Keeley's Kale and Potato Frittata

Keeley's Kale and Potato Frittata

A frittata can be described as an Italian omelette. But, there's no folding involved so it's totally easy to make. Take some eggs, some meat and/or veg and some cheese, and you've got the makings for a frittata. Hey, you may have even made one already without knowing what it was. Frittata is a delicious way to start the day, to feature at brunch, or to make a quick supper when you're really busy and really hungry.

This particular frittata is the creation of my daughter Keeley. Basically, she took what we had on hand to make this. You can easily do the same. You can add some cooked meats (ham or spicy sausage are tasty in frittatas), switch out the kale and potato for some spinach or broccoli or peppers or whatever other veggie bits you might have to use in the refrigerator, and use your favourite cheese in place of the cheddar.

Keeley’s Kale and Potato Frittata

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp garlic, minced

1 medium white onion, chopped

1 cup potatoes, cooked and cubed

1 bunch (about 2-3 cups) kale, washed, dried and chopped

8 eggs, lightly beaten

1 to 2 cups cheddar cheese, grated

Kale pile-up

In a large frying pan on medium heat, add olive oil, garlic and onion. Sauté until onions are softened.

Add potatoes and fry until they are warmed through. If you are using meat, add it now and cook until it also warmed through.

Add kale and sauté, stirring frequently, until it’s wilted.

Adding the eggs

Pour eggs over the vegetable mixture and stir to combine ingredients. Cover pan and let cook until eggs are almost done. You may want to lift the lid and give the eggs a stir once or twice while they are cooking. It’s not a must do, but will get things cooking a little faster and depending on your pan, it may prevent sticking.

When the eggs are almost cooked through, sprinkle on the cheese. Cover again for a few minutes until the cheese is melted.

Serve at once.

Makes 4 hearty servings.

Printable Recipe for Keeley's Kale and Potato Frittata

An Oldie but a Goodie: Sprout Burgers

Sprout Burger with Cheese

This is another one of my go-to recipes. It’s a big favorite of my husband (even though, in my opinion, he overdresses his burger as seen above with the addition of cheddar cheese). I’ve been making these burgers for decades. It originated in (guess where?) a Canadian Living magazine. It was their Summertime Cookbook Special from 1981. How do I know? Well, I still have a copy of that very issue. It was an article called “Great Menus for Good Losers: Delicious Low-Cal Suppers.” The burger was part of a menu that also featured a recipe for Yogurt Sesame Dressing to serve on mixed greens, and Lemon Snow, a dessert made from gelatin, frozen lemonade concentrate, ice cubes and egg whites. Each featured menu added up to less than 600 calories per serving.

Once you dress this burger up with cheese, mustard and relish, you’ll probably still get some of the sprout and water chestnut crunch, but you may miss the more subtle ginger-soy taste it offers and the low calorie count, of course. That’s why I dress mine with a little mayo, a leaf of lettuce and maybe a slice of tomato. However, you dress them, they are really good burgers, and a good choice to make ahead and freeze for a bbq later in the summer.

MA’s Sprout Burgers

(Originally from Canadian Living Summertime Cookbook Special 1981)

Sprout burger ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef

½ cup bean sprouts, chopped

¼ cup water chestnuts, chopped

1 tsp fresh ginger root, chopped fine

2 tsp soy sauce

fresh ground pepper

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients.

Shape into 4 large patties.

Broil or grill to desired doneness.

Serve on hamburger buns.

Our grill chef likes the burgers big and flat

Makes 4 burgers.

Printable Recipe for MA's Sprout Burgers

Steak with Kabob Taste

Kabob-flavoured steak served with grilled onions, quinoa and carrots

The barbecue grill gets busy this time of year. When my husband brought home a package of sirloin tip beef steaks, I remembered a marinade I wanted to try from the Canadian Living/Barbecue Collection cookbook. (Yes, the same source used for the delicious balsamic honey pork tenderloin.)

I hope you will try this marinade. The spice blend is wonderfully aromatic in a Moroccan, middle eastern way, and steaks and onions that marinate in it were oh so good. Canadian Living recommends serving this with grilled tomatoes, which would be wonderful. We had ours with the grilled onions, carrots cooked in foil packets, and quinoa, and that was wonderful, too.

