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ladysprite) wrote2009-02-03 04:24 pm
ladysprite) wrote2009-02-03 04:24 pm
Entry tags:
Cookbook Project, Books #14 and 15
I promise I'll eventually have something to talk about other than cookbooks. I'm just getting all of the cooking out of my system before I go back to actually working instead of sitting around the house all day with nothing better to do than play in the kitchen.....
"Crockery Cookery," Mable Hoffman
I don't remember quite when or where I got this book, but I know I've been in love with my crockpot for many years. It was especially useful when I was living by myself in vet school, and again the first year after I graduated - without someone else to help with dinner on late nights, it was wonderful beyond measure to be able to toss something in there on my way out the door and come home to a hot dinner.
Sometime last week, when I was grocery shopping, I picked up a pork shoulder roast. I had no idea what a pork shoulder roast was, but they didn't have the cut I was looking for, and it was on sale, and I figured I'd be able to find a recipe for it. I was wrong. After scouring almost every cookbook I owned, I came up with... maybe one? That called for prolonged, complicated, pain-in-the-butt all-day multi-step shenanigans to yield pulled pork (not my favorite dish). However, a last-ditch glance through this book yielded a recipe that looked too simple to be true - Cranberry Pork Roast. It didn't call for any particular cut, just "pork roast." And the recipe itself, which mostly consisted of tossing the meat, some honey, orange peel, and chopped up cranberries in the crockpot for ten hours, seemed ludicrous. I figured there was no way it could possibly work, but decided to try it anyway.
Admittedly, it would probably have worked better if I had remembered to both turn on the pot and plug it in, but such is life. As it was, it wound up finishing much later than I had planned and being reheated a couple of days later. And.... it was amazing. Falling-apart tender, juicy, tangy, and utterly delicious, and it made a perfect dinner with polenta and homemade creamed spinach. And the leftovers will probably make some darn good burritos.
"Betty Crocker's New Cookbook"
This is a giant, battered three-ring binder full of recipes that I got at Buck-A-Book, shortly after I graduated from college and before I got into vet school. I was new to living on my own, and wanted something that would give me decent, everyday, cheap, easy recipes. Plus, because the cover was broken, it cost 50 cents. Seemed like it was worth trying. And it was - while nothing in there is going to win any prizes, there were some good-enough recipes for a starving grad student. I haven't used it in years, though.
But I wanted to get ahead of the meal-planning game, given that I'm going to be shorter on time soon, and I decided to spend today making a batch of meatballs. And, in the interest of using up more cookbooks (and trying to figure out whether this book is as useful as I remember it being) I looked up the recipe in here.
They're.... not bad. They're meatballs. Not the most flavorful in the world, but they're tasty enough, and we're set now for spaghetti, or meatball subs, or soup. But given that this book is battered beyond recognition, and I've probably got better recipes elsewhere in my collection, I think this may need to be culled.
(Incidentally, meatloaf was one of the first things I ever learned how to cook. I was eight and a half years old, and my mom wanted to make sure I knew how to make at least a couple of dinners for when she went into the hospital to give birth to my sister. And I thought that shoving my hands into the gloppy, squidgy mixture of raw meat and eggs and milk and breadcrumbs was the most icky-awesome thing in the world. Two-plus decades later, it still is....)
"Crockery Cookery," Mable Hoffman
I don't remember quite when or where I got this book, but I know I've been in love with my crockpot for many years. It was especially useful when I was living by myself in vet school, and again the first year after I graduated - without someone else to help with dinner on late nights, it was wonderful beyond measure to be able to toss something in there on my way out the door and come home to a hot dinner.
Sometime last week, when I was grocery shopping, I picked up a pork shoulder roast. I had no idea what a pork shoulder roast was, but they didn't have the cut I was looking for, and it was on sale, and I figured I'd be able to find a recipe for it. I was wrong. After scouring almost every cookbook I owned, I came up with... maybe one? That called for prolonged, complicated, pain-in-the-butt all-day multi-step shenanigans to yield pulled pork (not my favorite dish). However, a last-ditch glance through this book yielded a recipe that looked too simple to be true - Cranberry Pork Roast. It didn't call for any particular cut, just "pork roast." And the recipe itself, which mostly consisted of tossing the meat, some honey, orange peel, and chopped up cranberries in the crockpot for ten hours, seemed ludicrous. I figured there was no way it could possibly work, but decided to try it anyway.
