Lemongrass Pork Shoulder Skewers

It's been hot, sunny, and generally awesome for a while now here in Seattle, so Katrina and I decided to get the grill out and try out a new dish that I've been wanting to make – lemongrass pork skewers. These have been a favorite of mine at every outdoor festival that has an Asian food stall. The citrus-y flavor of the lemongrass with the soy and fish sauce taste incredible on charcoal-cooked meats. Serving it on a stick reminds me of being a kid in the summer and barbecuing with my family.

This recipe is easy to put together and super wallet friendly. Pork shoulder is one of my favorite cuts of meat because of its low cost and ability to hold flavor. It's nice and fatty which is amazing for grilling. The fat content renders off during grilling and mixes with the brown sugar in the marinade to create a glaze that is unreal.

Ingredients - makes 4 servings

2lbs boneless pork 

1 stalk lemongrass

1 shallot

3 cloves garlic

3 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions

1. Before starting your marinade, soak a handful of bamboo skewers in water. I used a baking sheet with a plate on top of the skewers to submerge them. 

2. Mince the lemongrass, shallots and garlic then add to a small bowl. You want a pretty fine mince on the lemongrass since the stalks can be a bit fibrous and are not the most pleasant to chew on. 

3. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar and vegetable oil to create a slurry, then pour over your sliced pieces of pork shoulder, and allow to marinade in the refrigerator for a 2-3 hours. 

4. After marinating, take the pork pieces and weave them onto the skewer in a back and forth motion - like an accordion - so that the meat is well seated on the bamboo. 

5. Place your skewered meats on the grill for about 8-10 minutes a side, depending on how thick you sliced your pork, and serve hot off the grill. 

If you don't want to eat these as finger food, the meat is perfect for a banh mi sandwich – just slide the pork off the skewer and throw it on a french roll with carrots, cilantro, jalapenos and a bit of mayonnaise. Enjoy!

Kitchen Essentials | The Firsts

When I first moved out of my parents' house and started cooking for myself and my roommates, a few people recommended getting one of those giant sets of pots and pans. The 20-in-1 every-pot-you'll-ever-need kind of things. After taking a look at some of the selections at BBandB, they felt kinda cheap and didn't seem to be made to last. I knew the big set wasn't for me. I did some research on well made kitchenware, and cast iron skillets kept popping up in my findings. Cast iron has been used for a couple hundred years now, so I figured if it was good enough for my great grandma, it was probably good enough for me. I decided to purchase a Lodge 12" skillet and see what all the fuss was about.

Goddamn is it a beast. It took a bit of setting up, but after seasoning it for a few rounds it has become my go to pan in the kitchen. To season it, I poured a bit of vegetable oil into the center then wiped it all over the cooking surface, including the walls, with a paper towel. You want to leave a thin layer of oil across the entire surface – not too much though or it will get a bit gummy. Turn the oven to 500º and put the cast iron on the middle rack face-down for about an hour. The oil will char and turn a nice shiny black on the cooking surface. Do this a few times over a couple days and it will be ready to go. Once it's seasoned, it becomes a monster for almost anything you throw at it. Searing chicken thighs, frying bacon, sauteeing vegetables; it does it all and releases the food perfectly. The best part is that every time you cook with it and are using any amount of oil, you're seasoning it even more. Just be sure not to use soap when you clean it! Use super hot water and the rough side of a dish sponge to break up any bits that have stuck to the pan.

As my cast iron's right hand man, he needed a solid knife sidekick. I was in college, like a lot of people when they first move out, and I didn't have a lot of cash to spend on a badass kitchen knife, so I had to spend wisely. I did a TON of research on the most cost effective knives, and I kept hearing about one knife above all for the price - the Forschner Fibrox 8" chef's knife. This thing is a commercial kitchen workhorse and is meant to be used, dropped, stepped on, honed and ready to go on the daily. I'm pretty sure America's Test Kitchen uses this knife. It's about $28 and comes with a razor sharp edge that is easily restored with a quick pass on steel. It doesn't hold it's edge as well as other knives I have used, but again, a quick hone to line up the edge before you dice your onions or slice your tomatoes makes it a dream to work with. I love this knife and recommend it over my Shun Premier to anyone who asks about a good knife in their kitchen. I have owned the Forscher and my Lodge cast iron for about 5 years now and they could not be better. I truly cannot recommend these two items enough to anyone who is looking to build out their first kitchen.

Pumpkin Spice Donuts with Cinnamon Glaze

Happy National Donut Day!! I know most people get excited about pumpkin spice during the Fall, but to be honest, Taylor and I are just a couple of basic bitches who love pumpkin spice year round, so we're sharing our favourite donut recipe a few months early. 


