food Culinary Sandbox

Thanks guys. This was tonight's version… Yeah, I know better, but it wasn't until after I ate that I looked and realized I pretty much covered up the meat in the pics.  :rolleyes:  So as you can see REALLY WELL, sauteed onion and bell pepper plus pickled okra went on top of the meat. Pics aside, it was a really good combo! The seasonings on the meat include 4 different kinds of hot peppers, so I didn't add more on top. 
 
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Flambe if cheap stuff, if good stuff, keep the alky in it when cook with it. :)
 
Ok, I went with igniting it. VERY FUN!!!!
 
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This is one of those super-quick foods to cook, so it's best if you get your ingredients (and side dishes) prepped before you start cooking this. I just cooked enough for me tonight and modified the recipe a tad. How I made it:
 
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined
sea salt
cayenne powder
1 Tbsp butter
1/8 cup tequila reposado
1/8 cup sour cream (the original uses Mexican cream, which is different, but was unavailable)
1/8 cup chipotles in adobo sauce
ginger to taste
thyme leaves to taste
chopped chives
 
sprinkle the shrimp with salt & cayenne and set aside. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When it starts to sizzle, add the shrimp and cook for 1 minute. Turn the shrimp and cook it 1 minute more. Add the tequila. If using a gas stove you can just tilt the pan away from you until the tequila ignites. If using electric, tilt the pan slightly away from you and light it with a long match or lighter. Continue to cook until the flames disappear. Stir in the remaining ingredients except the chives. Sprinkle chives on top when serving.
 
Love this thread geeme.  And every time I look at your avatar all I can think is "Smee I'm about to kill myself, stop me..."  ;)
 
Thanks bunches! And LOL SnF - it is just too fun!
 
Ok, these pics absolutely FAIL to do this roast any justice, so I'll have to narrate more than I'd like to at the moment. Voila, un pork SIRloin roast. Why does this belong in the sandbox? I've never purchased a pork sirloin roast before, and sure enough never cooked one. I've made pork sirloin steaks (or chops, if you prefer) but never a roast. You know what comes next - looking on ye olde Internet to find the best way to cook this bad little boy. Only.... only.... there are lots and lots of folks out there who don't know the difference between a pork sirloin and a pork loin. And there a folks who don't know the difference between pork sirloin and pork tenderloin. And then there are the rest of the folks who do know what a pork sirloin is, but they mightily disagree in how one should be cooked.
 
Let's complicate this by the huge disagreement amongst those who cook pork tenderloins. Oh, my word - I learned a long time ago that there really is only one way to cook pork tenderloin, and that's with high heat, 9 minutes on two sides or 4 minutes on 4 sides, depending on how often you want to turn it. That bad boy will be super-tender and juicy if you cook it that way. But cook it low and slow like some say? Don't bother.  So how to cook a pork sirloin roast? Ok, I went with my gut and did 450F for an hour and five minutes - the internal temp was 148F when I removed it from the oven. Let it rest 20 minutes tented with foil.
 
Pre-oven, marinated in a mix of fatalii puree, lemongrass, ginger, rosemary and sea salt for at least an hour.
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I will tell every last one of you that the really dark areas are bark. Oven bark, maybe, but bark is bark. Maillard don't care!
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And here is where the FAIL comes in - this last pic utterly fails to show how those slabs o' meat GLISTENED with their juiciness. If I hadn't used my brand-new super-sharp to slice this, I would have utterly thrown safety to the wind and licked the blade. Have mercy!
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I mixed the fatalii puree and lemongrass at a 1:1 ratio, threw in a generous amount of rosemary and a liberal sprinkling of ginger powder. You will never go wrong in using fatalii and rosemary on pork, but adding the lemongrass and ginger took it up a couple rungs on the flavor ladder.
 
When my son came into the kitchen to fix a plate for himself, I told him that if the fatalii was too much for him just slice around the edges, which is exactly what he did, especially since he hasn't learned to appreciate the slightest bit of fat in meat. Me? I scarfed those scraps down - those were the best part!
 
geeme said:
Ok, I went with igniting it. VERY FUN!!!!
 
camaronesAlTequila.jpg

 
This is one of those super-quick foods to cook, so it's best if you get your ingredients (and side dishes) prepped before you start cooking this. I just cooked enough for me tonight and modified the recipe a tad. How I made it:
 
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined
sea salt
cayenne powder
1 Tbsp butter
1/8 cup tequila reposado
1/8 cup sour cream (the original uses Mexican cream, which is different, but was unavailable)
1/8 cup chipotles in adobo sauce
ginger to taste
thyme leaves to taste
chopped chives
 
sprinkle the shrimp with salt & cayenne and set aside. Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When it starts to sizzle, add the shrimp and cook for 1 minute. Turn the shrimp and cook it 1 minute more. Add the tequila. If using a gas stove you can just tilt the pan away from you until the tequila ignites. If using electric, tilt the pan slightly away from you and light it with a long match or lighter. Continue to cook until the flames disappear. Stir in the remaining ingredients except the chives. Sprinkle chives on top when serving.
Totally stealing this one G. Well done.
 
Pork tenderloin time again in the geeme kitchen. You know how it is, you get part of an idea, then a little more, but nothing else comes to you until you're knee-deep in the process? It's just like that sometimes. I dehydrated and powdered some pumpkins a while back and I got to thinking it was time to use some on a pork tenderloin. Then I decided I wanted to use lemongrass along with the pumpkin. Well enough, only I somehow cannot locate my dried lemongrass and I specifically wanted to go with a dry seasoning. Fine and dandy, as I had lemongrass paste in the fridge. Close enough. Into a bowl went the dried pumpkin, ginger, cayenne, cilantro, thyme, sea salt, and just a touch of allspice. Mixed that up well. Slathered the tenderloin with EVOO then slathered it with lemongrass paste. Once coated, sprinkled on the dry seasonings.
 
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I let that cook at 475F, turning a quarter turn every 4 minutes for a total of 18 minutes. Tented and rest for 10 minutes before slicing. As usual, the pic doesn't do it justice, but you will get a good idea of how it looked.
 
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There are good reasons why pork tenderloins usually come two in a package. The best reason is so you can experiment with one of them then tweak and refine when cooking the second one. I am going to make this again with the other one in a couple nights. The only thing I intend to change is not to slather on the lemongrass quite so thickly, as it overpowered the other flavors a bit too much. They were still there, just the lemongrass was stronger. When I got a bite where the lemongrass wasn't quite so thick, the combo of flavors was really excellent.
 
Lemongrass and pumpkin, sounds good to me, in Thai cooking they actually use pumpkin (it's called a Thai pumpkin) so I can totally see this...
 
I again made the pork with the lemongrass and pumpkin (etc.) tonight. A little tip to anyone who decides to have a go at it (and it's worth it!) - sprinkle the dry seasonings on the tenderloin and pat them in on a cutting board or plate, or something other than the pan you are going to roast the pork in, then move the seasoned pork to the roasting pan (on a rack.) If you get the seasonings on the bottom of the pan, they will burn. Not only does it not smell yummy, but they can actually flame up. Tenderloins have very little fat so there aren't enough drippings to stop the burning. I dumped some water into the pan, but you know, :notetoself: for next time. 
 
I know most people don't keep dried pumpkin handy, so I'm going to use pumpkin puree next time, to see if I get close-enough results. I am thinking to mix the EVOO, lemon grass paste and pumpkin together before coating the pork with the mixture. Should work. 
 
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