Grilled Cheese ALWAY Makes Me Feel Better!

Whether its a freezing cold day outside, I have had a bad week, or I just feel like crap, a good grilled cheese sandwich always makes me feel better. To be honest, any grilled cheese sandwich makes me feel better!

I’ve made grilled cheese in a frying pan, in a pizzelle maker, and in a fancy panini press. They have always turned out good, but what you really need is a good, non-stick pan, Land O'Lakes American Cheese, some good sourdough bread, and a lot of butter!

I’m traditional, thus the Land O'Lakes (yellow) American cheese. If you want to be all fancy, you can use a mix of cheeses like that great scene in the movie Chef when Favreau makes that mouth watering grilled cheese. Regardless of your cheese choice, just do this…

1. Heat up a non-stick pan, then add 1 1/12 tablespoons of butter.
2. Let the butter start to melt and get frothy, then add your constructed grilled cheese sandwich…two pieces of sourdough and about 5 slices of cheese.
3. Allow the sandwich to cook for about two minutes. When the butter starts to dissipate, take a quick peek to see if the sandwich is starting to brown. Once you see that nice golden color, flip the sandwich.
4. Add another ½ - 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan, right next to the sandwich, then lift the sandwich a bit and tilt the pan so the butter slides underneath. Cover the pan with a large bowl and let it sit another 1-2 minutes.
5. Remove the bowl, take another peek, and if you see that beautiful color, it is time to eat! If the color is a little light or the cheese isn’t “melty” enough, put the bowl back on for another 30-60 seconds, then check again!

I always serve my grilled cheese with chicken soup. During the winter, I make a great Lemon Chicken Orzo soup. I’ll post that next time I cook up a batch. But, when I’m not in the mood to exert that much effort, a box of good chicken broth, the juice of a lemon, a chopped serrano pepper and some ditalini pasta make a nice soup too. And, if I am being exceptionally lazy, I heat up a open a can of Chickarina from Progresso. It’s the only canned soup I eat, but it rocks!

Enjoy and feel better!

Mojo Marinated Pork Shoulder

Ah….another slow roast day!

A couple weeks ago, I watched Chef again. I love the scene where they just finished cleaning up the food truck and Martin is making his Mojo for the pork shoulder. Just looking at that makes my mouth water. I decided to try the recipe for myself. For version 1.0, I used pork tenderloin instead of pork shoulder, just to speed up the cooking time. Grilled on indirect heat, the pork took about 20 minutes to cook and had that great cilantro-orange-lime flavor. The meat was incredibly juicy. I decided to make the Mojo again, but this time using pork shoulder, which is what the recipe originally called for.

Roy Choi was a consultant for the movie. The Chef movie recipes are available on-line, but I included a link for the Mojo Marinated Pork Shoulder here.

For the Mojo…

• 1 bunch cilantro
• Zest of 1 orange
• ¾ cup freshly squeezed orange juice (about 3 medium oranges)**
• ½ cup freshly squeezed lime juice (about 6 limes)
• ¾ cup olive oil
• 8 garlic cloves (per the recipe, but I used a full head of garlic)
• ¼ cup fresh mint leaves
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon dried cumin
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• Kosher salt (to taste)

TIP: Use Cara Cara oranges if you can find them. They are much sweeter than traditional naval oranges and have a beautiful red flesh.

I put all of the ingredients in a blender and pureed everything until it was smooth. You can definitely chop up all of the ingredients if you would like, but the blender is much easier. Divide the Mojo, reserving at least a ½ cup to use as a sauce.

For the Pork Shoulder…

• 4-5 pounds pork shoulder (I used bone-in, but boneless works too)
• Kosher salt

Season the pork with a generous amount of salt. Place the pork in a very large, resealable bag (if you have one) or into a glass dish. Pour the Mojo into the bag/dish and rub the Mojo into the pork. Let the pork sit in the Mojo marinade overnight.

Cooking the Pork…

I used the Green Egg again with the plate installed for indirect grilling (aka the “Conveggtor” on the Green Egg site). The pork cooked at a steady temperature of 225 degrees for almost 4 hours until it reached an internal temperature of 140 degrees. I took the pork off the Egg, removed the plate and brought the Egg’s temperature up to 500 degrees. I seared off the pork for about 4 minutes on each side, then let the pork sit 10 minutes before cutting into thin slices. When I took the pork off the grill after searing it, the temperature was 145 degrees.

