Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls {Chả Giò}

June 30, 2017 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

There is a certain local Asian noodle bar that has built an entire business model on its take-out boxes of delicious noodle dishes, but what keeps me coming back are their spring rolls. Piping hot and crisp, full of savoury pork, carrots, bean thread noodles, and general umami-ness, they are served with crunchy green lettuce leaves and sprigs of fresh cilantro to wrap around them and salty-spicy-sweet nước chấm for dipping. They are insanely delicious and I could easily eat half a dozen in one sitting, but sadly each order only contains two rolls.

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Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde

April 24, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 8 Comments

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde | Korena in the Kitchen

I’ve had porchetta on the brain ever since watching the episode of Diners, Drive-ins and Dive that featured the porchetta sandwich at Meat and Bread in Vancouver (I’m pretty sure Guy Fieri pronounced it as some combination of “too legit to quit”/”winner-winner-chicken-dinner”/”Flavourtown”). I’ve never been to Meat and Bread to sample their porchetta, but on Saturday of Easter weekend Nate and I checked out Roast Carvery in Victoria, which is a similar concept: big joints of beautifully roasted meat, sliced to order and piled on a soft and crusty artisan roll with minimal fuss for a truly transcendent sandwich experience. I had Roast’s version of the porchetta sandwich, featuring crispy crackling, provolone cheese, sautéed broccoli raab, and a good dose of salsa verde along with the succulent porchetta, and man oh man, I think it might have been the best sandwich I’ve ever had. So. Good.

(Also – the new Victoria Public Market at The Hudson where Roast is located is pretty rad! I could have spent an hour alone just tasting olive oils and vinegars (apricot white balsamic! cinnamon pear dark balsamic!) and definitely need to go back to browse through the whole place more thoroughly.)

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde | Korena in the Kitchen …

Crispy Pork and Hot & Sour Rhubarb Sauce with Noodles

March 30, 2012 By Korena in the Kitchen 11 Comments

I usually think of rhubarb as a really great companion to strawberries in a pie or crisp, but its slightly acidic, slightly sweet flavour lends itself well to applications other than dessert. I have a freezer full of rhubarb from last year, and seeing as rhubarb season is almost upon us once again, I figured I had better use some of it up. Inspired by the rhubarb meatballs in Kate’s weekly meal plan at Venison for Dinner, I did a Google search for a sweet and sour sauce made with rhubarb and came across a recipe by Jamie Oliver for “My Favorite Hot and Sour Rhubarb with Crispy Pork and Noodles”. Being at home sick for a few days last week, I ended up watching a lot of Jamie on the Food Network, which cemented my gigantic crush on him and made me only too happy to try this recipe. Pieces of pork are baked in a sauce of pureed rhubarb, chilis, honey, and Asian flavours, then the pork is shallow-fried until crispy and served with the sauce over noodles, topped with what Jamie calls “interesting cresses”. I think what he means by this is micro greens, however my local grocery store isn’t so posh, so I ended up using bean sprouts and sunflower sprouts.

Look at those interesting cresses!

Jamie uses pork belly in his recipe, but I used pork shoulder instead (pork butt would work too). This was SO GOOD! The rhubarb sauce is tangy and flavourful, the pork is tender yet crisp, and the “interesting cresses” add a good dose of freshness and crunchy texture. It requires a bit of foresight to make because the pork takes at least an hour in the oven, but it’s definitely going on the “make again” list!

Crispy Pork and Hot & Sour Rhubarb Sauce with Noodles

Adapted from Jamie Oliver. Serves 2.

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. In an 8-inch square roasting pan, place:

500 grams boneless pork shoulder or butt, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

Sprinkle the pork with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a food processor, combine:

200 grams chopped rhubarb (fresh or frozen and thawed)

2 tbsp liquid honey

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

1/2-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

1 fresh red chili, de-seeded and chopped, OR 1 tsp chili paste (such as sambal oelek)

heaping 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder

Process until smooth (or as Jamie says, “wazz it up!”).

Pour the rhubarb mixture over the pork and cover the pan with foil.

Pretty unattractive but delicious anyway!

Bake in a 350˚F oven for 60-90 minutes, until the pork is tender.

