Month: February 2024

Link to a Tasty Pork Belly Recipe, Plus a Few Thoughts

Posted on by nancyuen

I found a great blog called Tiffy Cooks (https://tiffycooks.com/sticky-slow-cooked-pork-belly/). She posted a recipe for Sticky Pork Belly, and I prepared it last night, mostly following the recipe, but making a couple changes to try to make the flavors a little more intense, but no more salty, since I don’t like foods overloaded with SALT. Salt is an important ingredient, but too much is, well, too much. I used a little more ginger, a little more rice wine, and slightly more brown sugar. It was delicious.

By now, I’m sure you’ve figured out that I have not commenced a vegan diet (I had written about doing so previously). Although I can appreciate dishes that are, by their nature, vegan, I don’t like recipes that make use of substitutions that fundamentally change the character of a recipe. For instance, I enjoy chocolate chip cookies, but I have never made a recipe using an egg replacer. One reason is that many “specialty” ingredients are expensive and/or challenging to find locally, especially now, living outside a major metropolitan area. That is one thing I miss about living in San Diego: the availability of many ingredients considered “ethnic” in some way, like turmeric or black sesame seeds. But I don’t go on about that now. Things are improving in smaller cities (and I definitely consider Albuquerque among smaller cities, given that its claim to fame is the fact that Bugs Bunny failed to make a left turn here), but such ingredients like the aforementioned turmeric and black sesame seeds command quite high prices, meaning I’m much less inclined to make use of them.

I made a discovery yesterday while looking for recipes for Tiffy’s Sticky Pork Belly that I do, indeed, have black sesame seeds that I’d purchased since moving to Albuquerque, so I will start using them again. One recipe where I like to use them is Seared Tuna Steaks Encrusted with Sesame Seeds (there are many places where recipes for this can be found, so I’ll leave it out of here).

Over the weekend, I was at the produce section of a supermarket, and saw varieties of apples that I had not tried before. I bought three different varieties (Granny Smith, Cosmic Crisp, and Braeburn) and brought them home to use in a pie. I made shortcrust using half whole wheat flour (by weight), and was initially worried when it required a lot more water to bring it together than when using all a-p flour. I mentioned this to Peter, and he reminded me that whole grain flours typically require more water, so not to stress about it. He saw the crust as I was rolling it out, and, by its appearance (it had blobs of butter), said that it looked more like rough puff than shortcrust, but it looked fine, nonetheless. Relieved, I continued.

I’ve watched Peter beat butter sticks into a butter block for preparing traditional puff pastry. He said it’s not really any more difficult than making rough puff, so why use rough puff when it requires just as much work as real puff pastry? The things he has created using his homemade puff pastry have been successful. Someday, I will give it a go. I’ve learned the methodology of making phyllo, so I shouldn’t be afraid of puff pastry, I guess. But not today.

I am in the mood to bake cookies, and have a drawer full of lemons to use. The last time I baked lemon cookies, Peter commented that they were very good, with an intense lemon flavor, so I can make another batch of them, I suppose. We still have a quarter of the apple pie, but I’m hoping we’ll finish it off as a morning or afternoon snack today.

Hmmm… I have a recipe or Almond Flour Cookies, and they don’t look difficult, so I think I’ll give them a try. I have almond flour (I bought a bag at Costco). I will try something a little different with them and see how that works. If it does, I’ll post the recipe here.

In the meantime, I will discuss my upcoming appointment for my Disability Hearing, which has been postponed from this afternoon to next Tuesday at the same time (1:30 pm). I will explain (once again) that I had returned to work in 2019, and did so successfully, mostly at gigs through a temp agency (the pandemic caused many food service establishments to use temp workers instead of hiring permanent help). I had a job as a baker for a deli/restaurant in Del Mar, California, but was dismissed from that job when the proprietor learned of my brain injury, caused by a car accident on 21. December 2006. He was worried that my faulty memory would cause me to “forget” to check on something baking, and that I’d “burn the place down.” I had told the manager of my memory problem earlier, but she had not passed that information on to the proprietor, so he was shocked to learn of it.

The job I had after that was one for which my memory would not be an issue. I was a pantry cook at an Italian restaurant, also located north of San Diego. I enjoyed that job, but left in order to have surgery on my feet. After the surgery and my recovery, I decided not to return to that job, and was no longer working through the temp agency.

I went to one job interview after moving to Albuquerque a few months after we moved. I didn’t get invited to a second interview and heard nothing from the restaurant afterward, so I figured they’d hired someone else, or was just waiting to hire someone they liked, probably someone who wasn’t as neurotic. I have seen many signs outside restaurants saying they were hiring. I thought about the working conditions of many of those places, and decided they were not environments where I wanted to work.

So what have I been doing in the intervening months? I’ve been reading a lot, mostly online articles about topics that interested me, including the current political crisis in the United States. The world, especially America’s allies in Europe, as well as Vladimir Putin, are watching very carefully. Putin will, if The Rump is somehow installed as President, launch an attack on European countries that are members of NATO, knowing that The Rump would not come to the aid of those countries who owed money to NATO. In fact, The Rump was practically inviting Putin to attack certain (poorer) nations who are in NATO, knowing that they owed money to NATO and The Rump would veto aid. The Rump is a con man (to call him a “con artist” would give him too much credit), and has conned much of the US population that he’s their Savior, who will wield the sword of their “Almighty Lord Jesus” to vanquish his enemies, of which he sees many. At a recent rally, he said that he will only be a dictator on Day One. I heard the beginning of a program on NPR on which the two guests were members of an organization that promotes democracy, particularly in the US, where they perceive The Rump’s Dearest Wish, to cause the failure of the American Experiment and turn it into another totalitarian state run by a ruthless regime whose only interests are its own survival.

More recently, I started reading a novel I borrowed from another member of my book club. The book is titled The Forgotten Garden, written by Kate Morgan. I’m enjoying it immensely. Every time I sit down to read, I’m engaged for at least a couple hours, until something else requires my attention.

Almond Flour Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (112 g) blanched almond flour (not almond meal)
  • 3 tablespoons (36 g) dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon (2.4 g) baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 tablespoon (15 mL) water
  • 1 tablespoon (15 ml) fresh lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F (175C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk the almond flour, coconut sugar, baking powder and (optional) salt (breaking up all lumps in the flour). Add the water and stir until blended.
  3. Drop by scant tablespoons (I use a small cookie scoop, which is just shy of a tablespoon) on the prepared baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart.
  4. Bake in the preheated oven for 13 to 16 minutes until golden brown and set at the centers.
  5. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheet. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack and cool completely.

I am having trouble tasting the lemon. The almond taste is strong, obviously. I may try a batch using all lemon juice and no water, adding a little bit of sugar, to see if the lemon flavor becomes detectable.

The natural oil in the almond flour provides enough fat, I think, to provide the cookies with enough moisture and tensile strength to stay in one piece after baking. I think they would need to be stored in a container that is absolutely airtight, for I think they would turn into little crenelated hockey pucks after a very short time.