I’ve been craving home-made English muffins for a while. The plan is to use them as the base for Extreme Eggs Benedict (stay-tuned). I ran across a recipe from Nancy Silverton for a different kind of English muffin, loaded with grains and seeds, from her La Brea Bakery. These won’t be used for the Extreme Eggs Benedict. I improvised with the ingredients I had on-hand, including:

• Rye flour
• Rye flakes
• Wheat bran
• Wheat germ
• Polenta
• Barley malt syrup
• Natural starter culture  (Austrian)
• Flax seeds
• Sunflower seeds (midget)
• Sesame seeds
• Caraway seeds
• Poppy seeds
• Anise Seeds
• Bread flour
• Milk
• etc.

Split in half with a fork, slathered with butter and jam. Life is good!

This dish was fun and delicious. The black rice was dressed with a bunch of SE Asian ingredients. Peaches from the garden and chicken pieces were mixed with a bunch of other SE Asian spices. Made a sad day just a wee bit less sad.

Basil is doing really well in the garden, so I cut off a bunch and pounded it in the mortar with pine nuts, olive oil, parmesan, pecorino romano, etc.

Made the “Extreme Cook” way: freshly-made coconut milk and cream, boiled with pandan leaf, sweetened with palm sugar. Lasted about a nanosecond.

Salpicón is usually made with shredded, braised brisket or similar meat. I had some leftover smoked prime rib which I marinated in a dressing made of chipotle en adobo, lime juice, olive oil, etc. The salad contains greens, onions, crumbled cheese, fresh tomatoes from the garden, avocado, cilantro, etc. Perfect lunch on a pleasant summer day.

Reconstructed Pork Butt and Pork Belly – Cured and Smoked

I bought some “Country-style Pork Ribs” because they were on sale. Permit me to rant for a moment:

OK, I get the need to sell pork butt to people who are intimated by the size, fat and toughness of a whole pork but. Cut it up into smaller pieces. Call it something appealing: Country-style. Meaningless (to me), but appealing, harking back to a simpler time when hogs weren’t raised in ginormous factories.  But ribs? Also appealing, but also totally fraudulent unless the factory hogs have been raised near a nuclear power plant. How about calling it filet pignon?

OK, rant over. I feel much better

So, I also had a small piece of pork belly in the freezer and a hankering to cure and smoke piggy parts. So what if I cure the “ribs” and pork belly, reconstruct the pork butt by putting the cured “ribs” back together hiding the cured pork belly deep inside the butt, sandwiched between the two layers of “ribs”.

Anyway, here is a little video:
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After smoking:

Re-deconstructed. Not pretty, but the best cured pork ever:

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I made this fresh pasta to serve with a cream sauce made with chopped porcini stems.

Slices of the freshly picked porcini mushrooms were brushed with olive oil and roasted for a minute in 900F wood-fired oven. These were used to top a white pizza baked a few minutes later in the same oven.

Last year was a disaster for local porcini. I think I collected only one decent specimen. OTOH, it was a great year for chanterelles. After a wet winter and spring, I was hopeful this year would be different. This afternoon Tavo, the mushroom sniffing Lab, and I headed up to the National Forest on a scouting mission. Within about 10 minutes I had collected about a dozen nice specimens of various size. Unfortunately, they were filming a movie up there and not only did they have my favorite area blocked off, but noise from the set construction and trucks destroyed the serenity. And it was getting hot. Tavo was able to play in a stream for comfort.

Anyway, we’re going to return first thing in the morning to see what we find.  It has been pretty dry the last week, so unless we get some good rains soon, this may be all I get this season, at least as far as prcini are concerned. Plan is to use these for pizza on Friday or Saturday.

A marriage made in heaven! Served with a decadent chocolate sauce (also spiked with a bit of Gran Marnier).