Moo Shu Pork

Here are some things that are delicious:

1. Pork
2. Sauteed vegetables
3. Mushrooms
4. Eggs
5. Hoi sin sauce

Conveniently enough, the items on this list can be combined to become something even more than the sum of its parts: Moo Shu Pork.  It's one of my dad's favorite dishes when we go for Chinese food, and for good reason.  When you take that pork mixture and wrap it up in a pancake with plenty of sweet-spicy Hoi Sin sauce...oh man.  Good things happen.  My Moo Shu may never quite stand up to the stuff we got from our favorite Chinese place growing up, but it's a pretty tasty alternative to make at home.  

Here's what you'll need: pork tenderloin, shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, green onions, eggs, hoi sin sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, cornstarch, garlic, sake or rice wine vinegar, and some pancakes.

Your local grocery store may or may not have exactly what you would like - in my case, my pancakes are just flour tortillas, but many stores do sell pancakes specifically meant for moo shu and peking duck in the Asian food section.  It's also perfectly effective to shred cabbage yourself rather than grabbing cole-slaw mix, but I was in a weeknight hurry and the shredded stuff worked just fine.

First, chop the tenderloin into small strips.  Throw it in a bowl or ziploc bag with some soy sauce, sesame oil, a bit of sake or rice wine vinegar, and some corn starch.  Give it a good mixing, and let it sit for at least a half-hour.

While the pork is marinating, you can start in on the other components.  First, heat up a bit of oil and add your lightly-beaten eggs to the pan once it's hot.  Let the eggs set over medium heat, then flip the whole sheet and cook for just another minute or so.  Pull the eggs out of the pan, chop the sheet into small pieces, and set the eggs aside for later.

Add a bit more oil to your pan, then add your minced garlic and chopped green onions.  Saute just for a minute or so - be careful not to overcook - then add the shredded cabbage and bean sprouts.  At this point, it should be clear why I'm using a dutch oven rather than just a skillet: I'm making a whole lot of moo shu, and all that cabbage takes up lots of space.

Throw in a bit of sake or rice wine vinegar, since cabbage loves a touch of acid.  Let the veggies cook over medium heat, stirring often, until they're slightly wilted but still plenty crunchy.  The volume in the pan should reduce by about half.  Pull out the veggies and set them aside for later.

Add a bit more oil to the pan and bring the heat back up to medium-high.  Chop up your mushrooms, and saute them with the pork, marinade and all, until the pork is just barely cooked.  Do this in batches to make sure that the pan isn't too overcrowded.

Once your last batch of pork is done, the bottom of your pan will be covered in deep brown, flavorful porky goodness.  Don't let it go to waste!  Deglaze with some sake and soy sauce, scraping the bottom of the pan to mix in the porky goodness.  This will have the pleasant side effect of smelling divine.  Inhale deeply.

When you've got the pan nicely deglazed, bring back all of the elements that have been sitting and waiting so patiently on the side - the eggs, the veggies, and the pork mixture.  Mix well, and sample to see what flavors need adjusting.  Add more soy, sesame, or salt as you see fit.  Don't forget, this mixture doesn't need to do all of the heavy flavor-lifting - there's delicious hoi sin sauce to come, as well.

When you're ready to assemble, smear the center of a pancake with a generous amount of hoi sin, then spoon on plenty of the filling.  The filling retains a lot of liquid, so be careful, these can get messy fast - it wouldn't hurt to assemble using a slotted spoon.  Fold up your moo shu like a burrito, and you're ready to eat!

After writing this post, so am I.  Good thing we still have plenty of moo shu leftovers in the fridge.

Recipe: Moo Shu Pork

Prep Time: 30 Minutes | Cook Time: 30 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 12-16

Ingredients

• 2-3 pounds Pork Tenderloin
• 1 large bag (14 oz) Cole Slaw mix
• 1 bag (8 oz) shredded Red Cabbage
• 8 oz. Shiitake Mushrooms
• 3 Eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 bunch Green Onions
• 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
• 2 tsp Sesame Oil
• 3 tsp Cornstarch
• 1 cup Sake wine
• 4 cloves Garlic, minced
• 1 jar Hoi Sin sauce
• Moo Shu pancakes (or tortillas)