Remove the pork from the pan and scrape off as much rhubarb sauce as you can.

Place the rhubarb sauce in a pot and bring to a simmer to thicken if needed. Adjust the seasoning to taste – I added a little more honey and soy sauce and a dab of chili paste.

For the crispy pork, pour enough vegetable oil in the bottom of a wok or large pan to cover it 1/4-inch deep, and heat it over medium. When the oil is hot, add the pork pieces (I did this in two batches so as not to crowd the pan). Fry on both sides until brown and crispy, then set aside on paper towels to drain.

For the noodles, put a large pot of water on to boil while the oil heats. When you fry the pork, place about 175 grams of dry Asian egg noodles in the boiling water and cook until al dente.

To serve, divide the noodles between two bowls and spoon over the rhubarb sauce and crispy pork.

Top each bowl with:

a handful of “interesting cresses” such as bean sprouts and sunflower sprouts

sliced green onions (I forgot these)

seeded and chopped red chili

cilantro leaves

lime wedge

Mix it all up and dig in!

Blackberry Summer, Part 2: Blackberry Ribs

September 9, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 5 Comments

After making galettes and scones I still had a bunch of blackberries left, and my thoughts turned to a blackberry barbeque sauce for pork ribs. I’d heard of other fruit-based barbeque sauces, such as peach, and a quick Google search came up with several such recipes featuring blackberries. The one I went with is from Bon Appetit magazine, and includes honey, ginger, and hot sauce (which I substituted for chipotle pureé, because I put that stuff in everything!). It also makes a TON of sauce, so feel free to scale down the recipe.

Rather than puréeing the sauce in a blender and then straining it and using it to baste the baked ribs as the recipe originally instructs, I gently mashed the berries and didn’t bother straining, to end up with a chunkier texture. My favorite way to cook ribs involves smothering them in sauce and baking them, rather than just basting them with sauce at the end, and the berries broke down quite a bit with cooking, so next time I might just leave them mostly whole to begin with.These ribs, while not particularly photogenic, came out tasting fantastic. Pork works especially well with fruit, and the blackberries gave a nice tangy sweet flavour to the sauce. This recipe is definitely a keeper – I imagine the sauce would be equally delicious on chicken or steak.

Baked Ribs with Spicy Blackberry Barbeque Sauce

Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit. As I mentioned, this makes a LOT of sauce – probably half would still be enough for this amount of of ribs. I thought about parboiling the ribs (partially cooking them in boiling water to make them cook faster in the oven), but after reading some rib-lovers’ opinions on the matter (sacrilege!), I changed my mind – essentially it just boils out the flavour, which is never a good thing. Turns out they only took a little over an hour to bake anyway, so I didn’t really have anything to worry about.

Preheat the oven to 325˚F. Mix together the spice rub:

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tsp chili powder

1 tsp each salt and pepper

Rub the spices over both sides of 1 3/4 – 2 lbs of ribs (baby back, spare, whatever). Arrange the ribs in a baking dish.

For the sauce, combine:

2 1/2 cups blackberries

1/2 cup ketchup

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup fresh grated ginger (about 1″ chunk)

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp chipotle purée (or regular hot sauce)

salt and pepper

Stir gently to keep some of the berries whole (alternately, purée in a blender and strain through a fine mesh strainer). Pour the sauce over the ribs, turning to coat (make sure they are meaty side down when you’re done).

Those should be meaty side down!

Cover the baking dish with foil and bake in a 325˚F oven for about 1 hour, until the meat pulls away from the bone easily but is not totally falling apart. Remove the lid, flip the ribs over (meaty side up) and bake uncovered for another 10 minutes or so. Remove from the oven, put the ribs on a plate, and pour the sauce into a saucepan. Taste to check the seasoning (add salt and pepper as needed) and then bring it to a boil and simmer to thicken it. Cut the ribs between the bones into individual ribs, and serve smothered with sauce. Mashed potatoes work well to soak up the extra :).

