Pancetta Enoki Rolls

Since Vancouver (B.C. not Portland) is a city of many faces, it's hard to bump into the Pacific Northwest influence in some way. Since I actually live in Richmond (a municipality directly south across the river from Vancouver, our influence is Asian. Richmond is considered a "Pearl of the Orient" . Ever see a ball in a stone dragonlike creature's mouth the Kirin? The river delta of Richmond is that pearl in the mouth sides by the Fraser River.  The pearl is a symbol of good fortune. Therefore, as soon as you cross any bridge from north, south, or east to Richmond, it's  a good opportunity to brush up on your chinese. :-)

Which brings me to my next post. I salivated over  a picture in Anthony Sedlak's cookbook of his grandmother's pork roulade. Anthony Sedlak is a local boy made good in the world of cooking, now a major Foodnetwork star. His roll entailed of pounded pork tenderloin anointed with Dijon, rolled around pickles, bound with bacon and served with a sour cream sauce. Since favorite son and favorite daughter don't enjoy pickles yet, I replaced them with enoki mushrooms in my version. I actually didn't end up using the shimeji mushrooms, as I ran out of meat. That was just as well, cos the shimeji have a bit of a bitter kick to them.  Thinly sliced shabushabu pork butt replaced the tenderloin, and pancetta replaced the bacon. Finely chopped capers and homemade creme fraiche served as sauce.

Here's the key to homemade creme fraiche. Put a dollop of sourcream into a litre of whipping cream. I left mine in a very warm spot near a forced air duct out all day, then put it in the fridge over night. The next day, success! Most concoctions asked for buttermilk, and less whipping cream, but my experiment worked. It's been about a week now, and still hasn't separated. I put it on everything! It's hard to come by creme fraiche where I live. The closest thing (which doesn't have the tang) is Devonshire clotted cream, at $7 CAD is too dear for my taste.

L-R: Enoki, capers, Shimeji mushrooms, kecap manis soy sauce, creme fraiche, pancetta and thinly sliced pork butt. 

Since there was a dearth of baker's twine in the house, I scrounged around for any foodsafe string, which happened to be a grass holding bamboo leaves left over from joong. (Another post).

9 Sauces

I am on a cooking spree again. The other day, I made shrimp on lemongrass. Orginally, the recipe was shrimp on sugar cane, but a previous wrestling with a 5 foot length of sugarcane left me with blood on my hands. Really, how does one splinter a small trunk using a Chinese cleaver?
Inspired by the grand photos in this book, I hankered for a shrimpy skewer in the comfort of my own home. They turned out well, although the flesh seemed rather spongy, not unlike a crab claw one eats in the 2nd course of a 10 course Chinese dinner. (Note to self, hand chop shrimp, rather than blend, chunky is okay). The piece de resistance, was the nuoc cham dipping sauce. Umami dribbles of garlic, hotsauce, fish sauce, h2o, rice vinegar, and lime juice.

A conversation about how chicken Mcnuggets were made, inspired me to make my own nuggets. Do you know how it's made?  Whole bits of chicken, skin, bones and all, are blended into a greyish tubelike paste, which is sieved to remove the solid bits. Ammonia is added to sanitized the whole affair, pink food color to similate food appeal. Gross! So I breaded my own chicken breasts with parmesan, panko and furikake (seaweedy sprinkles) before broiling them in the oven. The fun part was the unnamed sauces....

White miso
Caramel
Anchovy paste
BBQ
Japanese mayo
Dijon/Hot mustard
Tonkatsu
Mango dipping sauce
Homemade nuoc cham (not shown)

Pure delight, double dipping up and down the line, for a mere taste for some and a full dunk for others. In the end, my favorite was the fishy saltiness of the anchovy paste followed by mayo. I had more sauces, but was limited by the number of small plates we owned. One child asked, where the most obvious sauce, ketchup was. We don't eat ketchup anymore. Due to a moment of health induced delirium, we decided to stock salsa in the house instead. Let's see how long that lasts....