Instructions

1. Cut pork into thin strips.  Add to large bowl or ziploc bag with 2-3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sesame oil, a splash of Sake, and 2 tsp cornstarch.  Mix well and let sit at least 30 minutes.
2. In a large pan or dutch oven over medium heat, cook lightly beaten eggs in a small amount of oil until barely set.  Flip and cook an additional minute.  Remove from pan and slice into small pieces.  Set aside.
3. Saute minced garlic and chopped green onions in a tablespoon of oil over medium-high heat for about one minute.  Add cole slaw mix, red cabbage, bean sprouts, and sake. Cook over medium heat until vegetables are slightly wilted but still crispy.  Volume will reduce by about half.  Remove vegetables and set aside.
4. Saute pork and chopped mushrooms in small batches with marinade over medium-high heat until pork is just cooked.
5. After last batch of pork is finished, deglaze pan with sake and soy sauce.
6. Return all ingredients set aside to the pan and mix well.  Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.
7. To assemble, spread a generous amount of hoi sin sauce onto a pancake, then add several spoonfuls of Moo Shu filling.  Roll burrito-style and serve warm.

Pork Chops a la Nicole

One day, probably about a month or so, my cousin Nicole sent me a message on Facebook asking for a recipe suggestion.  It felt a little bit like Chopped - she had a few ingredients she wanted to use for a dinner, and wasn't sure what to do with all of them.  Thankfully, unlike Chopped, the ingredients all fit together nicely, so it was a fun set to try to think into a coherent recipe.

Here's Nicole with her husband Adam and their (bloody adorable) son Logan.

Nicole had pork chops, diced potatoes, and zucchini to work with, and was leaning toward doing it all on the grill.  Pork chops and the grill get along great, so that was no problem.  When it comes to diced potatoes, my first thought was a hash, and I figured the zucchini could fit in there just fine, too.  I suggested a marinade for the pork and a method for putting together a hash, and Nicole said it went great.

I could hardly suggest a recipe without then trying to make it myself, now could I?  I ended up making a few changes to my original suggestions based on Nicole's feedback, but my end result made or a seriously tasty dinner.

Here's what you'll need: pork chops, a bit of bacon, sweet potatoes, zucchini, a sweet onion, some olive oil, some vinegar (white or cider), garlic or garlic powder, basil, oregano, thyme, mustard, salt, and pepper.

First, combine a bit of oil, vinegar, mustard, and lots of the spices into a nice marinade for the pork.  It's best to let it marinate overnight, but if you're in a hurry an hour or two will do the trick.  Let it marinate in the fridge and come back when it's time to cook.

Once the chops have had plenty of time to marinade, grill them up.  For thin chops like I used, 2-3 minutes per side was plenty.  Do your best to time it so that your pork will be done and rested more or less at the same time as the hash, which will take 15-20 minutes to make from chopping to finish.

When you're ready to get started, peel and chop the sweet potatoes, and also chop the zucchini and sweet onion into small, bite-sized pieces.

Give the bacon a rough chop and get it rendering in a pan.  Take care not to overcook it - it'll go back into the pan with the rest of the hash later on.  When it's well rendered, but not yet crispy, pull it out and set it aside.

Drain off most of the excess grease, but leave a few tablespoons in which to saute the diced sweet potatoes.  Cook them, stirring often, until they're starting to brown on the outside.  Try a bite - careful, they'll be hot - and when they're reasonably tender, it's time to add more stuff to the mix.

When the sweet potatoes feel pretty tender, add the zucchini, onion, and bacon, as well as a generous helping of the seasonings - basil, oregano, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper.  Continue to saute, stirring often, until the zucchini and onion are nice and tender, then taste and adjust the seasonings.  I added just a quick dash of vinegar in the last 30 seconds or so of cooking to brighten the flavors up, and it really helped a lot.

Serve your grilled chops atop a generous portion of hash, and be ready to offer seconds.

Recipe: Pork Chops a la Nicole

Prep Time: 5 Minutes (+2-24 hour marinade) | Cook Time: 15-20 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 6 thin Pork Chops
• 4 medium Sweet Potatoes
• 4 medium Zucchini
• 1 large Sweet Onion
• 8 oz Bacon
• 3 tbsp Olive Oil
• 3 tbsp Vinegar (white or cider)
• 3 tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 2 tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp Thyme
• 1 tsp Basil
• 1 tsp Oregano
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Combine olive oil, vinegar, mustard in a large resealable bag.  Add seasonings to taste.  Marinade pork minimum 2 hours.
2. Grill pork chops 2-3 minutes per side until done.  Rest under foil until ready to serve.
3. Peel sweet potatoes.  Chop sweet potatoes, zucchini, and onion into small, bite-sized pieces.
4. Chop bacon down into bite-sized pieces and render in a pan over medium heat until tender.  Set aside.
5. Drain away all but 2-3 tablespoons of grease.  Saute sweet potatoes in bacon grease until golden brown and tender.
6. Add zucchini, onion, and bacon to skillet with sweet potatoes, season with garlic powder, thyme, basil, oregano, salt, and pepper, and continue to saute until all vegetables are tender.
7. Optional: Add 1-2 tablespoons cider vinegar to hash in last minute of cooking and stir well.
8. Serve grilled chops hot atop a generous portion of hash.

