I went to Tokyo with some friends from college about six years ago. We were staying in Marunouchi, a business district. It was raining. We were pretty tipsy. There was an old man pulling a cart cooking sweet potatoes over a fire. That was the best potato I’ve ever had. Smoky, sweet but not too much, crispy outside, wrapped in tinfoil.
I still think of sweet potatoes as smokey grilling food, so when we decided to make a camping dinner I got a few. We kept this pretty simple to spend more time sitting enjoying the moment than fussing over dinner. After oiling them up, we cooked the potatoes on the fire for about an hour. In foil for about 45 minutes then without. Maggie made a sauce from a mixture of fish sauce, soy sauce, miso, molasses, black garlic rice wine vinegar and the wizard (worchestershire). We drizzled the sauce and then topped them with goat cream cheese, jalapeno, cilantro, and crumbled wasabi peas. We also made some dogfish head sausages on the fire.
No camp dinner is complete without smores.
And drinks. We brought our crucial detail porthole. We mixed 2:1 bourbon to pear brandy and angoustura bitters. The porthole was stuffed with orange rind, cinnamon, an apple, oak chips, and some dried flowers. The drink was very seasonal tasting in the best way. Like delicious booze cider.
Last year we did a pork sandwich test, one with ground cherries was the clear winner. We’ve been waiting anxiously until ground cherry season to try it again. It seemed like a fun exercise to try to adapt the sandwich into a main course and practice some plating with it.
We decided to do pork belly and shoulder. The pork belly was spiced with Benton’s country ham, which is now about two years old, star anise and xx. The shoulder was spiced with cumin, coriander, white pepper, smoked paprika, cayanne, and molasses. I used the modernist cuisine recommendations and cooked for 48h at 65C.
I vacuum bagged a lemon with some Pectinex Ultra SP-L, a pectin destroying enzyme. I put some slices on the lemon’s skin, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Left out for a few hours all the pith and rind fall away and leave perfect supremed lemon slices. Maggie made a greek yogurt, mint coriander, lemon sauce. Lots of mint. Lots of coriander.
The runoff in the bags was reduced by about 50% and thickened with xanthan. The belly and shoulder were portioned and seared off on the hottest pan we’ve got. We realized that we had forgotten to make a crispy dark grainy cracker to put with them, so we toasted some triscuits until they were burned and smashed them up.
We had a plate-off, I tried to make a somewhat natural looking plating with lots of herbs. Maggie went for a saucy cross thing.
After waiting a year to try this again, we were just as excited as last time. The mixture of the pork belly exploding on your tongue then the lemon and mint and fruit salady ground cherries then dark spices doesn’t get old. It’s not a combination that reminds me of anything else. I really don’t use ground cherries enough.
This year we got a CSA from Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance. We got our first box yesterday. It included salad greens from Goose Creek Gardens and green radishes from Clarion River Organics. Don’t tell anyone, but other than putting them on salads or just eating them with some butter and salt, I’m not really sure what to do with radishes. So, I grated them and mixed them with goat cheese. I needed something to stand up to the strong flavors, and I had some steak in the fridge, so I cooked it. I mixed in some truffle oil and mustard, put it in the circulator and seared it on our new 220v induction burner. (See my post on the 3500W Cooketek for how much I love it.). I topped it with some of our CSA greens and it matched perfectly. Still wish I could eat this one each day and hope that my missing records aren’t difficult to reproduce.
I call these Eggs in a basket. Other people call it : Eggs in toast, Eggs with a hole in it, Eggs in a hole, Toad in a hole, Frog in a hole, Egyptian Eye, Hobo. I’m not sure if it’s some regional thing, but I hate those people.