Admittedly, it would probably have worked better if I had remembered to both turn on the pot and plug it in, but such is life. As it was, it wound up finishing much later than I had planned and being reheated a couple of days later. And.... it was amazing. Falling-apart tender, juicy, tangy, and utterly delicious, and it made a perfect dinner with polenta and homemade creamed spinach. And the leftovers will probably make some darn good burritos.
"Betty Crocker's New Cookbook"
This is a giant, battered three-ring binder full of recipes that I got at Buck-A-Book, shortly after I graduated from college and before I got into vet school. I was new to living on my own, and wanted something that would give me decent, everyday, cheap, easy recipes. Plus, because the cover was broken, it cost 50 cents. Seemed like it was worth trying. And it was - while nothing in there is going to win any prizes, there were some good-enough recipes for a starving grad student. I haven't used it in years, though.
But I wanted to get ahead of the meal-planning game, given that I'm going to be shorter on time soon, and I decided to spend today making a batch of meatballs. And, in the interest of using up more cookbooks (and trying to figure out whether this book is as useful as I remember it being) I looked up the recipe in here.
They're.... not bad. They're meatballs. Not the most flavorful in the world, but they're tasty enough, and we're set now for spaghetti, or meatball subs, or soup. But given that this book is battered beyond recognition, and I've probably got better recipes elsewhere in my collection, I think this may need to be culled.
(Incidentally, meatloaf was one of the first things I ever learned how to cook. I was eight and a half years old, and my mom wanted to make sure I knew how to make at least a couple of dinners for when she went into the hospital to give birth to my sister. And I thought that shoving my hands into the gloppy, squidgy mixture of raw meat and eggs and milk and breadcrumbs was the most icky-awesome thing in the world. Two-plus decades later, it still is....)
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(Not that you're not a culinary genius, but, well. I'm not, and my crockpot has repeatedly given people the impression that I am. :)
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:)
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Also, with each "what I ate" post, you include a recipe review, a little "I think this is why I have this cookbook," a bit of personal history here and there, and other things. It isn't something that reduces to "I ate food."
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1 (3-4 lb) boneless or loin pork roast
1 cup ground or finely chopped cranberries
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon freshly grated orange peel
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp grated nutmeg
Sprinkle roast with salt and pepper. Place in a slow cooker. In a small bowl combine remaining ingredients, pour over roast. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours, or until roast is tender. Slice and serve hot.
Simple to the point of ridiculousness, and really good. (I used Penzey's Minced Orange Peel, and I didn't need to rehydrate it first - the extended cooking time gave it plenty opportunity to soak up liquid and integrate into the sauce and the flavor.)
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1 Pork roast of whatever size/type seems best. I usually use boneless shoulder or loin.
Indeterminate amount of yellow mustard (French's will do just fine)
Indeterminate amount of brown sugar (NOT granulated brown sugar or liquid)
Wash roast and put in oven pan.
Coat top and sides with mustard.
Coat mustard with brown sugar.
Bake as you would any other pork roast.
Not the most detailed instructions, but I'm not near a cookbook and just typing this stuff as I remember it. But it's awesome. It makes a fantastic glazed crust.
Serve with applesauce and whatever else you want. But make sure you've got applesauce.
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I've purchased that cookbook three times. The first copy, my ex kept. The second, got lost in storage for a couple of years, so I bought a third. I now have a spare. :-)
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Re: Top Sekrit Recipe
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Yep -- this is my job whenever we make squidged-meat dinner. (Meatloaf, swedish meatballs, etc.) Satisfying in a very primal way.
And I think we have that crockpot cookbook somewhere. I clearly should actually look into it sometime...