MA's Kabob-flavoured Steaks

Steaks with marinade ingredients

4 beef steaks for grilling, about 8 oz each

2 onions, sliced about 1/2 inch thick

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tbsp minced garlic

1 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

In a large dish, cover steaks with onion slices.

In another bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Pour marinade over onions and steaks, turning to coat. 

Steaks and onions on the grill

Marinate refrigerated for at least 4 hours or up to 1 day. (Ours marinated for 4 hours and the flavours developed quite well.)

Remove onions and steaks from marinade and bring to room temperature.

Grill steaks until desired doneness, turning once during grilling. Meanwhile, grill onions, turning once, until tender and lightly charred.

Printable Recipe for MA's Kabob-flavoured Steaks

Two for the Grill

Balsamic Honey Tenderloin

How does a barbecue meal come together at your house? Around here, it takes two. I do the prep in the kitchen and my husband handles the grilling. It works well for us except that over the years we’ve become so used to our roles that neither of us is really comfortable with switching over (plus I am not a big fan of fire of any kind, so our system is okay with me.)

Last weekend we two had a lovely meal out on the deck. We enjoyed balsamic honey tenderloin, potato and onion packets and coleslaw. The tenderloin recipe came from Canadian Living/The Barbecue Collection: a really big cookbook full of recipes you’ll want to try. The recipe said we’d have a delicious crust on the meat, but that didn’t happen. However, it was so tasty and so melt-in-your-mouth good that we didn’t miss the crust. The leftover pork was equally good the next day. The potato and onion packets are something we’ve been making for years (and you probably have your own version of it, too) so I thought it was a good idea to write it down somewhere. For convenience, I used bagged coleslaw and tossed it with bottled coleslaw dressing and a few little extras to make it my own (think celery seeds, caraway seeds, a teaspoon of sugar and maybe some extra mayo).

MA’s Balsamic Honey Tenderloin

from Canadian Living/The Barbecue Collection Cookbook

Pork skinned and marinade mixed

2 pork tenderloins, about 12 oz each

2 tbsp liquid honey

2 tbsp grainy mustard

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

Remove any silverskin (connective tissue) from the pork.

Mix together honey, mustard, vinegar, oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

Brush with marinade and turn occasionally

Put the pork in a non-metal dish and pour marinade over it. Turn the meat to coat. Marinate for 20 minutes or, refrigerated, for up to 1 day. (We marinated ours for about 8 hours.)

Remove pork from marinade, reserving the marinade to brush on as a glaze as the meat grills.

Place pork on greased grill over medium-high heat. Brush with marinade. Grill, covered, turning occasionally, until just a hint of pink remains in centre (about 160º F), about 18 minutes.

Sliced and ready to enjoy

Transfer meat to cutting board; tent with foil and let rest for about five minutes before slicing.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Printable Recipe for MA's Balsamic Honey Tenderloin

 

MA’s Grilled Potato and Onion Packets

Potato and onion with seasonings

3 Russet potatoes, sliced thinly - almost, but not quite through, to the bottom of the potato

1 white onion, thinly sliced

olive oil

sea salt or seasoning salt (I used a roasted garlic and sea salt seasoning)

pepper (I used freshly ground red, white and black pepper)

Cut heavy-duty aluminum foil or two layers of regular foil into 3 - 12” squares (or larger pieces if needed to accommodate the potatoes).

The packet

On each piece of foil, place a sliced potato. Put slices of onion between each slice of potato. Spray or drizzle a little olive oil over the potato and onions. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Repeat with other two potatoes and remainder of onion slices.

Wrap foil around the potato and onion to make a packet.

Place the packets on the grill over medium high heat. Cover and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, turning once or twice as they cook.

Grilled to perfection!

Remove packets from grill and open carefully. After all, it is a hot potato in there. Turn out into serving dish. Hungrier folk may wish to have a whole packet to themselves and that’s okay, too.

Printable Recipe for MA's Potato and Onion Packets

Share the Cottage Pie

Savoury cottage pie

When I go to the frozen food aisle of the grocery store in search of shepherds pie, I find a flat brick of a casserole made with ground beef, gravy, a scant handful of vegetables and a topping of mashed potatoes. There are two flaws in this scenario.