Chinese BBQ Pork Spareribs

May 21, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

Downtown in Victoria’s Chinatown (the oldest Chinatown in Canada, yo!) (also probably the smallest, as it’s literally only one block long) there are several Chinese BBQ shops with barbequed ducks, chickens, and meat hanging in the window. If you go in and order some barbequed pork, the guy behind the counter will grab a hunk of pork from the window, throw it down onto a worn wooden chopping block, grasp a formidable-looking cleaver, and hack the pork into little bits, which he will then wrap in purple butchers’ paper and hand to you with a little smile, like he knows how much you are going to enjoy those juicy, salty-sweet, porky morsels. Mmm-mmm indeed. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water a little bit.

I stumbled across a recipe for homemade Chinese BBQ pork on someone’s blog, and of course it made me want to try it for myself. I had also recently seen a recipe for Chinese pork spareribs, and I happened to have some ribs in the freezer, so I decided to combine the two to make Chinese BBQ pork spareribs. SO GOOD. I cooked them most of the way in the slow cooker and then finished them on the barbeque, because the Chinese name for barbequed pork means something along the lines of “fork toasted” – as in, the meat is toasted over flames on a fork to finish cooking it. I figured on a grill over flames was close enough!

The only thing I had to purchase for this recipe was the Chinese 5 Spice Powder, the ingredients of which vary but apparently the most common is a combination of cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel, and Szechuan pepper. In fact, my Chinese 5 Spice Powder is simply labeled “Chinese Spice Powder” and only has four ingredients! But it still tasted great, so I’m quite sure that whatever five or so spices sold together as Chinese 5 Spice Powder will be just fine in this recipe! Some more authentic recipes call for using maltose as a sweetener, but I couldn’t find any so I just used honey and a touch of brown sugar.

I chose to use this sauce on ribs, but you could also use it on other cuts of pork. Most recipes recommend marinating either pork tenderloin (for leaner BBQ pork) or pork butt (for fattier, juicier BBQ pork) in the sauce before roasting and then grilling it and brushing it with more sauce. I want to try making this with pork butt and rotisserie-ing it on the barbeque!…

Things I made this week

March 31, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 3 Comments

I got the April issue of Bon Appetit in the mail last week, and it is full of delicious recipes that I wanted to try immediately. So, I did, and we ate quite well this week! I made three recipes from the April issue and one from the March issue. I was fairly happy with the way they all turned out, but with the exception of one (which I will share in this post), I want to do some tweaking to get them to taste the way *I* want them to before I post the recipes. But I took pictures so I’m going to share them anyway 😉 The recipes are all available at bonappetit.com and I’ve included links to the original recipes, just in case you don’t want to wait for me to post my versions here!…

Delicious Ribs and Slow Cooker Fail

March 14, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 9 Comments

This morning I put ribs in the slow cooker to do their thing all day and be delicious and fall-off-the-bone ready for dinner. This is something I have done many, many times before with consistently awesome results, so imagine my surprise when I got home from work, lifted the lid to check on the ribs, and discovered that they were well on their way to becoming burnt. Luckily it was just the sauce that was turning black, so I put the ribs in a covered baking dish with some more sauce, stuck them in the oven to finish, and they turned out just fine.

Normally, the slow cooker works perfectly for these ribs, so I don’t know what the problem was. I think it might be time for a new slow cooker, because it was on low and the lid was on properly and everything. Anyway. The ketchup can be substituted for any tomato product (perhaps with an added dash of cider vinegar) – once when I was out of ketchup, I subbed in some cherry tomatoes from the overabundance growing on the porch, which turned out to be incredibly delicious. And if you don’t have a slow cooker (or just don’t trust yours anymore!), these can also be done in a covered dish in the oven….

Hollandaise Sauce

March 2, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 6 Comments

Pulled pork eggs benedict with chipotle hollandaise

My very favorite restaurant breakfast is eggs benedict, and Nate and I have gotten pretty inventive with making it at home: he comes up with creative flavour combinations and I try my best to whip them up in the kitchen. We had a bunch of pulled pork left over, and Nate suggested a pulled pork benny with chipotle hollandaise. I loooooove hollandaise sauce, but I’ve never been able to find a recipe that turns out the way I want it to.

I did a quick Google search for “hollandaise sauce”, and found a recipe by Daphna Rabinovitch from the show Canadian Living Cooks. Canadian Living has been the source of a good number of my trustiest, most reliable recipes, so I decided to give it a try. And it was great! This recipe yields a thick, fluffy, restaurant-style hollandaise. Be warned that it is NOT low fat – there is a lot of butter in here.