Pumpkin Spice Donuts with Cinnamon Glaze Makes a dozen donuts (+2 extras for you to snack on)
Ingredients
1 box of yellow cake mix 1 large egg 1/4 cup vegetable oil 3/2 cup water 1/2 cup pumpkin puree  1 tsp cinnamon powder 1 tbsp butter
1 cup powdered sugar 5 tbsp water 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder 

Directions
1. Heat the oven to 350º. Prep the donut tray by rubbing a generous coat of butter to each cavity. 2. In a large mixing bowl, mix the boxed cake mix, egg, vegetable oil, water, and pumpkin puree together either in a stand mixer or by hand until there batter is consistent. 3. Whisk the 1 tsp of cinnamon powder into the cake mix. 4. Transfer the cake batter into a piping bag. 5. Fill each cavity of a donut pan (we used this Wilton one from Amazon) 2/3 of the way and then bake in the oven for 12-14 minutes. (To test if they're ready, poke a toothpick in one donut. They're ready if there's no runny batter stuck to the toothpick when you pull it out.) 6. Let the donuts rest in the tray for 10 minutes before popping them out and transferring onto a cooling rack. 7. In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the powdered sugar, water, and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon powder to create a glaze. The consistency should be as viscous as ranch salad dressing.  8. Once the donuts have completely cooled, dip each one into the glaze and set on a cooling rack to dry.
Ahh, our basic bitch cravings for pumpkin spice all the things has been slightly satiated... at least for another few weeks. 

Fried Chicken Tenders

So, we got a deep fryer. Katrina has a Goodwill not too far from her place and it’s easy to just pop in and see what’s on the shelves on the way home from work so we try to check in as often as we can. The fryer kinda looks like a rice cooker so we almost overlooked it, but once we realized what it was and saw that it was only $10, I snagged it instantly.

It’s a DeLonghi that holds a little over two pounds of food. There’s no temperature dial or gauge which we were a little nervous about, but according to the manual it is set to 350º which should be solid for most items. There’s a little spigot that pops out to drain the cooled oil making cleaning pretty easy. This thing must have been used only once or twice – it still had the packaging stickers on it. A wipe-down with some soap and water was all it took to make it look brand new. 

The other weekend we went to a cookout at a friend’s and he made some unreal adobo fried chicken, so that got us hankerin’ to try our hand at it. We decided to just do some basic chicken tenders as a test run to see if the fryer even worked.

We did a few different variations to see what produced the best results and ultimately landed on a pretty solid formula; the trick is to double batter before frying for seven minutes. We seasoned the tenders with black pepper and Vegeta (which you don’t actually say like the dude from Dragon Ball Z).

After seasoning we dipped the meat in buttermilk, tossed in a bowl of seasoned flour and repeated. After breading the tenders we let them sit for about 10 minutes so that the flour soaked up all the moisture. Fried ‘em for 7 minutes and then transferred to a rack to cool for a second. Insane crispness - the breading was super thick and crunchy. Popcorn chicken is actually pretty easy to do this way also – dice the tenders into chunks do the same double batter process. Works wonders.

Buttermilk Chicken Tenders

Ingredients

1lb chicken breast tenderloins
1 cup buttermilk

Vegeta seasoning

Breading mix, in a bowl:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup rice flour
1 tbsp Paprika 
1 tsp Pepper

Directions

1. Season tenders with Vegeta and black pepper (we got pretty liberal with the stuff) 

2. Dip individual tenders in buttermilk, then roll ‘em around the bowl of flour. Now do it again! You want there to be "clumps" of the flour mixture, which will give the chicken strips a solid, crunchy coating (as seen in the photo below).
3. Let the battered and floured tenders sit for 10 minutes before dropping them into the fryer.

4. Lay tenders in a single layer in the fryer basket, or drop em in your pot of 350º oil and fry for about 7 minutes. Transfer to paper towels or cooling rack to dry for a bit before breaking those things open!

If you want to add some spice to your golden little nuggets, cut some Frank’s Red Hot sauce with melted butter until it’s of a desirable heat level, then toss your fried chicken in it and serve. 

If you're like Katrina and want to up the breading to chicken ratio, try making popcorn chicken! Cut the chicken tenderloins into bite-sized pieces and follow the same method for double breading with the buttermilk. Fry these for 6 minutes and enjoy!

Hello, World!

Hey friends!

Thanks for stopping by this little 'ol blog. We've been thinking about starting one for quite some time now and finally kicked our butts in gear to get this first post up. Funny how the biggest barrier is hitting that teeny orange "Publish" button to get started, right?


You've probably guessed by now that this is going to be our food blog. First and foremost, our favourite past time is eating yummy food. It's not hard to do when we're both also really excited by the idea of cooking together and - more often than not - end up overcooking for two. ;)  We're also at that point where we're learning what types of tools we like (and don't like) in our kitchens and trying to be smarter about how to build our tool sets moving forward. 

We're still learning and going through the life lessons of what it means to be a real adult and can't wait to share all of our trial and errors in the kitchen.

We're excited to do this and can't thank you enough for joining along.

Let's get messy and silly in the kitchen and eat lots of yummy food together, ok? Ok!