Tag Archives: pork

Meat and Poultry

Pork in Green Sauce with Zucchini

Puerco en Salsa Verde con calabacitas

  • 1 lb. pork loin, in chunks
  • 4 peppercorns
  • 1/2 bay leaf
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 2 cups salsa verde (Mexican green tomato sauce with chile)
  • 4 small zucchinis, cubed
  • 2 cups chopped spinach
  • 1 chicken bouillon cube
  • Salt to taste

Place pork in heavy pot with water to cover, onion, pepper, garlic and bay and boil for 1 hour, skimming off foam. Remove meat, strain the broth and discard spices and onion.

Reduce broth to about 1/2 cup. Return meat to pot, add salsa verde and bouillon cube. Simmer for half an hour.

Add spinach and zucchini and continue cooking for another 1/2 hr., adding broth or water if necessary. The sauce should be quite thick by the end of cooking .Adjust seasonings. Serve with tortillas (makes great tacos!)

Soups and Stews

Pozole: Mexican Hominy Soup

Pozole is a pork, chicken, and hominy soup very typical of south central and western Mexico. In many places it is traditionally served on Thursday afternoons and evenings.  It is ladled into clay bowls and each person garnishes and seasons the soup at the table per individual taste.

Ingredients for Pozole: Mexican Hominy Soup

  • 1/2 lb. pork shank
  • 1/2 lb. spare ribs
  • 1 cut chicken
  • 1 pigs foot
  • 1/2 onion
  • 1 t. oregano
  • 4 quarts water
  • salt
  • 2-3 cups hominy
  • 3-5 guajillo chiles, soaked overnight

Preparation

Cut meat into pieces. Boil pork meat and chicken with onion, oregano, and salt. Skim as necessary. When meat is half-cooked, add hominy and whole chiles. Cook till hominy is tender and begins to pop open. Serve in clay bowls accompanied by any or all of the following garnishes and additions:

  • powdered or dried leaf oregano
  • quartered limes (squeeze juice into soup as desired)
  • red chile powder (chile piquin or cayenne)
  • sliced avocado
  • shredded lettuce
  • fried pork rinds (chicharrones)
  • queso fresco (Mexican fresh cheese)
  • sliced radishes
  • chopped serrano chiles

pozole


Meat and Poultry

Pork Sausage Meat

Saged pork breakfast sausage is really not that difficult to make.

Ingredients for Pork Sausage Meat

  • 10 lbs. ground pork
  • 4 T brown sugar
  • 3 T salt
  • 8 T sage
  • 2 T pepper
  • 1 T garlic powder
  • 2 tsp each paprika and nutmeg

Preparing Pork Sausage Meat

Mix all ingredients well and shape as desired. Can be stuffed into casings or fashioned into small patties for frying. Separate patties with parchment or waxed paper and freeze in small batches for later use.

Spice this sausage up with 1/2 tsp or more of powdered cayenne or hot pepper flakes, if desired.

Meat and Poultry

Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage 2

This recipe, Hungarian Stuffed Cabbage 2, comes from an old Hungarian cookbook that’s almost falling apart. Dad made rudimentary translations of some of the entries that were particularly evocative of his childhood years in Hungary.

Töltött káposzta II (Cabbage Rolls)

Recipe from Az Ìnyesmester Szakácskônyve (The Expert’s Cookbook)

  • Ground pork
  • Chopped bacon
  • Uncooked rice
  • 1 egg
  • Sauerkraut leaves
  • Sauerkraut
  • Browned flour roux

Wrap mixture of pork, bacon, raw rice, and 1 egg in pickled cabbage leaves. Place in large pot with sauerkraut between layers. Cover with water. Cover and cook. Thicken sauce with brown flour roux before serving.

Variation. Layer all of the cabbage roll ingredients with the sauerkraut and leaves.

Expert Book of the Cook: Hungarian cookbook

Meat and Poultry

Pork Chops with Corn Dressing

Pork chops smothered in a top dressing of sage-seasoned sweet creamed corn, baked to a lovely crisp crust with a moist, savory interior.

Ingredients for Pork Chops with Corn Dressing

  • 4 pork chops, thick cut
  • 6 slices whole grain bread (best day-old)
  • 1 small chopped onion
  • 1 egg
  • 1 can creamed corn
  • salt and pepper
  • 1 t or more rubbed sage
  • oil
  • 2 T finely chopped celery
  • 2 T finely chopped green pepper
  • broth to moisten

Brown the pork chops in oil. Place in deep oven-proof dish in single layer.

Combine finely chopped or crumbled bread, onion, egg, creamed corn, celery, green pepper, and seasonings. Moisten with broth if necessary. Spoon on top of chops and smooth out to edges in even layer.

Bake at 350 F for 1- ½ hrs.

Serve with pan-fried potatoes.

Garden sage

Sages, from Botanical.com

Sage Herb (Salvia Officinalis)

Culinary Sage

Meat and Poultry

Lecso

  • 2 lbs. pork, cubed
  • 4 onions, sliced
  • Oil for frying
  • 6 green peppers, sliced
  • 3 hot peppers, chopped
  • 8 ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • 1-1/2 cups rice
  • 3 cups water
  • 4 polish sausages, cut in pieces

Brown pork with 1 of the onions in oil in large pot. Add a little water and cook until pork is done. Add sausage. Add rest of onions, green peppers, tomatoes, hot peppers and rice and combine well. Heat over low flame until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender.