Pork Chops in Wine Sauce with Mushrooms and Carrots

This meal was born out of uncertainty.  Kristin and I generally try to shop just once a week or so, and so we  need to get to the store with several meals' worth of ingredients on our shopping list.  This time, we were drawing a blank, and so decided to just see what was decent and on sale and improvise a meal from there.  

We'd just eaten a phenomenal quantity of pork in the week before, so were hoping to find some good beef on sale, maybe.  As it ends up, the beef was enormously expensive, and the fish at the fish counter was underwhelming, so we were back to pork.  I picked up some carrots and some pasta to go with it, and decided I'd figure out how to combine them when it came time to actually cook.

I eventually decided that I wanted to make a hearty wine sauce for the pork using the carrots, along with some mushrooms and onion.  My on-the-spot invention turned out pretty tasty, in the end.

Here's what I used: pork chops, fresh mushrooms, sweet onion, carrots, white wine, dijon mustard, lemon juice, tomato sauce, thyme, basil, salt, and pepper.  At first I hemmed and hawed over whether tomato and mustard could get along - it's a combination I also use in baked beans, and - obviously - goes together on hot dogs and hamburgers all the time.  It worked well here, too.

First, generously salt and pepper both sides of the chops.  Cook under the broiler, 4-5 inches away, 7-8 minutes per side (more for thicker chops, less for thinner ones).

While the chops cook, rough-chop the carrots and onion.

Saute the carrots and onion in a fairly deep pan with a bit of oil until the onions are getting translucent and the carrots are quite tender.  This can take a while.

When the vegetables are tender, it's time to transform them into sauce.  Add mushrooms, tomato sauce, plenty of white wine, a dash of lemon juice, and seasonings - I like thyme and basil here.  Simmer over medium heat to combine and cook the mushrooms - about 10 minutes should do the trick.

Somewhere during that ten minutes while your sauce simmers, your pork chops should be finished.  Perfect timing!  Let them rest a few minutes and they'll be ready to serve.

Once the sauce is done simmering, you're ready - that's it!  Serve the pork with a generous helping of sauce and vegetables on top, accompanied by your favorite starch.  I used some buttered, herbed noodles and liked it quite a lot.

Recipe: Pork Chops in Wine Sauce with Mushrooms and Carrots

Prep Time: 10 Minutes | Cook Time: 35 Minutes | Difficulty: Easy | Servings: 6-8

Ingredients

• 6-8 inch-thick Pork Chops
• 1/2 lb Baby Carrots
• 1 large Sweet Onion
• 12-16 oz. White or Portabella Mushrooms, chopped
• 2 cups White Wine
• 1/3 cup Tomato Sauce
• 2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 1 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 tsp Thyme
• 2 tsp Basil
• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Instructions

1. Season chops generously with salt and pepper on both sides.
2. Broil chops 4-5 inches from broiler, approx. 8 minutes per side until cooked through.
3. Roughly chop carrots and onion.  Saute with olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until tender.
4. Add wine, lemon juice, tomato sauce, mushrooms, basil, and thyme to skillet.  Simmer over medium 10 minutes until mushrooms are tender.
5. Serve chops with a generous helping of sauce and vegetables, accompanied by your choice of starch. 

Honey Chipotle Carnitas

When last we left our heroes our intrepid pork had been slow-cooked all day and pulled.  Suddenly, a nefarious power separated pork from pork, leaving some to be brutally barbecued while the rest was thrown mercilessly into the dark and cold.  That is...the fridge, to be later made into Carnitas.

This is Part 2 of a two-part slow-cooker porkfest: Carnitas!  I never make these by themselves - they always follow after a day or two worth of BBQ sandwiches.  You're welcome to make just the Carnitas, though, and I'll include the pre-separation steps in this post as well as the original BBQ post for completeness' sake.

For those who followed the BBQ post and so are starting with cooked-and-shredded pork reserved from there, skip down til the next cutting-board-full-of-ingredients picture.  If you're starting fresh, you're in for the long haul.