1. What I have found is not, strictly speaking, a shepherds pie. Foodies and lexicographers will tell you that a shepherds pie is made with lamb or mutton. Make the same casserole with beef and it’s a cottage pie. You can research this at length on the internet and here’s a link from the British news outlet The Guardian to get you started.
2. Regardless of what you call it, the store-bought version will never ever be as good as the cottage pie you make in your own kitchen.

This cottage pie recipe is based on a Gordon Ramsay recipe I found several years ago on Recipezaar (which has since become food.com). My version makes a savoury supper dish in a quantity large enough for sharing or freezing for future use. As you’ll see in the last photo in this post, I made two 9” round casseroles (one for dinner, one for the freezer) plus one single-serve casserole to freeze and take to my mom.

There are a few ways to tailor your cottage pie to suit your tastes and your pantry. You can play with the type of vegetables you want to use. For instance, parsnips, turnips, and mushrooms work well. Just keep them finely diced or grated so everything cooks up evenly and the pie keeps its characteristic minced texture. The food processor is your friend for this task. I like the flavour that a good red wine gives the ground beef, but you can substitute beef stock if you prefer. The mashed potato topping is traditional and delicious. I’ve used Parmesan with the potatoes, but cheddar complements this dish very well, too. I’ve also used mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes to top the cottage pie. If you do this, I recommend steaming the cauliflower, as boiling it makes the mash a little too watery.

However you choose to make this dish your own, I hope you and yours enjoy this cottage pie.

MA's Cottage Pie

Cottage pie ingredients

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Have ready 2 - 9” round casserole dishes or 1 - 9” x 13” casserole dish

2 tbsp olive oil (if ground beef is fatty, omit the oil)

2 lbs lean ground beef

1 cup celery, finely diced

2 cups onions, grated

2 cups carrots, grated

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp tomato puree

2 tsp dried thyme

2 tsp dried rosemary

2 cups red wine (substitute with beef stock, if preferred)

1 cup beef stock

3 to 4 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into pieces

4 tbsp butter

2 egg yolks

2 to 4 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated

sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Cooking down the filling

In a large frying pan, heat the oil. Add ground beef and sauté until cooked through.

Add celery, onions, carrots, and garlic. Saute until vegetables are softened.

Add Worcestershire, puree, herbs, wine and beef stock. Cook together for 15 minutes or until the liquids have cooked down and the sauce is thickened.

Meanwhile, boil the potatoes until cooked through. Drain and let stand a few minutes to dry out slightly. Mash the potatoes together with butter, egg yolks, cheese, salt and pepper.

Enough to share

Place beef filling in casserole dishes.

Cover beef filling with mashed potato topping. Grate extra cheese on top of pie.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or cool and wrap for the freezer.

To cook from frozen, defrost in the refrigerator, unwrap and cook for 25 to 30 minutes or unwrap and cook for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until pie is cooked through. 

Printable Recipe for MA's Cottage Pie

Over-stuffed Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

Over-stuffed roasted vegetable lasagna - gluten-free

My introduction to roasted vegetable lasagna came via the frozen food aisle. On several occasions, the shiny box of roasted vegetable lasagna was a suppertime timesaver – fast and easy. This homemade version bears little resemblance to what comes out of the box. It’s overstuffed with roasted vegetables (because you know how I love them), has three kinds of cheese, a good dose of tomato sauce and is made with rice noodles so it’s gluten free. It’ll take some time to prepare and bake, but I promise you won’t need any fancy cooking skills to put it together.

You can vary the mix of vegetables to suit your taste. I would recommend always using onion and garlic and have to say that eggplant is right at home in this lasagna. I used 8 cups of vegetables, which is what makes this over-stuffed. If you end up using less, adjust the baking time accordingly. This does make a lot of lasagna so be sure to invite some friends over or stash some in the freezer for a suppertime timesaver for another day.

MA’s Over-stuffed Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

What you need to overstuff the lasagna

Preheat oven to 350 F.

