2011

Parties That Cook’s Eat Real Inspired Recipe: Gingery Pork and Shiitake Mushroom Lettuce Cups

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Menus & Recipes, News & Events September 22nd, 2011 @ 3:31 pm

This weekend (September 23-25, 2011) is Oakland’s Eat Real Festival, and surprisingly, it’s not all about the food trucks. Don’t get me wrong, I plan on eating as much of the Tamales, Samosas, Sliders, Grilled Cheese, Mac & Cheese, Pizza, Spam Musubi, Ribs and other tasty bites as I can… But it’s nice to know that there are plenty of free activities to participate in while I’m waiting for my next craving.

This week’s featured recipe for Gingery Pork and Shiitake Mushroom Lettuce Cups with Hoisin Sauce involves a good amount of veggie prep, but the good news is that chopping is probably the toughest part of this recipe! Plus, once you’ve checked out Sean Baker’s Veggie Butchery demo on Saturday, you’ll be chopping and dicing those vegetables like a samurai.

Lettuce Cups Filled With Gingery Pork, Shiitake Mushrooms and Hoisin Sauce
This recipe can also be found in our Appetizer Recipe Library!

Ingredients
Pork Mixture:
3/4 pound ground pork
6 shiitake mushrooms, finely diced
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 Tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
1 Tablespoon Thai sweet chili sauce
1 Tablespoon Asian fish sauce
1 8-ounce can whole water chestnuts, drained and diced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
2 Tablespoons cilantro, chopped
1 Tablespoon canola oil 2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil
2 Tablespoons oyster sauce

24 Boston lettuce leaves, washed and trimmed into 3 inch rounds
Hoisin sauce
1/4 cup peanuts, toasted and chopped

Methods/Steps
Prepare Pork Mixture: Place the ground pork into a medium bowl. Finely dice the shiitake mushrooms and red bell peppers. Mince the garlic and ginger and add all of the chopped ingredients into the pork. Add the chili sauce and fish sauce and mix well.

Chop Aromatics: Dice the water chestnuts and set aside. Thinly slice the scallions and chop the cilantro, set aside until ready to use.

Cook Pork Mixture: In a large skillet or wok, heat the canola oil. Add the pork mixture and stir-fry over high heat, breaking it up, until it is cooked through and starting to brown, about 8 minutes. Pour mixture into a strainer to remove excess oil from the pan. Return the pork to pan over low heat and stir in the water chestnuts, scallions, cilantro, sesame oil, oyster sauce and cilantro. Toss mixture and remove from heat.

Serve: Trim lettuce leaves into 3-inch rounds. Brush very lightly with hoisin. Spoon 1 Tablespoon of pork into the middle of each leaf. Garnish with peanuts and arrange on a serving platter.

Serves/Makes
Makes 24 cups

Recipe created by Parties That Cook® www.PartiesThatCook.com

Parties That Cook’s Chicago Team Treat: An Evening at Girl & the Goat

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining Tagged with chicago restaurant, Cookbook Club, girl & the goat, Parties That Cook Chicago, top chef, top chicago restaurants September 21st, 2011 @ 12:01 pm

This blog is brought to you by Parties That Cook’s Chicago team! In lieu of Chicago’s traditional cookbook club this quarter, PTC lead chef David Avila recently hosted fellow PTC chefs Heidi, Molly and Brandy at Chicago’s hottest restaurant: Girl & the Goat. David runs the restaurant’s prep kitchen five days a week, so he treated the girls to an evening of delicious food and offered nuggets of insider information about the history and creation of each dish.

David said the Girl & the Goat team does all their own pickling – and a lot of it! He has even been out to the local farms, such as Slagel Family Farms, where Girl & The Goat sources meat and produce from. Sounds like the definition of farm-to-table dining.

After delivering a bottle of vodka and bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to the kitchen chefs, Heidi, Molly and Brandy sat and sipped cocktails. They then enjoyed two delicious breads made just for them: A hearty pretzel bread with a perfectly crunchy crust paired with a horseradish butter and a “corny” corn bread with a sweet and spicy corn relish. One of the restaurant’s owners stopped by their table and gave them the scoop on “Top Chef” winner Stephanie Izard’s new retro-inspired diner opening this fall, “The Little Goat”. Talk about getting the VIP treatment!

Then the food started coming.

Of course, Heidi, Molly and Brandy let David order for them. They nibbled on bites of pretty much everything. First up was the Roasted Cauliflower with pickled peppers, pine nuts, and mint. Yum! The girls also got a taste of the Grilled Edamame with smoky blue cheese and rosemary. The consensus was that the smoky blue cheese melted over the edamame put it over the top in the best way. The Squash Blossom Rangoon with crab, chive yogurt and toasted almonds was delish, as was the Chickpea Fritters with eggplant-tomatillo caponata and mozzarella. The texture of the fritters was amazing and the fact that they sat on top of a bed of mozzarella made the dish that much better!

The Seared Tuna came up next – served with a delicious crumbled lamb sausage, grilled blueberries and pepitas. Yes, I said grilled blueberries! David explained that the grilling is done by putting a cooling rack on a hot grill and then “spilling” the blueberries on the rack. This was Heidi’s favorite dish of the night, while Brandy’s favorite was the Kalbi style beef ribs. She further explained, “It melted in my mouth and was served over the cutest corn coblettes and topped with charred okra.” There was more, including some oysters that were to-die-for, but if you couldn’t guess by the photos, it’s time to move on to desserts.

The group ordered all four desserts offered that night. They enjoyed the Chocolate Bouchon with a foie fluff and the Brown Sugar Cake with goat cheese mousse of the most perfect texture, but the highlight hands down was the Pork Fat Doughnuts with house-made honey yogurt and lemony eggplant. While eating, Molly shared the tale of a former job where she had to serve homemade donuts from a machine every night. Though she would normally curse a doughnut, she scraped the plate on this one.