Meal #3

Okay, so I broke my promise that I would update right after I made my next meal...Bad Grace! *slaps hand*

Meal #3:Dinner
"Pork Shoulder Braised in Hard Cider" (p. 183)
"Potato and Turnip Grain" (p. 320)

This was a HUGE Success! All I can say is it was supremely delicious. Anyway, the pork recipe calls for a 3 lb. shoulder of pork. I forgot to write down this information on my mom's grocery list, and thus we picked out a 5lb. ( no lie) shoulder of pork. This made searing the pork a little difficult.... To turn the darn thing over required the assistance of my mom, a pair of tongs, and a large sauce spoon... Let's just say we shed a lot of sweat to turn the hunk of meat over in the pot! And, though the recipe calls for "hard cider" we took the cheaper root of plain cider. I was just about to pour all 4 cups of cider that the recipe calls for into the pot with the pork, when my mom read a small note on the side of the recipe. It says that if using regular cider, to reduce the amount by half and replace the other half with chicken stock. It's a good thing she saw that because we might have ended up with uber sveet (super sweet) pork if she hadn't!
So, since we had a 5 lb pork shoulder, it had to cook for a looooooong time.... 6 hours!! All the while the kitchen filled with the tantalizing smell of roasting pork and aromatics. I felt like it was Christmas.. you know, the kitchen filled with beautiful smells... ahh...anyway...
After the pork was cooked, I use the au jux to make the sauce in the recipe. The only problem was that in the book, Martha says I should have 2 cups of pork juice, and to boil it down to one cup. Well, I had about 5 cups of au jux ( again, no lie) ! So, instead of standing near the stove for 2 hours and boiling down 5 cups of au jux, I took the short cut and took out 3 cups of the stuff. I figured I could boil down the remaining 2 cups, but even that took too long and I wound up taking out a cup of it secretly...shh!... But, even though I omitted the reducing part, the sauce still wound up delish.
....Whew! I don't think I've ever written so much about pork in my life....

Well,t he potato and turnip gratin deserves its fair share of words too.
Turnip Observations: Turnips were a relatively new vegetable to me. I had never had one before and thus was a little nervous. I mean, I didn't want to ruin a bunch of perfectly good potatoes with the unknown turnip! The only things I had heard about turnips were negative. For example, in the movie "Howl's Moving Castle" ( I admit it, this is the one anime movie I actually like) Sophie, the main character, meets a moving scarecrow with the head of a turnip. She is kind of freaked out ( as any sensible person would be if they saw a moving scarecrow) and mentions the she never did like turnips, and continues to call him "turnip-head" Thus, the negative appeal.
--- just a side note: I must sound like a total weirdo...anime, moving scarecrows, turnip-head...*sigh*... and how does this correlate to cooking a gratin?

Anyway, back to "Turnip Observations"... So when I peeled the turnip, It looked just like a peeled McIntosh apple! I was tempted to tell my brother I peeled him an apple and watch as he happily bit into the turnip...hah!... that would have been funny...but my integrity won out....not to mention the fact that I needed the turnip for the dish... Anyway, second observation: turnips smell like horseradish. At least, to me it did...

Well, as I am probably boring you to tears as I poetically describe the lovely turnip, I will move on and tell you how the dish turned out.... It was surprisingly very good! The turnips tasted just like potatoes, and even though I boiled the cream and forgot about it and it boiled over...long story.... the dish turned out to be delicioso!

Well, I'm guessing that is probably enough about pork and turnips, so I'll stop here and fill you in on the latest happenings in the Kelly kitchens next week!

Grace