The Sublime and the Beautiful in the Kitchen

I've been reading Burke for my Romanticism class, and in case you were unaware, the Sublime is something that is obscure and inspires terror. Rather like a daunting recipe you have never tried before. The Beautiful, meanwhile, is small, round, pleasantly varied in texture, and non-threatening. Like a frittata.

My current menu is a schizo mix of ambitious grand project meals and comfortable "I'd rather not cook tonight but I should" fallbacks. It's always good to have a little bit of both. The benefits of the ambitious meals are that, if you pull them off you have the satisfaction of being really impressed with your intrepidness and skill in the kitchen, and you also have a new thing that you now know how to make. The benefits of the fallbacks are that they are familiar and thus easy, and you know that although they may not blow your mind, they will always be good.

This is my menu:

Miso shrimp with rice x 3

Roasted potatoes in Romesco sauce x 4

Pork carnitas tacos x 3

Spinach and mushroom frittata x 4

Baked polenta and mushrooms x 4

Skillet black beans and potatoes x 4

Penne with chicken and spinach x 4

I present you now with recipes for one grand project (that I pulled off handily) and one fallback that never fails to please. The first is pork carnitas, a time-consuming but deceptively simple and maximally delicious way to prepare an inexpensive cut of pork. I reserve the right to apply my name to this recipe, because I made some changes to recipes I found online that I feel make these carnitas distinctive yet authentically Mexican in flavor.

Emily's Pork Carnitas Tacos

1 lb pork butt (aka pork shoulder), cut into 2” cubes

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 cup orange juice

1 splash of beer (preferably not a dark beer)

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp black pepper

1 tsp coarse salt

For the tacos:

Corn tortillas (I use Alejandro's corn gorditas--made here in Tucson)

Diced white onion, radish, avocado, cilantro and lime wedges for garnish

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Combine the spices in a bowl. Heat some olive oil in the bottom of a cast iron baking dish, or skillet with a lid, over medium-high heat. Toss the pork in the spices until well coated and braise in batches. Remove the braised pork to a plate. Add the orange juice, beer, garlic and serrano to the dish and return the meat to the dish. Add enough water to just cover the meat. When the liquid reaches the simmering point, remove from the heat and place in the oven. Cook covered for three hours, giving the meat a stir every ½ hour to hour. When the pork is done, move the meat to a dish to cool, reserving the cooking juices. While the pork cools, prep the taco garnish and set aside. When the pork is cool, shred it with your fingers. It should shred quite easily. Heat some of the reserved cooking liquid in a skillet over medium high heat until it simmers. Add enough shredded pork to cover the bottom of the pan and let it cook until it begins to crisp. Let it crisp on both sides. Scoop a little of the pork onto warm corn tortillas and serve topped with the garnish, a fresh squeeze of lime, and a pinch of salt. Yields 8 small tacos.

The second recipe is a simple frittata, variations upon which I make a lot because they are quick, tasty, light, and easily adaptable to whatever ingredients you may have on hand. If you're not familiar with frittata, it's kind of like a quiche without the crust--and while it might seem tricky, with a little practice it's quite easy. This is one of those great dishes that works equally well as dinner or breakfast. Although I've thrown every vegetable imaginable into frittatas before, this minimalist interpretation is one of my favorites.

Spinach and Mushroom Frittata

6 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 cup sliced mushrooms (I used a combination of white and baby bellas)

