I have always wondered how to make super tasty carnitas. My first effort was a recipe from Modernest Cuisine at Home, which uses a pressure cooker to shorten the process. While those carnitas are brilliant, that is not how Mexican families make carnitas, so, I wanted to try that. Having done so, now I know why it’s best to rely on our local authentic Mexican restaurant for carnitas in a pinch. I found an authentic recipe to try. It’s a slow cooked porkbutt recipe that can only be described as confit porkbutt. The biggest surprise was that you literally confit the pork in lard. In addition, you use an orange, an onion, garlic, Me4xican oregano, evaporated milk and a Mexican coca cola. Once it has cooked for hours, you let it cool and then tear it apart with your hands. We made tacos with radishes, chaoite cheese, green onion and jalapeno, and cilantro. They were spectacular.

When we began our Pizza Quest, one of the founding ideas was to see if we could identify brilliant pizza pies that we had never tried, and add them to our repertoire of great pizzas. Think of it like this, imagine we are menu testing for our personal pizza restaurant, and we only want pies that we truly love. None of the “usual” pies, just really brilliant, tasty, and moreish pizza pies. Stop the presses! The Mortadella & Pistachio pizza is the reason we went on this quest. First of all, it has just a few ingredients. Second, if you have never had pistachio pesto, you haven’t lived. Third, when you discover how the acidity of pickled shallots and a squeeze of lemon juice creates pizza umami, then you will understand. For our pizza, we substituted Genoa Salami for Mortadella which was not available, made fresh pistachio pesto which is absolutely delicious, and made a pile of pickled shallots (red wine vinegar, sugar, & peppercorns). The cheeses are shredded mozzarella and fresh mozzarella. This is a 5-star pizza

When we enjoy a steak, I often make this incredible “green sauce” which is a form of a refined sauce made from a chimichurri. I start with whatever green vegetables are fresh. I add garlic, ginger and shallots, and I blend them all in a blender with some chicken bone stock. Then I further smooth it out by running the whole blended mix through the cuisinart and finally through a chinois. After that, I reduce it, adding fish sauce, soy sauce, lime juice, red wine vinegar, hot hoeny, sugar and maple syrup and in the end, finish it with butter before serving it as a side to the steak and baked potato. Its a smooth, hot spicy absolutely layered and delicious sauce that amplifies the steak. When there is leftover sauce, you cannot throw it out. It has to be used. What better base for a pizza? Then, we had left over Korean spicy sausage, goat cheese, fresh mozzarella, calamita olives, and fresh tomatoes. It seems like a good blend.

Ingredients:

• Magic Green sauce
• Fontina
• Spicy Korean sausage
• Fresh mots
• Goat cheese
• Kalamata olives
• Fresh tomato
• Red pepper flakes
• Sourdough crust

This is the magic green sauce

Indonesian fried chicken is one of the most flavorful version of fried chicken on earth. You start out with an amazing marinade that includes toasted coriander, fennel and cumin seeds, then after grinding them up, you add them along with garlic, shallots, glangang, lemon grass, curry powder, chili powder, peri peri powder, turmeric, sugar and coconut water. You allow the marinade to soak into the chicken for up to two days. There are a couple of ways to proceed at this point. One is to fry the chicken as it is, the other is to cook the chicken in a pot to thicken and cook the chicken through before frying it. Either way, before you fry it, you dust it with corn starch. Then you bake it careful not to overbake it letting the oil drip off in a warm oven. We chose to cook the chicken through before frying it. I like the idea of the paste being cooked through. So, that was a lot of work to get to the frying part. Even so, I am not sure we nailed the experience. It tasted pretty good.I think I would approach this differently in future. For example, cooking down the marinade before finally coating the chicken. I would also bake the chicken in the oven to get it mostly cooked rather than simmer it in the sauce which would make give it a better texture. Anyway, pretty delicious all told. I served it with a coconut rice, green onions and Kafir Lime Leaves.

Here is the sequence:

First, you marinate the chicken for up to 48 hours

Next you simmer the chicken in the marinade:

Finally, you cook down the marinade before coating the chicken in it, and then frying it.