2-3 tbsp olive oil

2 green peppers, washed, seeded and coarsely diced

½ lb red, orange and yellow mini-peppers, washed, seeded and cut in half

2 (about 1 ½ lbs) zucchini, washed and sliced into ¼” rounds

2 carrots, sliced

2 medium onions, sliced

1 lb mushrooms, thickly sliced

2 tsp garlic, minced

1 10-oz pkg rice lasagna noodles (12 noodles)

I love those roasted vegetables!

1 ½ cups tomato sauce, prepared or homemade

1 tsp oregano

1/3 cup dehydrated parsley flakes

½ tsp salt

freshly ground pepper, to taste

500 gram ricotta cheese

2 eggs

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 lb mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced

grated Parmesan for sprinkling

Tomato sauce is first in

Combine olive oil and vegetables on baking sheet. Roast until vegetables are softened. For tips about roasting vegetables, check out my previous post here.

Noodles, veggies, ricotta mixture, tomato sauce & mozza 

Cook rice noodles according to package directions. Drain and lay flat on a sheet of aluminum foil.

In a bowl, combine oregano, parsley, salt, pepper, ricotta, eggs and ½ cup grated Parmesan. Mix well.

To assemble: In a 9” x 13” baking pan, spread a thin layer of the tomato sauce in bottom of pan. Lay 4 noodles in the pan, overlapping them if needed. Spread 1/3 of the vegetable mixture onto the noodles. Spread 1/3 of the ricotta mixture on top of the vegetable layer. Spread ½ cup of the tomato sauce over the ricotta layer. Place slices of mozzarella over the tomato sauce layer. Repeat the layering (noodles, veg, ricotta, tomato sauce, mozza slices) twice.

Cover with foil. Cook for 30 minutes.

Remove foil and continue cooking for 45 to 60 minutes or until cooked through.

Makes 8 to 10 generous servings.

Printable Recipe for MA's Over-stuffed Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

So good with a salad on the side

Rice Noodles with Chicken & Vegetables

Rice noodles with chicken and vegetables

I know next to nothing about Filipino food, but I have prepared this Filipino dish many times over the past year and it is seriously delicious. In fact, I must confess that my husband and I polish off a whole platter of this between the two of us in just one sitting. That’s how much we like it.

The recipe comes from a cookbook called Extending the Table: a world community cookbook, which was given to me by one of my daughters and her husband. It’s a wonderful resource put together by the Mennonite Central Committee. In among the recipes from around the world are stories about the people behind the recipes and inspirational perspectives on the role food and community play in our lives.

In the Philippine community, this dish is known as pancit bihon, which means rice noodles. This recipe calls for adding the uncooked rice noodles directly to the pan. This is what I do. It is a bit messy. To avoid the mess and the excitement of the threadlike noodles scattering themselves across your stove top, you can soak the rice noodles in warm water for ten minutes or so and then cut them into smaller pieces before adding them to the dish. I’ve only used rice noodles, but regular vermicelli could be used although you will want to precook it before adding it to the dish. 

Additionally, you could substitute pork for the chicken; add shrimps if you like; and use whatever vegetables you have on hand in place of those in the recipe, increasing the amounts of veg and meat if you want. In the original recipe, the hard-cooked eggs, green onions and lemon slices are given as a garnish. I recommend including them with the dish. They look wonderful and taste even better!

MA’s Pancit Bihon

Pancit Bihon ingredients

2 tbsp cooking oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 cup cooked chicken, chopped

3 tsp fish sauce

2 cups chicken broth

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

1 cup carrot, diced

1 cup green beans, cut into 1” pieces

1 cup cabbage, coarsely shredded

8 oz rice noodles

2 eggs, hard-cooked and chopped

2 green onions, diced

1 or 2 lemons, sliced

Cooking the rice noodles

In a large frying pan, heat cooking oil over medium heat. Add garlic and onion and sauté until just softened.

Add cooked chicken, fish sauce, chicken broth, carrots, beans, cabbage, salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes or until vegetables begin to soften.

Add rice noodles and cook 5 to 8 minutes or until noodles are tender. Add more broth or water as needed if mixture is too dry to cook the noodles.

Place noodle mixture on a large platter. Garnish with eggs, green onions and lemon slices.

