I've been trying to write something here everyday, just to keep writing, and to hopefully get into the habit of writing everyday. I missed a few days over the weekend, because I needed some time to get stuff done around the house, but also because I needed some time to relax, which I did while not doing stuff around the house.
Friday ended a 12 straight days of work for me. 4 days at my day job, 4 days at the Hopkinton State Fair, and then 4 more days at my day job. Not much got done around the house in that stretch (at least, not by me). I made a fantastic dinner...that I didn't get to eat until lunch the next day.
I love to cook. If I could sit around the apartment all day cooking, I probably would. In fact, that's pretty much what I did on Saturday, but more on that in a moment. Once a week, I get an e-mail from the Disney Food Blog, which I usually look at briefly, always intending to read more closely later, though I rarely do. This past week, though, they teased a recipe from "Be Our Guest", the Cinderella-themed restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. I've never eaten there, but I've heard great things, so I was curious.
The recipe was for a braised pork shoulder over mashed potatoes with a red-wine sauce. A pretty simple-sounding recipe, but what caught my interest was that there were instructions for plating. My confidence in cooking has grown over the years, and I believe that I know enough technique to make just about any recipe I can find (short of molecular gastronomy, but I'll get there). My biggest hurdle is plating, though. Most cookbooks will delve into great detail on the proper way to hold a knife, and how to chop, slice, boil, scald, simmer, sear, braise, and grill, but few - if any - go into detail on plating. As such, it's not something I've learned. So, to find a recipe that seemed easy, and came with plating instructions? Let's do it!
Not to mention, I like pork shoulder, and I knew the mashed potatoes could be swapped out for mashed boniato, one of my favorite side dishes ever, and, somewhat coincidentally, something I discovered at Disney World. If you like potatoes, but have never heard of boniato, you should try it. It can be tough to find (I've had great luck with Hannaford supermarkets in New Hampshire; Market Basket, too), but if you do find it, peel it, dice it up, mash it (preferably with a food mill), add some butter, and some milk, and have yourself a helping of mashed awesome. The flavor is starchy, and sweet, but not as ripely sweet as a sweet potato or a yam. To kick it up a notch, add some crispy bacon and a nice smoked cheddar.
I decided to make this recipe after work. If real-life featured foreshadowing, unrelated alarms would have started going off, and would have been well-deserved. To start, I had to go to three different grocery stores to get everything I needed, and by the time I got started cooking, it was 7:00pm. Now, the roast braised for almost 2 hours, so I figured I'd be pulling it from the oven around 9:00pm, which was late, but not out of the window of acceptable dinner times for me.
Dice and saute some bacon. 7:20.
I set about cutting up veggies. A bulb of fennel. A carrot. An onion. 7:30.
I needed to brew some coffee. 7:45.
Cut the roast into 4 pieces and season all of them. 8:00.
In the middle of all of this, I got a phone call from my wife. She'd forgotten about her fantasy football draft that was that night, and she was working. She asked me to sign in as her, and monitor her picks. I agreed, and propped the computer up on a chair near the kitchen so that I could monitor the draft, the chat, and my dinner.
This just added to the delay, though, and by the time I got the pork into the oven, it was almost 8:30. It wouldn't be done until almost 10:30, which was a little late for dinner. There was no turning back now, though, so I put it in, set the timer, then went about the rest of my night, cleaning, peeling, and dicing the boniato. Making (probably terrible) draft picks (I'm bad at Fantasy Football to begin with, and not paying attention to the NFL doesn't help with that). Tending to the roast. By 10:00, the draft was over, and everything was ready except for the roast and the sauce, and this was when I really screwed up. I had waited far too long to start prepping the sauce.
The recipe was simple: dice some carrot and some onion. Cook until softened. Add 4 cups red wine, reduce by half. Add four cups braising liquid/beef stock, cook until thickened.
A reasonable cook would probably try to time the wine reduction with the pork being done. What did I do?
Wait until the pork was almost done before even starting the sauce.
Long story short, I finished with a nowhere-near-as-thick-as-I'd-have-liked-it sauce, drizzled over pork set atop mashed boniato with a side of sauteed haricot verts in plastic containers to go in the fridge for lunches over the next few days. They were tasty. I'd have liked to have had a serving fresh and hot, in a bowl as intended.
This is the problem when I cook - time management. More than that, it's a fundamental understanding of how long something will take to cook. I've recently learned how to make bacon jam (recipe to come). The key step is to let everything simmer and reduce for 30 minutes. In my head, that recipe takes 30 minutes, plus a few more for prep time. In reality? I have to cut bacon, and then crisp it up. That alone can take up to ten minutes. Then, there's the onion. Another 5 to 10 minutes. That adds up. Ideally, I'm prepping while stuff is cooking, but that is risky, as it can lead to burned food, or improperly prepped food. If I prep everything beforehand, cooking goes smoother, but the entire process takes longer.
On Saturday, I made chili. I'd been craving it lately, for whatever reason, and had thought about making it on Friday, but was overruled, as my wife and I needed to do some honeymoon planning, and she knew of my predilection for hours-long recipes. I tried to reassure her that I'd made my planned recipe before, in under an hour, but she held firm and made a far quicker dish so that we'd have more time. So, I made chili while she was at work. Since I had the day to myself, I made the super-involved chili.
And yes, it took me about 3 hours. I guess plating is not the only thing I need to work on.
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