Singapore chicken is an easy dish to make and its super yummy. You start off by making a dark “Kepop Manis” sauce with dark soy sauce, molasses and brown sugar. It’s so quick and easy and delicious. Begin by heating oil in a wok until hot. Add a sliced onion until they are slightly browned. Add chicken and chili and stir-fry further until the chicken starts to brown.

Add sugar then add the kecap manis sauce and water and continue to cook until chicken is cooked and the sauce starts to thicken.

Stir in the lemon juice and mint.

Serve with steamed coconut rice and a steamed snow peas.

This dish is from my favorite Italian cookbook Frankies Spuntino. Making cavatelli was a first for me, and I have never made pasta with ricotta cheese, but there it is. It’s difficult to work with the dough, but I did my best. In the book the authors say that this is the most popular dish on their menu. That is good enough for me, and I LOVE brown butter sage sauce so it was an easy call. The recipe calls for hot italian sausage coins to accompany the brown butter sage sauce. To make the sauce, you first pre-cook the sausages, then cut them into coins. You brown the coins on both sides with some butter. Once browned, you set them aside and add butter and sage leaves to the pan. While the butter is browning you boil the pasta for about 4 minutes then drop them into the pan with the sausage, the pecorino romano and some white pepper….serve with a pinch of Italian parsley. I can absolutely see why it’s the most popular dish on their menu!

We went full Thug Kitchen on this one. Their intro is the best version: “Part soup, part chile, Pozole is a hearty dish you can trick out with a fuck ton of toppings.” Thug Kitchen is my go to vegetarian recipe book. He has done a great job of making vegetarian food taste wonderful.

You start with chili, I used several, toast them, soak them and eventually blend them with garlic and cocoa powder. The meal begins with an onion and a pile of (pressed) firm tofu, the garlic chili paste and the water the chili soaked in, hominy, zucchini and broth along with salt, oregano and peri peri spice, all of which cooks down for about 30 minutes. Finished with a little maple syrup and the juice of a lime , its served with cabbage, radish green onion and cilantro. Absolutely delicious.

We are always open to new versions of Peperoni Pizza. This one got our attention because instead of pineapple, which offers a little acidity and sweetness, this one uses pickled jalapenos and hot honey to offer sweetness, acidity and heat! In addition, they ramp up the heat with red pepper flakes. Our version used a tomato sauce we spiced up with Tapatio sauce, mozzarella cheese, fresh cut pepperoni, chopped pickle jalapeno, fresh mozzarella and hot honey. It a was pretty delicious version of pepperoni pizza, and one we will take on again with pepperoncini as a variant!

We made a wonderful peanut based chicken stew last week from Equatorial Guinea that left us with some leftovers. I started with the peanut sauce and ran it through the food processor for a while before the chinois and oh my, it was silky smooth. I also had a whole bowl of chicken broth left over that carried that equatorial spiciness and flavor. We had porkbutt in the freezer and so we opted to do Pap and Gravy with porkbutt instead of beef ribs. I started by searing the porkbutt in the dutch oven, then added two quartered onions and 5 quartered tomatoes to the pot and topped it off the peanut sauce and the chicken broth. I brought it to a boil and left it to simmer all day. It had reduced by half and the sauce was beginning to thicken when I turn it off. When I make sour pap, I use a quarter cup of white vinegar to a cup of cornmeal, and bring it to the consistency of play-dough.

This was probaly the most delicious version of this dish I have ever made! Absolutely moreish.

Freshly made, pico de gallo is a fabulous accompaniment or even a great appetizer with good corn chips, The secret is to get the ratios of tomato, onion and jalapeno peppers just right. You need ripe Roma tomatoes, a large jalapeno and a medium white onion along with a few limes. Once made, the mixture needs to meld together for at least a couple of hours for it to taste great. What makes it work, are the knife cuts. Make sure all the tomatoes are cut to about the same size, same with the onion and finely cut the jalapeno and the cilantro. Add about a teaspoon of salt and about half a teaspoon of pepper, then squeeze limes till you get the flavor just right, then cover and refrigerate. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 4 Roma tomatoes
• 1 large Jalapeno
• Half a medium white onion.
• Half a cup of chopped cilantro
• Salt
• Pepper
• Limes