SED - Day 28 - Late Edition

[teddy_radiator]

Eep! I've been working all day and the time has escaped me. I'm falling down on the job. Sorry, but this day was nothing more interesting than working all day, rice and pulled pork for supper, and some Red Velvet ice cream for dessert. I promise not to be so tardy tomorrow - promise!!

Comments

[kittylefish.livejournal.com]

pulled pork sounds yummy.

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

Sok I've managed to miss 2 days of the month - but one was due ro travel and exhaustion ans yesterday due to not starting it early enough. Sigh. My bad.

[lady-of-clunn.livejournal.com]

I hear you!

What does red velvet ice cream taste like?

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

It was nice, but I wasn't as nuts about it as I wanted to be. It did taste a bit like red velvet cake, but it wasn't all that, to be honest.

[lady-of-clunn.livejournal.com]

Red velvet cake?

Er... what does that taste like?

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

Actually that pulled pork over rice sounds yummy! I've never made it, since it takes forever to cook, but there's probably a version of it in my pressure cooker cookbook.... (I love my pressure cooker!)

[stgulik.livejournal.com]

My husband made mashed potatoes last night, and he would have loved to have had our old pressure cooker for the job. Potatoes take 45 minutes to boil in the regular way. Unfortunately, it done broke and hasn't been replaced.

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I find that it only takes about twenty minutes to boil potatoes sufficiently for mashing. Maybe it's the variety of potato? Anyway, you probably wouldn't want an old pressure cooker, when the new ones have been improved so much. (See my response to Teddy's comment below.)

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I don't own a pressure cooker, because I've always been afraid of them, but I would love to know how to use one.

[mimimanderly.livejournal.com]

Oh, Sweetie -- they are NOT your mother's pressure cooker anymore! The modern ones have been redesigned for safety, and explosions just don't happen anymore. I bought this one that was highly recommended by Cooks Illustrated: http://www.amazon.com/Fagor-8-Quart-Stainless-Steel-Pressure-Steamer/dp/B00023D9RG/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1432982574&sr=1-1&keywords=fagor+8+quart+pressure+cooker and I LOVE it. In fact, I wonder how I ever did without it. Since we have lunch as our big meal of the day, if I wanted to make stew or a roast, I would have to make it the night before and reheat it, because there just wasn't time in the morning. Now, I can make it in about an hour on the same day I serve it, and it tastes like it was simmering away all day. Most soups, I can make in about a half hour. Because it's an enclosed system, all the flavor and nutrients stay in the pot instead of dispersing into the air. I also bought this cookbook: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Big-Pressure-Cooker-Book/dp/0804185328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1432983068&sr=1-1&keywords=the+great+big+pressure+cooker+book and have found it a great source for all sorts of recipes. The nice thing it, it tells you up front how long the recipe takes and its degree of difficulty (most are really easy). The pressure cooker has made such a big difference in the ease of getting food onto the table, and I use it several times a week. Oh -- and you can make it all in that one pot: saute the vegetables and/or meat... add the liquids... let it do its thing, and voila -- only one pan to clean!

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all the fantastic information! I am totally inspired now. I love my slow cooker, but I'm dreadfully absent-minded. I once put in a turkey breast to roast it, then came back three hours later to find I had forgotten to plug it in!

Yes, I only remember the old-fashioned one my grandmother had, with its weight on top, blowing off steam like a locomotive. I had heard so many horror stories from my mother about them that I was convinced you had to be an engineer to use one. Now I'm itching to try one.

[melodyssister]

But you yourself said that any post is a good post (or words to that effect) - do't beat yourself up!

Can you describe pulled pork in terms a Jewish vegetarian would understand? I get that it's a kind of barbecue, but as the rest of my family has always gone for the spare ribs when we've been at barbecue places (and even in the DC area, we have't had it at cookouts), I don't think I've ever seen it closely.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

This is very true! ♥

Well, pulled-pork barbecue is just a way of making barbecue meat easy to use. I am very basic and cheat a bit. At one of our local bargain food stores, they sell really nice pork loin roast for $3 each. I cook it in the slow cooker for several hours until it's very tender. I take it out, let it rest for a bit, then, using two forks, I pull it apart into shreds, until it's not recognisable to its closest relatives!

I then take the pulled apart shreds and cook them with a little of the pot liquor, and either some prepared barbecue sauce, or concoct something with ketchup, mustard, honey, worchestershire sauce and any thing else at hand. We usually either serve it on hamburger buns or rice, but it really is just improvised every time.

[melodyssister]

Oh, thank you! I kept on thinking of old-fashioned taffy that you pull and stretch to get the right texture, which is obviously not some thing you can do to meat - although in both cases the pulling is meant to create the right texture. Not really something one could recreate as such, although one could probably prepare beans or lentils with the same flavourings and if you mashed the result, like a kind of dry daal, the texture might be similar? Probably not, I imagine I have no idea anymore what meat's texture is, LOL.