For the pulled pork bennys, I warmed up some pulled pork and seasoned it with barbeque sauce, piled it on two halves of a toasted English muffin, topped each with a soft poached egg, mixed a few teaspoons of chipotle puree into the hollandaise sauce and then spooned it over. Delish!…

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

February 27, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

Real Southern barbeque isn’t something that you get a lot of in Canada, but ever since Pig BBQ Joint opened up in town, I have developed a love for pulled pork sandwiches. I’ve made them a few times at home, and this time I sort of made it up as I went along. The results were really good, so I’m going to share it.

I use a slow cooker for this recipe, but you could just as easily cook the pork in a Dutch oven (see the recipe for details). The barbeque sauce is made from the braising liquid and juices from the pork, and relies on smoked salt and chipotle powder in the Brown Sugar Rub to get a slightly smoky flavour. If you don’t have smoked salt, regular salt is fine. The sauce as I originally made it was kind of ketchup-y, so I’ve modified the recipe here to show what I would do next time.

The buns and coleslaw play just as important a role as does the pork and sauce. The buns should be soft and slightly chewy, and not too grainy. The coleslaw should be creamy, crisp, and a little bit tangy. If you have a favorite coleslaw recipe, feel free to substitute it!

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Pork Picadillo

January 31, 2011 By Korena in the Kitchen Leave a Comment

A blurry pork picadillo burrito

A few years ago my friend Lynette got me a year’s subscription to the Everyday Food magazine, published by Martha Stewart Living. I have a collection of about 20 issues now, and they all contain fantastically easy and delicious recipes that are great for a weekday meal (or a weekend meal, for that matter!). This pork picadillo from the June 2007 issue is a Latin-American/Mexican dish that can be used as a burrito filling, on nachos, in a quesadilla, over rice… you get the picture. I’ve only ever tried it in a burrito, but I can imagine that it would be just as good in any other application. I love the combination of smoky chipotle heat with a hint of cinnamon and cloves, along with the sweetness of the raisins. Sounds odd? Try it – it’s wonderful!

We had this in burritos along with cumin-spiced black beans, fresh Mexican-style farmer’s cheese (available at Fairways, of all places!), sour cream, salsa, lettuce, and cilantro. I am becoming a believer in the less-is-more approach to burritos – choose a few delicious toppings that compliment the flavour of the filling, rather than overwhelming it. It also makes the burrito easier to hold, fold, and eat!

The original recipe makes a lot, but it freezes well. I’ve reduced it by roughly half and adjusted the seasonings a bit. Usually the Everyday Food magazine recipes are available on the Martha Stewart website, but for some reason I can’t find this one

Pork Picadillo

(adapted from Everyday Food, Issue 43, pg 66, June 2007)

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 an onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

coarse salt and ground pepper

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 chipoltes in adobo, finely chopped (or about 1 tbsp chipotle purée)

1 tsp ancho, chipotle, or regular chili powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

just over 1 pound of lean ground pork (lean is important, otherwise you end up with greasy filling)

1 14 oz can of chopped or crushed tomatoes

1 tbsp cider vinegar

1/4 cup raisins, chopped

In a 2-quart pot or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, until onion is soft. Add tomato paste, chipotle, chili powder, cinnamon, and cloves; cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add pork and cook until no longer pink, stirring to break up any lumps. Add tomatoes, vinegar, and raisins, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partly covered, until thickened, 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve as a burrito or quesadilla filling, over rice, on nachos, in a stuffed pepper, over a baked potato… Makes at least enough for 4 burritos.

Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls {Chả Giò}

Porchetta-style Roast Pork Shoulder with Salsa Verde

Crispy Pork and Hot & Sour Rhubarb Sauce with Noodles

Crispy Pork and Hot & Sour Rhubarb Sauce with Noodles

Blackberry Summer, Part 2: Blackberry Ribs

Baked Ribs with Spicy Blackberry Barbeque Sauce

Chinese BBQ Pork Spareribs

Things I made this week

Delicious Ribs and Slow Cooker Fail

Hollandaise Sauce

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Pork Picadillo

Pork Picadillo

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