Meat and Poultry

Baked Pork Chops in Sour Cream

Polish Baked Pork Chops in Sour Cream

Wieprzowina w Smietanie

  • 4 thick-cut pork chops (3/4″)
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • 1 T sugar
  • 2 T vinegar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Season the pork chops on both sides with salt and pepper and brown in butter. Mix together vinegar, sugar and water and pour over the pork chops. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer gently about 1-1/4 hours or until chops are tender.

Add sour cream and heat without boiling.

Pork chops

Sour cream is used primarily in the cuisines of Europe and North America, often as a condiment. It is a traditional topping for baked potatoes, added cold along with chopped fresh chives. It is used as the base for some creamy salad dressings and can also be used in baking, added to the mix for cakes, cookies, American-style biscuits, doughnuts and scones. It can be eaten as a dessert, with fruits or berries and sugar topping. Also, it is sometimes used on top of waffles in addition to strawberry jam. In Central America, crema (a variation of sour cream) is a staple ingredient of a full breakfast.

Sour cream. (2016, December 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:41, December 28, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sour_cream&oldid=757081067.

Meat and Poultry

Segadin–Hungarian pork and sauerkraut stew

Székelygulyás: a rich pork and sauerkraut stew (goulash), perfect when accompanied by dumplings, noodles, potatoes or rice.

This simple and straightforward recipe was translation by Dad from Az Ìnyesmester Szakácskônyve (The Expert’s Cookbook).

Ingredients for Segadin (a Hungarian pork and sauerkraut stew)

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 T lard (or oil)
  • 2 lbs. pork
  • 2 lbs. sauerkraut
  • Flour
  • Sour cream

Brown the finely chopped onion in 1 T lard, with paprika. Add 2 lbs. diced pork. Cook until tender. In separate pan, warm 2 lbs. sauerkraut. Thicken with flour. Mix together with pork and sour cream to taste.

Wesselburenkraut 19.06.2012 18-35-26
By Dirk Ingo Franke (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Soups and Stews

Green Bean Soup

Ingredients for Green Bean Soup

  • 2 cups green beans, diagonally sliced
  • 2-3 strips bacon or side pork
  • 2 T flour
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • pinch of cayenne
  • 1/2 t paprika
  • 1/4 t garlic powder
  • 1 T vinegar
  • 2 T sour cream

Preparing Green Bean Soup

Cook the green beans till tender. Fry the bacon until fairly crisp. Remove bacon from pan and add the flour to the grease and brown well, stirring constantly. Add a bit of bean juice to flour to moisten and make a smooth paste. Add flour mix to beans. Season.

Simmer till thickened. Add vinegar and cream just before serving. Servings: 4

Note: To convert this into a vegan soup:

  1. Omit the bacon or side pork and instead heat a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and add the flour to it and brown to make a roux, adding a pinch of smoked paprika to lend the soup a rich, smoky flavor.
  2. Substitute the sour cream with a simple cashew sour cream made by blending until smooth and creamy 1/4 cup soaked and drained raw cashews (soak for 1 to 3 hours), 1 T unsweetened almond milk or other plant-based milk substitute, 2 tsp lemon juice and/or apple cider vinegar, and salt to taste.
Meat and Poultry

Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

This recipe for cabbage rolls is the basic Eastern European version that we knew as kids: a savory melding of rice and ground meat rolled in cabbage leaves and smothered in thick tomato sauce. It was always served with sour cream.

Mom would make a whole turkey pan full of cabbage rolls, enough to feed the six of us and more for at least  two or three sittings. As the leftovers sat and aged in their sauce over the next few days, the taste intensified and filled out… I always preferred leftover cabbage rolls over freshly made ones.

There are endless variations of cabbage rolls. One Ukrainian version is pickled cabbage leaves (sauerkraut style) stuffed  with fried onions, ground meat, and buckwheat and baked in a meaty broth instead of tomato sauce. Similar cousins  are rice and lamb stuffed grape leaves in Middle Eastern cuisine.

Ingredients for Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

  • 1 head of cabbage
  • 1 lb. mixed ground beef and ground pork (either half and half or slightly more beef than pork)
  • 1 finely minced onion
  • 1 cup cooked rice
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1-1/2 t salt
  • 1/4 t pepper
  • 1 large can tomato soup + 3 T ketchup*
  • 1 cup water
  • Sour cream for serving

Core cabbage. Place in large pot of boiling water with a splash of vinegar. Cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and let stand 10 to 15 minutes to cool. Sauté onion in a little butter. Mix together the ground beef, onion, rice, salt and pepper. Separate cabbage leaves. Shave off the ribs. Put a large spoonful of meat mix at the base of each leaf and roll up tightly. May fasten with toothpicks. Place in an oiled oven pan, nestling the rolls together so they won’t unroll. Mix together the tomato juice, catchup, and water. Pour over cabbage rolls. Bake, covered, at about 325 F for 1-1/2 hours.

These are best removed from the oven and let sit to settle and thicken the sauce a bit before serving. Place bowls of thick sour cream on the table, and mound a large tablespoonful of the cream on each cabbage roll before eating.

* Mom always swore by Aylmer’s tomato soup instead of tomato puree for making real Cabbage rolls., but it wasn’t always easy to find.

cabbage for cabbage rolls