What I have been doing with food
I've decided after some lj drama, to take a break from writing about anything deeply personal, except for food. I've been writing an essay for an independent study on the subject for the past couple of weeks. The assignment was supposed to be about 5-7 pages and be kind of an autobiography of taste. Tackling the subject has been fun but arduous. I have been talking to my parents a great deal about how they ate when they were growing up, and thus far they have helped me tremendously. Looking at the differences between how and what they ate then, to how and what they eat now, has given me a perspective on how my own tastes have evolved over the course of time. I've told my parents that I would send them copies of this paper, and now I face my toughest audience. I am going to write it in steps (as of writing this entry I have retooled my thesis idea to accomodate these steps), and publish it here as a sort of serial. Gimme about three days on this.
A few things actually.
1. I had a horrendous craving for a cuban sandwich the other day.
After fighting it solidly for two days, I caved. I went on a mad dash to several local grocery stores, trying to find pork loin. I started at Native Roots. I ended up buying a TON of pork, however, no loin. The selection of locally raised pork, beef, and buffalo there is impressive, and because they deal locally, you can get some of the variety meats if you so choose just by asking the grocers to order it for you. I ended up getting a couple of pork chops and a rack of ribs. The ribs were kind of an impulse buy, but the guy working at the time dropped the hint that the butcher accidentally marked the ribs at the cost to the store. That means those ribs only cost me seven bucks. Cha Ching!
My next stop was the Homeland on Alameda, where I found the loin and some goods for cooking it. I hate that I have to supplement my trips to places like Native Roots or Forward Foods with trips to big grocers, but in the case of a craving such as this, there was no other option.
When I got home, I made a hasty mojo marinade using some garlic, orange juice, cumin, salt and red pepper. I sauteed the garlic in a pan until it cleared up. Then I put the orange juice and spices in until it came to a boil. I then put that into a casserole that I had already placed the patted dry loins. About an hour later, I put the glorious mess into a 375 degree oven and let it cook for 50-60 minutes. After it cooked, I pulled it out (gross), and let it rest for about ten minutes to cool and soak in some of the moisture it released(double gross). This was then sliced in preparation for the sandwich.
A cuban sandwich is really simple. Ham, roasted pork, pickles, swiss cheese, and mustard are placed between the two halves of roll of cuban bread. Cuban bread is a lot like a baguette with the exception that lard is used in the dough to give the bread a different texture. Since I was in no mood to wait for bread AND roasted loin, I just bought a baguette. The trick to a good cuban is toasting it and flattening it (aside from the ingredients, of course). A lot of places I've looked suggest a sandwich press for the combined cooking and flattening needed, but I couldn't justify the purchase to myself at this time. I just pressed each side down hard with a spatula into my frying pan to achieve similar effect after buttering the outsides of the bread.
That motherfucker was delicious. The only thing I could have done to make it better was to plug the loin with some cloves of garlic, and let it marinate longer before putting it in the oven. Other than that, the sandwich, and subsequent sandwiches over the past couple of days were amazing.
I had enough pork left over to make some pretty tasty nachos for dinner this evening too.
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