Last week was a whirlwind. Hubby had (and still has) a deadline on a project, and evenings were busy with events. With the coming of the weekend, I had a coversation with Dad earlier in the week, to catch up and to talk with him about a couple of recipes that I wanted to try out. There was, in my earlier days in Taiwan and my visits back with family, a wonderful dish, that I always wanted to try to make, but had not had the time yet to just give it a shot: fried pork chop noodle soup. They serve it at this one restaurant in the basement food court level of a department store; and, alas, this restaurant ended up closing not long ago. It's probably a basic dish, considering that they churned this stuff out for patrons left and right, but there are no recipes for it really, to give me any hints on the spices they use to flavor the pork prior to deep frying, or how they go about making their soup. All I know is, if someone made it right, I'd know it from the first taste. But, I have yet to find anyone who can make it this side of the Pacific. So there I was, talking with Dad, and he suggested, how about he just come visit for the weekend, and we can make it together. That was a fantastic idea - we could use the help of 2 familiar tongues to see if we've got the recipe right.
Fried Pork Chop Noodle Soup
Dad actually came prepared, with pork chops already marinating in soy sauce, scallions, salt, pepper, and sugar. The mixture smelled wonderful, but a bit strong... nevertheless, we pressed onward. He also brought some vinegar-pickled mustard greens, a very Chinese ingredient, and definitely not for the light of nasal-sensed. Flavorwise, I find it really wonderful, it's sour, it's salty, but it definitely is not something that a typical American would just pick up off the shelf and say, hey, I'll throw this into a soup, and it'll taste just dandy. He also brought some cucumbers from his garden (yay, at least his cukes survived the heat wave - mine died...), which we would slice and marinate with salt, sugar, and vinegar as a side dish. The marinated cukes is a good balance for the meat/noodle-heavy soup, since the cukes have a wonderful sweet and light flavor. Poor Dad, though - while trying out my mandoline, on which I also sliced a small sliver of my thumb, he took a good hard slice of HIS thumb, and we were playing EMT in the kitchen with my first-aid kit. Word of warning - a mandoline, while convenient in slicing everything under the sun, also takes with it the convenience of slicing, well, everything under the sun. We learned that lesson the sharp way.
So after our little emergency session, we took the pork chops, dredged them in a mixture of corn starch, white pepper, and black pepper; and got them ready for frying. A pot of oil hot and ready to go, Dad took care of deep frying the chops while I chopped up the mustard greens into little slivers. I also cooked up some spaghetti, and drained it. Using the same pot, I heated up some chicken broth for the soup base. In just about an hour, we were ready to go with our dish - some spaghetti into our bowls, some soup to surround, a little pile of pickled mustard greens beside the spaghetti, and finally the fried pork chop on top. The pork chops were really wonderful, very flavorful, and balanced well with the sourness of the mustard greens and the base of the soup. Not exactly like we remembered (next time, I'm going to try just marinating the pork chops in just salt, pepper, and sugar; and dredge in the same corn starch mixture, omitting the soy/scallion items, which seemed to overpower the flavor of the meat.
Pickled cucumbers
Cukes sliced thin, and we mixed them with some salt to coat and to flavor. I placed the cukes in a colander, to allow the water extraction from the cukes (by the salt) to drain off. After about an hour, we added some sugar and vinegar, to taste - personal preference will dictate how much you add to your cukes. You can go ahead and just eat the cukes as soon as you've mixed in the sugar and vinegar, or you can let it sit in the fridge overnight if you'd like. I personally think the next day, they taste even better, having let all the flavors meld together.
So that was Saturday, and this morning, Hubby, Dad, and I went to a local diner to have some brunch. It was all right, not all that impressed - their apple wood smoked bacon was a bit too smoky, and the waffles were a bit too thin, almost like toast. The flavors were still good, and I was impressed by their moist scones (Dad's order), their sausage links, and, most of all, the maple syrup they set on our tables (instead of the usual corn syrupy bleah). We returned in the early afternoon, and Dad was getting ready to head on back home.
With Dad heading off, and Hubby at work to catch up on his deadline, I was left, wha ha ha ha ha, to my own devices. I decided to bake some items for this week - I settled on some lemon poppyseed muffins, a la Joy of Cooking, and I also added in some raisins for texture. Having gotten some inspiration on the scones from brunch, I also decided to make some scones, a la Best Recipes (from Cooks Illustrated) - this was a tip from a good friend of mine Jess, who made scones one time for a girls' day trip that filled our car with wonderful smells.
I followed the recipe this time to a T, and used a food processor that they called for instead of my usual standing mixer. I found, by using the food processor, I was able to get a finer grain in cutting the butter into the dry ingredients, and the flour seems to have been better coated with the butter than any other method I've tried. BTW, I've tried them all - hand mixing, standing-mixer mixing, and hand-held mixer mixing. I may also try this same method for my pie crusts in the future! In addition to the heavy cream that the recipe called for, I mixed in my experimental choice of additions - raisins, as well as 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract. The dough turned out moist and sticky, and after patting the dough down to about 3/4" thickness, I cut rounds out of it. Baked it for 14 minutes at 425, and they turned out pretty well. I could probably have turned off the oven at 12 minutes, but thought I'd leave them in just a bit longer to further brown the top, but the bottoms did get a little scorched. Nonetheless, after letting them cool, I took a smidgen of a bite, and they came out pretty good - moist in the center, not heavy and dense like some of my other scone efforts. This time, I did pay close attention to not overmix, which is something I can be *badly* prone to do in baking - and my close attention paid off.
And now, it's dinnertime - I may just have a slice of that left-over pizza we still have in the fridge. Until tomorrow!
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