Whether you're making both preparations or just the Carnitas, you'll need a good sized chunk of pork shoulder, about a liter of pop, a large sweet onion, a large red bell pepper, and a can of Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, as well as - of course - salt and pepper.

Chop the onion into large chunks and arrange on the bottom of your slow cooker.

Give the red bell pepper a similar chop and toss it down there on top of the onion.

Now the pork.  Unwrap and unceremoniously plunk down on top of all those veggies.

Our cooking liquid is a terrifying mixture of pop and adobo sauce.  Pour your pop over the pork until it's covered or you reach the top of your slow cooker, whichever comes first.  Then, open up the Chipotles and pour out the adobo sauce into the slow cooker, as well.  You can add a couple of peppers as well, if you like, but we'll find plenty of use for them later.

Cook on low 6-8 hours.  Drain off the liquid.

Shred with two forks until you have a pot full of goodness like this.  Make sure to discard any bones that came with your pork, as well as any extra fat.

Folks who used half of their pork for BBQ sandwiches reserved the other half - covered in Chipotle peppers - at this point.  If you did so, it's time - pull out that reserved pork and let's put it to use.

To get from shredded, peppery pork to Carnitas, you'll need honey, cinnamon, garlic powder, oregano, cumin, and perhaps a dash of hot sauce, in addition to your pork and Chipotle peppers.  Quantities are all quite variable, depending on how much pork you've reserved and how spicy you like it.  If the pork spent a day or two in the fridge covered in Chipotles, you can probably skip the hot sauce.

Carnitas is characterized by pork that's first slow-roasted or braised for a long duration, then cooked again over high heat with additional seasonings and flavorings.  The end result is a crispy-but-tender, flavorful pork extravaganza.

The second round of cooking Carnitas often happens in a hot oven, but I prefer to do it in a pan, where I have more ability to flavor as I go.  I'm a control freak like that.

Set a large skillet - I prefer Cast Iron for this kind of thing - over medium-high to high heat.  You want the pan hot enough to crisp up the pork, but not so hot that you'll burn it in the process.  Individual stove-and-pan combinations will lend themselves to different temperature settings for this, so be careful.

Once your pan is nice and hot, dump the pork and the chipotles in there and go to work.  Break up the chipotles with a spatula so you don't end up with mouthfuls of nothing but peppers.

As you cook, add plenty of cumin.

And oregano.

And garlic powder.

Keep things moving in the pan, lest your pork scorch.  It's also important to keep tasting for balance of flavors.

Now is the time to add the sweeter flavors.  I like to add honey and cinnamon to take some of the savory-spicy edge off.  Especially if you've included the whole can of Chipotles, this could just be too spicy without some sweet relief.

Add honey and/or cinnamon according to your preference, and keep tasting.  You'll know when it's ready.  It'll go from "Yeah, no bad" to "Ooooh."  Then, and only then, is it time.

You can serve this in any number of ways, but I prefer taco-style on a flour tortilla with some salsa (preferably home-made!) and cheese.  Some fresh fruit is a handy accompaniment to cool your mouth down.  Beer works, too.

Recipe: Slow-Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork

Prep Time: 10-15 minutes   |   Cook Time: 6-10 hours   |   Difficulty: Easy   |   Servings: 10-12.

Ingredients

• 2-4 pounds Pork Shoulder
• 1 liter Cherry Cola
• One large Sweet Onion
• One large Red Bell Pepper
• One can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce
• 1 tbsp Cumin
• 1 tbsp Oregano
• 2 tsp Garlic Powder
• Honey to taste
• Cinnamon to taste
• Hot Sauce to taste
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

Chop onion and bell pepper and arrange on bottom of slow cooker.  Place pork shoulder on top of chopped vegetables.  Pour adobo sauce and cherry cola over pork to just cover.  Reserve chipotle peppers.

Cover and cook 6-8 hours on low.

Shred pork with two forks.  If pork is not tender enough to shred easily, cook on low an additional 1-2 hours.

Add shredded pork and chipotle peppers to a heavy skillet over medium-high to high heat.  Break up peppers with a spatula.

Mix and stir pork mixture constantly, adding cumin, oregano, and garlic powder.

Add honey (suggested 2-3 tbsp) and cinnamon (suggested 1 tsp) to taste.

After 10-15 minutes on heat, pork should be crispy on the exterior but still tender.

Serve immediately on flour tortillas with salsa and cheese.