Lahp Moo or The Pork Roast that lived on

My one and a half year-old daughter demanded seconds of this dish.  Really.

It began as a pork roast I made a few nights ago for Chad and the kids to eat while I was at work.  I heard she ate her pork like crazy, but of course she liked the applesauce even better.  Fast forward a couple of days, and there is half of a roast sitting in my fridge.  What to do?  We had planned on turning the rest of the roast into BBQ sammies, but that just wasn't quite challenging enough: slice pork, add barbecue sauce, heat.  So, I consulted one of my favorite cookbooks, Quick & Easy Thai, and found a recipe for lahp moo, a pork sort-of-salad reminiscent of larb.  The recipe was written for ground pork, which of course was to be cooked as part of the recipe, and not already roasted beforehand.  I decided the roast would turn thai. 

I put the roast (cover eyes and press on) into the food processor and ground it up.  The deed was done, and we would have no barbecue sandwiches for dinner.  In my enthusiasm (it's working!), I left the food processor on a little teeny bit too long, so my pork was a little too ground up for my taste, but the end result was delicious anyway.  All of the thai flavors I love were there: the sweet, salty, the spicy, and the sour.

Don't toss your leftovers, people!

The approximate recipe for this dish:  Grind up your leftover pork roast in the food processor*, but not too much!  You want it to look about like cooked ground beef, texture-wise.  Season with the juice of two or three limes, a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, crushed red pepper to taste, chopped mint, chopped green onions and a couple of tablespoons of thinly sliced shallots.  Toast a few tablespoons of raw rice in a dry skillet over medium high heat until it begins to turn golden brown.  Process the rice until it is pretty fine, and toss it into the pork mixture.  Serve with chopped tomatoes and cabbage leaves, and of course some sriracha on the side!

*If your pork looks a little too fatty (mushy), then try putting it into a frying pan with a tablespoon or so of hot oil and cooking it for a few minutes. 

Peppermint Ice Cream with Hot Fudge Sauce

We always had a tacky Christmas tree growing up- I mean really tacky, just how I like it. We used multi-colored lights, garlands of both silver and gold, lots of shiny ball ornaments, tinsel, and candy canes. I think I even remember adding a few popcorn strands to that mess one year. Well, I love nostalgia, and I love a good tacky Christmas tree, so I still tend to follow my old family tree-decorating traditions. We forgot the tinsel this year, sadly, but not the candy canes! The problem is, what to do with all of those candy canes when Christmas is over? I usually put them in a bowl by the front door in the hopes that someone will eat them, but inevitably end up throwing them away after a month or so. Not this year! I believe I have started a new tradition for our little family- peppermint ice cream!

What better way is there to avoid being wasteful and still have a tacky tree than to smash your leftover candy canes to smithereens and pour them into homemade ice cream, I ask you? Ice cream is simple to make at home as long as you have the proper equipment. I always keep my ice cream maker in the freezer, because I am sort of a last-minute cook: I rarely plan my culinary adventures in advance, and the ice cream maker takes fifteen hours to chill. I use basically the same recipe for all of my homemade ice creams, and just tweak the flavors to suit my mood and ingredients. This recipe is half and half cream & pet milk, mainly because I had the pet milk in my pantry and preferred to use that than to use up all of my daughter's milk. You could use whole milk in place of the evaporated milk, or you could just omit the milk altogether and use all heavy cream. You will get basically the same end result with any of the above combinations, with just slightly varying levels of richness.

Peppermint Ice Cream
makes a quart plus one bowl


2 c evaporated milk
2 c heavy cream
3/4 cup of sugar
6 egg yolks, beaten until pale and smooth
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
5 or six candy canes, placed in a ziplock bag and beaten with a rolling pin

Combine milk, cream, and sugar in a medium sauce pan and stir to combine. Cook over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid has almost come to a boil. Slowly pour about half of the liquid into the egg yolks, stirring all the while. Then pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan with the remaining liquid and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Add the extract and stir to combine. Pour the mixture through a sieve and into a bowl set over an ice-water bath. Stir with a whisk to chill. Once the mixture is cold, follow the instructions for your ice cream maker and chill in the freezer. Serve with hot fudge sauce.

Note: I added a few drops of "soft pink" gel food coloring to my ice cream to make it pink, but you could leave it out or substitute a few drops of plain ole red food coloring if you like.

