 2 hours and the result was a fantastic, succulent piece of meat. I was thrilled with the texture but I found it was a little oversalted on the outside, which reminded me why I struggle so much with rubs. How do you use a rub and flavor the inside of a piece of meat without making the outside too intense?

The Brussels sprouts are classic, with bacon. I just crisped up some bacon (is there anything in the world that doesn't taste better with bacon?) and used the fat to sautéed the Brussels sprouts. I'd like to get a little more creative with them and will be trying a recipe that called for using lemon zest soon.