2 cups sliced baby spinach

1/4 cup grated cheese + 2 Tbsps Parmesan (I used white cheddar this time, but almost any cheese will do. I've used Swiss, jack, smoked gouda, feta, even bleu in the past)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In an oven-safe non-stick skillet (about 12" in diameter), heat about 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and allow them to saute until they just start giving of their liquid. While they cook, beat the eggs with the milk and stir in the grated cheese, salt, pepper, and paprika. Add the spinach to the skillet, and cook until it just starts to wilt. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet, give it a gentle stir, and sprinkle the top with parmesan and nutmeg. Taking care that the flame is not too high (you don't want to make the bottom of the frittata rubbery), cook the frittata just until the edges start to set. When you can gently lift the edge away from the pan with a rubber spatula, but the center is still liquid, transfer the skillet to the oven and bake uncovered for 10-15 minutes, or just until it puffs up and the center is set. You can check by jiggling the pan. If the center jiggles, it needs more time. Once it is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool for at least a minute before removing from the pan. If you are adventurous and dextrous, you can remove it from the pan by placing a plate on top and quickly flipping it. If you are like me and prone to clumsiness, use a rubber spatula to gently loosen the frittata from the bottom of the pan and carefully slide it onto a cutting board. Cut into four wedges. Delicious served with a side of pears and walnuts with a little balsamic vinegar.

Irma, You Done Done It Again

I had some leftover roasted yam from when I made "Tony Rigatoni" the other night, and this morning, as I looked into my somewhat bare fridge that was not offering up any appealing breakfast options, I thought, "Hm, I wonder if I can put that yam that into a quick bread or something." So I consulted my trusty Joy of Cooking, and what do you know, the exact thing I had in mind was right there in it's venerable pages: yam muffins! I'm enjoying a couple right now that I just took out of the oven. So spicy and sweet and warming; perfect for the fall weather that has FINALLY decided to come to Tucson. Thanks, Irma Rombauer.

One thing that I love about the Joy of Cooking (if you don't have a copy, you should really look around for one at a used bookstore or something. Get a classic edition; mine is a modern reprint of an edition from the '70s. Some of the recipes are dated, but it's just a charming all-purpose cookbook) is that it's not just a bunch of recipes. There is a lot of great practical information scattered throughout the chapters that help you understand what you're doing when you're cooking. Anyone can follow a recipe, but understanding why you are going through the steps in a very specific way is what makes you a cook or a baker. Rombauer includes one of these helpful tidbits for baking muffins, and it's so interesting (to me, anyway) and written in such a quaint, grandmotherly way that I have to include it with the recipe. It might make the difference in the quality of your muffins.

"Muffin batters are easily made. To mix, add in a few swift strokes the beaten liquid ingredients to the combined dry ones. The mixing is held to an absolute minimum, a light stirring from 10 to 20 seconds, which will leave some lumps. Ignore them. The dough should not be mixed to the point of pouring, ribbonlike, from the spoon, but should break in coarse globs. If the batter has been beaten too long, the gluten in the flour will develop and toughen the dough; and the grain of the muffin will be coarse and full of tunnels.... Good muffins should be straight-sided and rounded on top...the grain of the muffin is not fine but uniform and the crumb moist."

Isn't that lovely? There's actually a drawing included of what the cross section of a poorly-made muffin looks like, and what the top will look like if the oven temperature is wrong. Anyway, if you follow this advice, your muffins will be better for it, and you will be a better baker.

I made a couple of substitutions to the J of C recipe. I didn't have quite enough cooked yam, so I smashed it with a couple overripe bananas that I had been saving, and that worked out fine. I also did not add the extra 1/4 cup of sugar the book recommends. I figured the banana would provide enough sweetness, and in my opinion it did. If you were just using sweet potato, or canned pumpkin, I think the extra sugar would be necessary. I also used chopped walnuts instead of pecans--equally tasty either way, I think.

Joy of Cooking Yam Muffins

Dry ingredients:

1 1/4 cups flour, sifted

1/4 cup sugar (increase to 1/2 cup unless you are using banana)

2 tsps double-acting baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

3/4 tsp salt

Optional: 1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts--and it doesn't have to be a full cup)

Wet ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten

3/4 cups milk

2 tbsps melted butter

1 cup cooked mashed yams, OR 1 cup canned cooked pumpkin, OR a combination of yam and banana

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Combine the dry ingredients well in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, milk, and melted butter. Pour the mashed yam mixture into the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients over. Combine quickly with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, following the recommendations above. Drop the batter from the spoon into greased muffin tins; each cup should be no more than 2/3 full of batter. Bake for twenty minutes, or until a knife inserted into one comes out clean. Irma says they are best right out of the oven.