Growing up, we always had our peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce, so here is my version:

Hot Fudge Sauce
makes about 1 1/2 cups

1 stick butter
3 T cocoa powder
1 t vanilla
1 t instant coffee granules
pinch salt
6 T evaporated milk (or just use whole milk)
1 c powdered sugar

Heat all ingredients except the sugar in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat until melted and smooth.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sugar until melted and smooth.  Enjoy!

Chicken Pot Pie

I went to the grocery on Tuesday to stock up on a few items because snow was predicted for today in Memphis, and goodness knows that Memphians completely lose track of their senses when they think there is going to be weather. I successfully avoided the snow crowds at the grocery (don't get me started on the midtown Schnuck's) and made it home with my fryer, intended for Zuni chicken, one of our favorite dinners. Chad came home for lunch, however, and casually mentioned that he might like to have chicken pot pie sometime (picture light bulb over head), so I decided to go with that. Aren't I just a good little wife?

The sauce for this recipe starts with bacon. Bacon makes everything good. I used the drippings from the bacon to cook the vegetables, then added flour to thicken the sauce, which was eventually made from the fryer I got- a carrot, half an onion, a few cloves of garlic, a rib of celery, some peppercorns and water to cover, cooked for a couple of hours=stock and boiled chicken. Two birds, one stone! No pun intended. Anyway there was only one bird, but I digress. Added the stock to the flour and vegetables, thickened with a buerre manie (pronounced burr monyay) and topped with pastry...voila! Chicken pot pie!

I used only a top crust, and I think it was just the right amount of pastry for this recipe. You could certainly do a bottom crust if you like, just double the recipe for the pastry and blind bake the bottom crust.

Shortcuts: use canned stock and store-bought pie dough (gasp!). On pie crust: if you have a food processor, it really is easy. Just have your ingredients measured out before you begin. You'll feel like a pro in no time. You can use all butter if you are queasy about shortening- the shortening just makes the crust easier to deal with.

Chicken Pot Pie

for the stock:
1 whole chicken
1 carrot, broken in half
1 rib celery, broken in half
1/2 onion (you don't even have to peel it!)
3 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic, smashed
salt to taste

for the pastry:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup shortening, cold and cut into pieces
1/4 cup butter, cold and cut into pieces
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

for the filling:
3 slices bacon
1/2 onion, chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
2 carrots, cut diagonally into 1-inch chunks
2 tablespoons flour + 2 more tablespoons for the buerre manie
3 cups chicken stock, warm
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 cup frozen peas
salt and pepper to taste

egg wash made with one egg yolk and a tablespoon of water

First make the stock. Place the first 7 ingredients in a large pot and fill with water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours. Season to taste with salt. Strain the stock through a sieve and discard all except the chicken. Take the meat off of the chicken bones and set aside 2 cups for the pot pie. Save any extra meat for chicken salad!

Make the pastry: In a food processor, pulse the flour and salt and sugar to combine. Scatter the butter and shortening over the flour mixture and pulse a few times until it looks like coarse meal. With the motor running, add the cold water and process until the crust starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Take the dough out and press it into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap, then let it rest in the fridge for an hour.

Make the filling: In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until just crispy. Remove to a paper-towel-lined plate and let drain. Chop the bacon when it is drained. In the meantime, cook the onion and celery in the bacon drippings until softened. Add the carrots and cook for a couple of minutes more. Sprinkle two tablespoons of the flour over the cooked vegetables and stir to coat the vegetables. Add the warm stock and stir to combine. Let the remaining stock cool off a little and then pour into ziplocks to store in the freezer for future use.

Using a fork, combine the remaining two tablespoons of flour with the softened butter to make a buerre manie. Stir the buerre manie into the sauce and bring to a boil, cook until thickened. Add the frozen peas and the chicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour the mixture into a pie pan.

Use a rolling pin to roll out the pastry into a circle just slightly larger than your pie pan. Roll the crust onto the pin and unroll it over your pie pan. Crimp the edges of the pastry onto the pie pan. Brush the pastry with the egg wash and cut a few slits in the center of the pastry to allow the steam to vent.

Bake for about thirty minutes, until the pastry is golden brown. Check your pie about halfway through. If your edges start to get too brown before the center of the pastry is done, cover them with tin foil.

Let the pie rest for about ten minutes before cutting into it. Enjoy!