Note that the actual recipe calls for the internal pork temperature to be 160 degrees. If you do google pork temperatures, there are recipes that say to cook the pork until the internal temperature is 195 degrees. The FDA endorses the 145 internal temperature and I have been cooking most of my pork this way. You can’t really over cook pork shoulder; the longer you cook it, the more tender it gets.

Accoutrements…

I served this with cilantro lime rice (which I made in the rice cooker) and a bottle of Ghost Pines Cabernet for dinner.

Buen Provecho!

Pasta Agli Olio

I love a good bowl of pasta (a.k.a. “macaroni” in our house) and could it pretty much everyday. While our family favorite is probably rigatoni with a a hearty, slow cooked, meat gravy, a close second is definitely Pasta Agli Olio. In fact, I have had a taste for Agli Olio ever since my post last week about Chef.

Ingredients

¼ cup(ish) olive oil

8-10 cloves of garlic, sliced thin

Red pepper flakes - make your own call on how much heat you like

Handful of chopped Italian Parsley

¼ cup Parmesan cheese

1 lemon

1 pound linguini, spaghetti or fettucini

A note about “macaroni.” Our family favorite is Ronzoni , which you can now buy through Amazon. For dinner last night, I used fresh linguini from Standard Market . It was meh; a little too thick for my taste.

Cooking Method

Start your pasta water - big pot, lots of salt, bring to a rapid boil. While you are waiting for the water to boil, warm a medium/large saute pan (any pan with sides) on low heat. Add the oil, garlic and red pepper flakes and allow the mixture to cook in the pan on low throughout the rest of the cooking time. Stir occasionally.

Once the water begins to boil, add the pasta and cook according to the package directions. We prefer our pasta al dente. Saute the pasta in the oil for a few minutes (3-4) until the pasta is completely coated in the oil. Remove the pan from the oven and add the Parmesan, parsley and the juice of one lemon. Mix well and serve!

Another note. Most of the time I make Agli Olio with just the oil, garlic and red pepper flakes. I added the parsley, cheese and lemon based on the recipe from the Chef movie. I don’t know that I would regularly add the Parm and to be honest, my ingredient list is slightly different in terms of quantities than the Chef movie recipe, but the addition of the lemon and parsley I’ll make sure to incorporate all of the time (as long as I have some in the house)! It is definitely a nice touch!

Enjoy!

Chef, the Movie

After a weekend of marathon cooking with my son Anthony, I’m drinking a bottle of Hess Select Cabernet Sauvignon and watching one of my favorite movies:  Chef.

I love this movie.  I’ve always been a fan of Jon Favreau - I mean who isn’t?  Swingers? Elf? Very Bad Things? Come on! The music and the food regularly inspire me to get off the couch and cook for hours, which is what I did this weekend.

Anthony and I spent Friday night and all day Saturday cooking our butts off.  We made gravy, pot roast, pulled pork and lemon chicken orzo soup.  We started with the pot roast on Friday night which cooked for about eight hours in the slow cooker.  Saturday morning we were up and cooking by 9am.  Our gravy turned out awesome (ask my expert tasters, Diego and Lili) and we both walked away with about five servings (meals) EACH of gravy.  The pulled pork has actually become one of my signature dishes: pork shoulder cooked for seven hours at 300 degrees with a rub of roasted chili oil, dry mustard, paprika, cumin, cayenne, salt and pepper.  Right out of the oven, as tacos or in sandwiches, as is or with BBQ sauce, it makes my mouth water.

But, despite everything I made, what I really want to eat right now is Cubano.  I’m watching John Leguizamo prepare Mojo Pork Cubanos right now and I’m obsessed!  That is the next recipe I’m going to tackle.  Bakespace has published a list of the recipes from Chef on-line.  All you have to do is create an account and you can access six recipes.  Make sure to download the soundtrack first, because you can’t make Mojo Pork Cubanos without that music playing in the background.  Stay tuned for a future post on how my Cubanos turned out!

Until then, listen to one of my favorite songs from the movie!