Printable Recipe for MA's Pancit Bihon

Pork Medallions in Mustard Sauce

Tender pork medallions in rich mustard sauce garnished with fresh green grapes

I’ve been working on a post about the best oatmeal cookie recipe and was hoping to have it ready to go this week. It’s turning out to be a history lesson for me as I am finding out that recipes can evolve over many decades. Meanwhile, here is a fully evolved recipe for a main dish that has drawn rave reviews at my table for, well, decades. It’s dedicated to the family and friends I’ve shared it with over the years.

This recipe originated in a special Christmas edition of Canadian Living magazine from 1985. (I think Canadian Living is still one of the best magazines out there and I especially like their recipes.) I’ve made minimal changes to this recipe. 

You will have to fuss a bit to make the pork medallions. However, you can prepare the dish a day ahead and do the final cooking the next day. Stick with the Dijon, as regular mustard doesn’t deliver the same subtle flavour. And, don’t forget the green grapes. They are just so good with the rich, creamy mustard sauce. Serve this with brown rice and steamed green beans, and get ready for the compliments.

MA’s Pork Medallions in Mustard Sauce

Preheat oven to 350º F.

For the meat:
2.5 lbs pork tenderloin
¼ cup flour
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp white pepper
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil

For the sauce: 

¼ cup butter
1 clove garlic, halved
¼ cup flour
¼ cup Dijon mustard
1 cup milk (I use skim)
½ cup dry white wine
½ tsp salt
½ tsp dried basil
½ cup light cream

For the garnish:
1 ½ cups seedless green grapes, washed and dried 

Making the medallions

Cut pork tenderloin into ¾” thick slices. 

Using a mallet or the edge of a heavy bottle, pound each piece of pork to flatten it slightly.

Combine flour, salt and pepper; dredge pork in flour mixture.

In large frying pan, heat butter and oil over medium heat.

Saute until golden

Sauté pork for about 5 minutes each side or until golden on both sides. Do this in batches so that the meat is not crowded while it sautés.

In a shallow baking dish, arrange pork in a single layer. Cover with foil to keep warm.

Whisk together sauce ingredients

In a saucepan, melt butter.

Cook garlic in butter for 2 minutes, and then remove garlic from pan.

Stir in flour to make a smooth paste.

Add mustard and stir with love until the mixture bubbles.

Whisk in milk, wine, salt and basil. Cook stirring constantly for about 1 minutes or until the mixture is bubbly and has thickened.

Remove from heat and whisk in the cream.

Pour sauce over pork.

(The recipe can be prepared ahead up to this point, then covered and refrigerated for up to 1 day. Add about 15 minutes baking time when you reheat it.)

Cover the baking dish with a lid or foil and cook for 25 to 30 minutes or until pork is tender.

Transfer pork and sauce to a warm serving platter.

Garnish with green grapes and serve.

Makes 6 to 8 servings. 

Printable Recipe for MA's Pork Medallions with Mustard Sauce

Pork Chops with Port Glazed Mushrooms

Pork Chops with Port Glazed Mushrooms

The liquor cupboard in my house is a mishmash of opened and unopened bottles of all shapes and sizes. While the red wine bottles tend to change more frequently, most of the others are dusted off only occasionally. Earlier this week I visited the cupboard looking for something to glaze a beautiful bounty of button mushrooms. What I know about wine is sadly limited, but I knew from past cooking experience that marsala went well with mushrooms. I had no marsala, not even any sherry, and so I reached for the bottle of white port (how it arrived at our house I cannot recall). It was a delicious default decision.

This main dish is simple to prepare and cooks up quickly on the stovetop. The mushrooms are sautéed dry, that is, without oil, to draw the moisture out of them. The residual mushroom “juice” is boiled away, and then butter is added to brown the mushrooms. Finally, the port is poured in and reduced down to a flavorsome glaze. The mushrooms on their own make a scrumptious side dish or you can pair them with chicken breasts instead of pork chops for an equally easy and elegant main dish.

MA's Pork Chops with Port Glazed Mushrooms

4 boneless pork loin chops
½ onion, finely diced
1 lb fresh button mushrooms, cut into thick slices
4 tbsp butter, divided into 1 tbsp and 3 tbsp
1/3 cup Port (white)
Pinch of dry thyme leaves

In a large frying pan, melt 1 tbsp butter over medium high heat.

