Roast Pork

I always fancied making roast of my own for sandwiches. This is my first take at it. It came out pretty well. So well in fact, I brought it to a friend Christmas party and they gave good reviews of it!

Recipe:

A cut of Loin

Seasoning:

Salt

Coarsely Ground Black Pepper

Thyme

Recommended Equipment:
Oven, or Pan

Mix the seasoning in a bowl. Rub it all over the Loin block. Let it sit in the fridge for around 1 hour for the seasoning to suck out moisture and permeate into the meat. The loin can sit in the fridge overnight before it is cooked the next day. This gives it even more flavour!

Typically, roast would be cooked in an over for around 30 - 45 minutes at 200 Degrees Celsius. I have a short cut over here to cook this baby with a pan.

Tip Alert! [Heat the pan with some olive oil. Then sear the loin on all sides to seal in the flavour. Remove loin from pan. Slice the loin into slices around 5mm thick. The slices would not be cooked on the inside, but the sides would be cooked. Slice by slice, cook for around 1 minute on each side.]


Total Time:
30 - 45 minutes depending on thickness of loin block

Alternative Timescale:
10 minutes initial pan frying
10 minutes for slicing
20 - 30 minutes for further cooking

This picture shows the loin after 30 minutes cooking in the oven.

 

Burger Patties

These babies are one of the most useful food types in modern cooking. Easy to make, keep and cook, no wonder the Americans built a whole industry around it! Look at McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's!  Personally, I rather know what goes into my patties. Hence why I came up with these!

Recipe:
500g of minced meat (pork, beef or both, but not chicken!)

Seasoning:
Salt,
Coarsely ground black pepper,
White pepper,
Ground coriander seeds,
Nutmeg
Worcestershire Sauce

Binding Agents:
1 egg
Breadcrumbs

Alternative Alert! [I have not tried mince chicken with these spices. Typically chicken requires a unique blend of spices as the meat has no flavour. If there are requests for this, I'll look into it!]

This will make 6 patties of around 85g each. For monster burgers, do 4 patties of 125g. The way to make the patties are shown below:

1. Make a meatball
2. Lay meatball on grease paper
3. Press the meatball until it is flat
4. Cover top with more grease paper
5. Cut paper and freeze

Longevity:
These babies will keep for 3 weeks in the freezer

John's "Man" Cookies

 

Step back chocolate chip! Sugar cookie -- tremble in fear! Brownies? You're going down!  John's "Man" Cookies are in the house! :-)

John loves oatmeal raisin cookies, but doesn't see them very often around our house, 'cause Katie and I aren't big fans. Well, one day he had enough. He took over the kitchen and made some big beefy oatmeal fellas -- not only with raisins, but chocolate chips *and* pecans too! These are rugged, chunky...and delicious!

John's Man Cookies

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup margarine or butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1  1/2 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375°. Mix all ingredients except oats, flour, and raisins. Stir in oats, flour and raisins. Stir in pecans and chocolate chips. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until light brown, about 10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Lentil Soup supper...

Tonight I took my first stab at making lentil soup. I love lentils and it is one soup that has a lot of vegetables in it that David will actually eat. Here is the recipe I used from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound dry lentils
• 4 cups water
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 pinch salt
• 1/2 large onion, grated
• 2 large tomatoes, grated
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-1/2 potatoes, diced
• 1-1/2 carrots, sliced
• 1 plantains, sliced
• 2-1/2 bay leaves
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Rinse and pick through lentils, then place in a bowl with water to cover and let soak while you prepare the other ingredients.
2. Fill a large pot with 2 quarts of water, and stir in the olive oil and salt. Bring to a boil.
3. Drain the lentils, and carefully pour into the boiling water. Add the onions, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, carrots and plantains into boiling water. Drop in bay leaves and season with salt and pepper. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until lentils and plantains are tender, 45 to 60 minutes.

I did not have any bay leaves so I left those out. I was also surprisingly out of onions so that was not added either. It was very good! I also left the lentils separate from the rest of the vegetables. I like to eat lentils plain with garlic salt so I wanted some leftover plain lentils, but you can add them right in like the recipe says too. I had never worked with plantains before either. I think David was nervous about how they would taste, but I thought they tasted just like a potato mixed in with the rest of the veggies. I cut them like you would a banana and as they cooked they softened quite a bit and broke into smaller pieces.

Overall, it was a very yummy supper and it got Davids approval, which is hard to get sometimes with vegetables!

Christmas weekend

Hi there! I hope everybody's having a lovely holidays! As I can read about all of you, it is!

Today I'm extremely tired. I've been working this evening in a theatre performance on the street, I was playing the Queen of Hearts' role and my mates were another characters from children's stories... we had to dance, play with the childrens and all that kind of stuff... I hope I could show you pictures very soon!

Last weekend I spent my time with some of my friends from Algeciras. We went to El Cairo's pub, I have wrote about it before; and after that we went to Café Teatro, another nice place where we had some beers. I really missed this kind of things with my friends from Algeciras...

Cristina, María and me

María joking about the idea of drinking from her shoes

Me with Angie.

Godino and María, I love this picture, looks so funny!

Cristina and Godino blaming Rafa... for something!

Green and red hairs!!

Top - Blanco

Dress/skirt - Hellbunny

Boots - Aces of London

And I spent almost all sunday with my mum, making some Christmas shopping (here in Spain we normally don't share the presents until the 5th of January, our tradition is different), eating in a big mall and going a little time together.

A Christmas tree on the mall!

Wishing you a merry Christmas!!

Cardigan - Bershka (old)

Tiger Army t-shirt from Sziget (Budapest)

Skirt - Syndrome second hand

Shoes - offbrand

And finally this week, another year is ending... what are your plans for that night? I don't have any plan at the moment!!