Party time!

Well, it is summer and time for deck parties.  I have been very remiss this past year keeping up with this blog for many reasons.  The first of which would be the fact that I have not cooked as much as I should be!  Second, it has been a crazy up and down year.  The down is the fact that my husband has been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer.  The up is the living that I am making him do (plus all the traveling for school I've done).  This year, so far, I have been Lisbon, Portugal; Paris, France; Tampa, FL; Boston, MA; and Colorado Springs, CO.  Trips to be taken during the rest of the year: Tampa, FL; Stratford, ON, CA (for the Shakespeare festival); San Antonio, TX; and possibly back to Tampa, FL (to see my g'pa and meet with my colleague).  This along with working full time and all the art stuff I've been working on.  I am so proud of the fact that it seems I am getting a handle on painting and drawing now.  Most proud of this painting drawn and then painted from a picture I took outside Monet's house in Giverny, France:

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I adopted these two rascals:

So, yes, I think I have a few excuses, but I think we are settling down a bit now.  And, of course, the CSA has started for this summer, so it's time to start cooking again.  I got lucky in that the CSA started in time for my first party.  I didn't get pictures of the food, but I will put the recipes up because I used a LOT of what I got from both of my CSAs for this party.

Braised Pork 

For this batch, I used my time-honored braised pork recipe, but mixed up the herbs a bit because of what I had available:

• 1 3.5 pound pork shoulder roast*
• 6 sprigs fresh thyme
• 4 sprigs Thai basil*
• 1 can chopped green chiles
• water
• salt & pepper

Trim the fat on the roast.  Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Place in a large Dutch oven.  Add green chiles, thyme and basil.  Pour water over all until halfway up the roast.  Bring to a boil and then cover and reduce heat to simmer for about 3 hours or until the roast reaches an internal temperature of 180 - 190F.  Remove from the Dutch oven and cover with foil.  Allow to cool until able to be handled.  Pull pork, removing most of the fat as you pull.  Serve with BBQ sauce.

Homemade BBQ Sauce

I also prefer to make my own BBQ sauce when I make my pulled pork.  And I always get positive comments when it is all said and done.  Unfortunately, I no longer have my sorghum, so I substituted molasses.  It gave it a darker flavor which I wasn't sure about, but in the end, everyone liked it.  I would like to find sorghum again because it is perfect for my BBQ sauce.

•  3 cups ketchup
• 1 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 4 thyme sprigs

Place all ingredients in small saucepan.  Heat until boiling; reduce heat and simmer 1 minute.  Adjust flavors as needed.

 Memphis-style Coleslaw

So, if you are going to serve pulled pork, you need coleslaw, right?  I don't eat it myself (have never liked raw cabbage), but there is always someone who wants cabbage with their BBQ.  And, of course, I had just gotten cabbage from the CSA, so why not, eh?

• 1/2 medium head green cabbage*, shredded
• 1 small head radicchio*, shredded
• 2 carrots*, peeled and grated
• 2 Cups mayonnaise (I used olive oil mayo)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 Cup seedy mustard
• 1/4 Cup cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp celery seeds
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Wash and prepare the vegetables and place in a large bowl.  Mix remaining ingredients in a small bowl and then pour 2 cups of dressing over the vegetables and mix well.  Add more dressing as needed.  Allow to marinate in refrigerator a minimum of 3 hours before serving.

Bourbon BBQ Baked Beans

 And of course, since I had BBQ sauce left over and other fresh veggies, I decided to go ahead and make baked beans as well.

• 4 (15-oz) cans Pinto Beans, drained & rinsed
• 8 oz bacon*, cooked & crumbled
• 1 onion, diced & browned
• 4-6 cloves garlic*, minced and browned
• 1 large red pepper, diced and sauteed
• 1 Cup BBQ sauce
• 1 Cup brown sugar, lightly packed
• 2 Tbsp molasses
• 2 Cups homemade chicken broth
• 1 Cup bourbon (I used Knob Hill)
• Salt to taste

Drain and rinse beans and place in crock-pot.  Saute the vegetables and add to crock.  Add remaining ingredients.  Mix well.  Cover and cook for 10 hours on LOW or until the beans are the consistency desired and the alcohol has cooked down.

*CSA ingredients. 

BBQ Sauce

Okay, I'll admit it, I was lazy on that last post.  I didn't link the bbq sauce recipe for the pulled pork.  Probably because I knew it was part of another post from a couple years ago.  But my mom mentioned it this morning when I dropped off some of the pulled pork for her and Dad to enjoy.  So, here is the BBQ sauce recipe all by itself.  I created it when I received a bottle of sorgham from the CSA in Cleveland (FreshForkMarket.com) and it has become my favorite bbq sauce for pork (I've used it for both ribs and pulled pork).  You could easily adapt it for a light molasses and I think it would taste very similar.  Not sure where you could get sorghum around here.

Sorghum Honey BBQ Sauce

• 3 C ketchup
• 1 C sorghum*
• 1/2 C cider vinegar
• 1/2 C honey (this is the raw honey from Bob's hive)
• 6 sprigs fresh lemon thyme

Wash the thyme and then gently pull the leaves from the stems; discard stems.  Place all ingredients in small saucepan.  Heat until boiling; reduce heat and simmer 1 minute.  Adjust flavors as needed (I did add a bit more honey because this seemed a bit tart).

I prefer this sauce on pulled pork and believe it would be good on beef brisket, but not sure how it would be on chicken. 

 *CSA ingredients

Baby Back Ribs

For the 4th, I decided to make baby back ribs.  My thought was that I would pre-roast them in the oven and then finish them on the grill with the grill.  To make them even more compelling, I made my own bbq sauce because for some reason, I can never find a premade sauce I like.  I am still using up some sorgham "molasses" that I have left from Fresh Fork Market (freshforkmarket.com), my CSA in Cleveland. I also had honey from my brother's hive, which I thought would be very nice to use in the BBQ sauce, as well as fresh thyme.

But as things go, we ended up with other plans.  My Department Chair, Mark McCartney called me up and asked if we would like to join him on the lake (Sanford Lake) for the fireworks.  As I was trying to figure out what to do about dinner before we headed out, I chose to cut the ribs to see how much they needed to be cooked.  It turned out that they were perfect and lovely!  We enjoyed some ribs on the way out to Mark's along with some of the beans I had cooked earlier.  Lovely dinner.  On the 5th, I took the remaining 1/2 rack, basted it with the bbq sauce and cooked them off to enjoy for dinner.  As you can see, we must have liked them as only 1 lone rib remains.  I am sure I will enjoy that for lunch tomorrow!

BBQ Baby Back Ribs

•  1 rack baby back ribs
• cumin
• paprika
• onion powder
• garlic powder
• tumeric
• BBQ sauce (see below)

Line a baking sheet with foil.  Place a loose sheet of foil on top of the pan.  Sprinkle ribs liberally with dry spices and pat in to flesh.  Place rib rack onto loose foil, cover with another sheet of foil and seal around ribs.  Bake at 300F for 2 hours.  To finish, raise temperature to 425F.  Brush ribs with BBQ sauce and bake, on top rack for 10 minutes.  Turn ribs and baste again, bake for 15 minutes longer or until the bbq sauce starts to caramelize. Allow to settle for 5 minutes before serving.

BBQ Sauce

• 1 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup sorghum "molasses"*
• 1/4 cup fresh local honey
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar
• 6 sprigs lemon thyme, leaves removed

   Mix all ingredients in a medium saucepan.  Heat to boiling and then simmer for about 1 minute.  Cool and store in the refrigerator until use. 

 
 *CSA Ingredients