Add onions and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes or until onions are softened.

Add chops to pan and sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes; turn chops over and sauté 5 minutes more.

Remove chops from frying pan and keep warm.

Place mushrooms in dry pan

Remove onions from frying pan, keeping separate from chops.

With frying pan on high heat, put in all the mushrooms and stir well with love. 

Reduce the heat to medium high and keep stirring often.

Moisture is released from mushrooms

After a few minutes, moisture will begin to escape from the mushrooms.

Continue stirring the mushrooms until most of the liquid has evaporated, then add 3 tbsp butter, sautéed onions and thyme. Stir to combine.

Sauté on medium high heat until the mushrooms begin to brown.

Add the Port to the pan and toss to coat the mushrooms well. Increase the heat to high and let boil vigorously until the Port has reduced in volume by about half. 

Almost ready to serve

Return the chops to the pan and cook on medium heat for 5 to 7 minutes. 

Printable Recipe for MA's Pork Chops with Port Glazed Mushrooms

Baked Beans with Apples

Baked Beans with Apples - so good!

This post goes out to my nephew Adam who really enjoys these baked beans.

This is another recipe inspired by Mme Benoit. The original is found in her Cooks at Home book, published in 1987. It is a true French Canadian recipe featuring maple syrup and was passed down through five generations of her family. Never one to be bound by tradition, I’ve made some changes: substituting bacon for the original salt pork and brown rice syrup for the maple syrup (because that’s what I had on hand), adding some molasses, and omitting the optional half cup of rum poured over the apples just before serving. Burying the mustard-covered onion in the beans is part of Mme Benoit’s original instruction. And yes, you can eat the onion when the beans are all baked. It’s mushy good by then.

About the pre-cooked beans: I began by using the Short Soak Stove Top Beans method described in an earlier post. If you follow that post, remember to double the amounts to get the measure of pre-cooked beans needed for this recipe and keep the cooking water, because you will use it in this recipe. If you use another method to pre-cook the beans or want to use canned beans instead, you will need 12 cups of pre-cooked beans and you will need to add enough water to just cover the beans.

About the brown rice syrup: Brown rice syrup is about half as sweet as sugar. It’s said to offer some health benefits over some other sweeteners and that’s how it wound up in my pantry. Last year, there was a lot of controversy about arsenic in brown rice syrup. After looking into the brand of brown rice syrup I have been using from Lundberg Family Farms, I am satisfied with the safety of their products. If you are interested, you can check them here. What’s really surprising to me in the whole debate is that neither Canada nor the US set limits on the levels of arsenic in foods. If you are interested in the issue, the University of Guelph Food Safety Network is a good place to start your reading.

About the maple syrup: Of course, good old Canadian maple syrup is authentic, tasty and has health benefits, too, and you can check them out here.

All that being said, whether you use brown rice syrup or maple syrup, I hope you will try making these delicious baked beans with apples. They go great with a cooked ham and a crowd of hungry people. Just ask Adam.

Baked Beans with Apples

Get ready for the bean pot

Preheat oven to 325º F.

4 cups dried navy beans, pre-cooked to make about 12 cups, and the water in which they were cooked (I used my Short Soak Stove Top Beans method)

4 strips of bacon to line pan

½ lb bacon, chopped

1 large onion, peeled and sliced in half

1 tsp dry mustard

1 cup brown rice syrup or maple syrup

Bacon strips to line pan

1 tbsp coarse salt

½ cup molasses

2 to 4 apples, well washed, unpeeled, cored and sliced

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup butter

Line a large, deep baking pan with bacon strips.

Place the pre-cooked beans and their cooking water on top of the bacon strips.

Burying the onions

Mix in the chopped bacon.

Cover the onion halves in dry mustard until all of the mustard sticks to them. Bury the onion halves in the middle of the beans.

Add the syrup and molasses to the beans.

Sprinkle the coarse salt over the beans.

Cover and bake for 3 hours. Remove from oven and stir beans gently. If they are getting dry, slowly add hot water to them.

