I’ve ordered carnitas in a restaurant a couple of times and was always disappointed with the dry overcooked meat so I’ve not made them at home. But when daughter, Wende, advised her great success making then, I had to give them a try and used the same recipe that she did. The recipe for Reverse Carnita’s comes from famous chef Rick Bayless – not sure why they all called Reverse Carnitas but I followed the recipe as written using all of the optional flavorings.
While I’ve previously used a couple of their recipes, I recently added “Serious Eats” as one of my regular blog reads and I’ve been learning a lot from the site such how to make the perfect beef stew. I normally would not make another beef stew blog post if it were not for what I learned from this one. The recipe along with a lot of how-to’s came from their All-American Beef Stew post and I’ll let you visit the site for the details but here are their 13 rules: Select your meat wisely, Sear your beef before cubing, Go easy on the flour, Separate your vegetables, Booze makes it better, Use chicken stock, not beef, Break out the umami bombs, Don’t waste flavor, Powdered gelatin FTW, Yukon golds make for cleaner stew, Use the oven, not the stove, Don’t overcook it, Don’t eat it today, eat it tomorrow, it doesn’t matter.
Cindy had a birthday while Bev was in Florida so we finally were able to take her out to lunch this day and as a seafood lover, we took her to Chesapeake’s Seafood House in West Knoxville. They are one of the Copper Cellar Family of Restaurants, which is a local chain that, in addition to Chesapeake’s, includes Calhoun’s, Copper Cellar, Cappuccino’s, Cherokee Grill, Corner 16, and Smoky Mountain Brewery with locations around the Knoxville area and in Gatlinburg.
I had purchased a whole pork loin and cut it into 6-7 inch roasts with the idea of using some of it for schnitzel-like dishes and I’d saved Pam’s recipe for Crispy Pork Medallions on her “For The Love Of Cooking” blog, which I had planned to use as written. But then I decided to use her recipe but substitute the loin cutlets for the tenderloin medallions.
For the past two years, Eliza has taken her family on the Christmas Lantern Express and this year we went along. The ride is put on by the Three Rivers Rambler- “The Three Rivers Rambler is an excursion train in Knoxville, Tennessee along the Tennessee River. The train is operated by the Knoxville and Holston River Railroad, a subsidiary of Gulf and Ohio Railways.”
After trying Pacific Cod a couple of times and not caring for the chewiness of it, I decided to do something different with my three remaining pieces and make them into fish cakes. I used a recipe that I got from Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives that was courtesy of a restaurant and since it was, I had to reduce it by a factor of four to get the one below.
Seafood Bisque
After eating the cioppino for Thanksgiving, there were five cups of super tasty, somewhat chunky broth remaining. As you likely know, I’m more of a recipe follower than a real cook, but I decided to give real cheffing a try and turn the cioppino leftovers into a seafood bisque. Per the web, “bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth of crustaceans.”