Cover and return to oven for 1 hour.

Topped with apples, brown sugar and butter

Meanwhile, prepare the apples for the topping and cream together the brown sugar and butter.

Remove beans from oven and uncover. Place the apple slices on top of the beans, as close together as possible. Spread with sugar and butter mixture.

Return to the oven, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Serve some of the apples with each portion of beans.

Makes about 12 to 14 servings.


Printable Recipe for MA's Baked Beans with Apples

Dig into baked beans with apples

Making friends with pulled pork

Barbecue pulled pork and coleslaw on Panini bun 

A few posts back I mentioned buying some pork loins at a really good price. That left me one problem: how to use it all. Pulled pork came to mind. The only drawback was that I didn’t really care for pulled pork all that much. I had tasted it for the first time about a dozen years ago in North Carolina. I had been invited to a loading dock lunch with the crew who were working on the new building for which I was doing PR and communications. I felt it was an honour for a corporate type like me to be included. It should have been a great experience, right? I mean barbecued pulled pork was practically born in North Carolina and I’d been told a local caterer known for their barbecue was doing the cooking.

Well, maybe it was just a bad day for the caterer or maybe my Northern Canadian palate simply could not appreciate the legendary culinary offerings of the South. Either way, all I can remember about that lunch was trying to be polite as I ate the cold, greasy, fatty mess of pork plopped on my plate next to the oddly warm puddle of coleslaw and the hard white roll. Not good. Not good at all. In fact, it was enough to keep me far away from pulled pork even as it rose to fame over the next ten years of the foodie explosion and enjoyed increasing popularity with caterers in my part of the world.

Once in a while though, I follow my own advice and I decided to give pulled pork a second chance. I remembered my daughter Keeley telling me she’d made barbecue pulled pork in her slow cooker for a potluck and that she’d been asked for an encore of the dish for the next potluck. I called Keeley for her recipe. (I am so fortunate to have children who not only have grown up to be smarter than me, but to be great cooks, too.) Keeley couldn’t give me the exact recipe she used, because there wasn’t one, but she described her basic technique. I’ve incorporated it here along with the ingredients I used. I found the rub recipe at Steven Raichlen's Barbecue! Bible (he's written 28 books about barbecue so he knows what he's talking about) and the rest of the recipe is gleaned from a combination of recipes from several sites. The result was very, very tasty. I am happy to report that pulled pork and I are once again on the best of terms.

Every bite GONE!

This barbecue pulled pork makes a terrific suppertime sandwich served up on a pillow of a Panini bun with side of homemade coleslaw. As you can see in the photo above, I piled my coleslaw right on top of the pork and it was yummy. You can also serve it over rice or mashed potatoes. Any leftover pulled pork will mix well with baked beans (and I’ll be posting a recipe for making delicious baked beans in a few days).

MA’s Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork

3 lb pork loin roast

For the Basic Barbecue Rub:

¼ cup coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup paprika

3 tbsp freshly ground pepper

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 tbsp dried onion flakes

½ to 1 tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp celery seeds

Mix together the ingredients for the Basic Barbecue Rub. Put it into a jar as you won’t need the full cup of Rub to make this recipe. Store away from heat and light. It will keep for several months.

For the Slow Cooker:

3 onions, sliced

1 cup barbecue sauce, homemade or purchased

1 cup cooking liquid, either pop or broth or water (I used ginger ale, but read root beer is good, too.)

Rubbed pork the next day

Cover the roast with part of the Rub, massaging and patting it well into the meat.

Place the roast in a covered dish and put in refrigerator over night.

Into the slow cooker

  The next day, place the onions in the bottom of the slow cooker.

  Place the pork roast, fat side up, on top of the onions.

  Add the barbecue sauce and cooking liquid.

  Set slow cooker on low heat and cook for 6 hours.

Pulling the pork

  Remove the pork from the slow cooker and put into a large
  casserole. The meat may fall apart as you move it, so take care
  when lifting it out. Pull the pork apart with two forks. 

  Return meat to slow cooker and cook on low heat for 1 to 1 ½
  hours.

  Serve in sandwiches, over rice or potatoes, or mixed into baked
  beans.

Printable Recipe for MA's Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork