Flavours of Hanoi - VIETNAMESE SALAD SASKATCHEWAN STYLE

Angel hair pasta for two or three
Dipping sauce (see below)
1/2 cup carrots, shaved with a vegetable peeler
1/2 cup English cucumber, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cabbage, thinly sliced
1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced and chopped
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
Fresh cilantro for garnish, chopped

Dipping Sauce – Mix together:

1 large garlic, minced

1 hot pepper, chopped

1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup fish sauce

1/2 cup red-wine vinegar

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Cook pasta in salted water. Drain, rinse and cool. Make dipping sauce.

Boil two cups of water with a dash of salt. Drop in the cabbage and cook one minute. Add carrots and cucumber and cook another minute. Drain and cool in cold water. Add vegetables to the dipping sauce.

Mix together the ground meat, red onion, cilantro, sugar and fish sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Mix very well, until the meat begins to break down and get sticky. Form into ten patties. Cook patties until browned on both sides and cooked through. Add the warm patties to the dipping sauce and vegetables. Cool.

To serve, place the noodles on a platter. Scoop vegetables on top. Place meat patties around the sides. Pour on dipping sauce. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro.

Asian flavours - VIETNAMESE SALAD

Other than the dipping sauce, this dish can be made entirely with Saskatchewan-based ingredients. (Adapted from Cooking Light)

Vietnamese Salad
1/2 of a 450-gram box angel hair pasta
Dipping sauce (see below)
1/2 cup carrots, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cucumber, seeds removed, cut in thin matchsticks
1/2 cup cabbage, thinly sliced (optional)
1 pound pork or beef, or a combination
1/4 cup green onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
2 handfuls of lettuce
Fresh cilantro and mint for garnish, chopped

Cook pasta in salted water. Drain, rinse and cool. Meanwhile, make the dipping sauce (see below).

Boil two cups of water with a dash of salt. Cooking each separately, boil the carrots, cucumber and cabbage just until they start to soften. Remove with a slotted spoon and rinse in cold water. Add vegetables to the bowl of dipping sauce.

Mix together the ground meat, green onion, cilantro, sugar and fish sauce. Add a dash of salt and pepper. Form into ten patties. Cook patties on a grill or skillet until nicely browned and cooked through. Add the warm patties to the dipping sauce and vegetables.

To serve, place the noodles on a platter. Circle with lettuce. Scoop vegetables and meat patties on top. Pour on dipping sauce. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro and mint.

Dipping Sauce – Mix together:
1 large garlic, minced
1 hot pepper, chopped
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup red-wine vinegar

Down comes the house - PORK RAGOUT WITH FENNEL SEEDS

Rosie's house came down yesterday. In honour of our old friend, I cooked a Czech dinner (Rosie was of Czech ancestry and it was her first language, eventhough she was born in Saskatchewan.) Now that we have a big hole in the ground we can start building our new house.

For years I'm been bugging John to redo my kitchen. He builds gorgeous kitchens for "clients," an elite group of people of which I am not a member. But all that nagging has paid off. Not only do I get a new kitchen, I get a whole new house!


Pork Ragout with Fennel Seeds
(Adapted for local ingredients from The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire, Time-Life Books)

2 lbs. pork cut into cubes
3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 1/2 cups meat stock
1 cup thinly sliced morel mushrooms

Sprinkle the pork with salt and pepper. Melt the butter on medium heat, add the onions and sauté until soft. Stir in the pork and lightly brown. Sprinkle with the flour and fennel seeds and stir together well. Cook on low heat for several minutes, stirring to prevent the pork from sticking. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil. Turn to low, add the mushrooms, cover and simmer 1 hour. Adjust seasoning as needed. Serve on buttered noodles.

Week 49 - STUFFED ONIONS

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week - 18 March 2006

Breakfast - Yogurt with cherries.
Lunch - Baguette and ham sausage.
Dinner - Green salad. Stuffed onions.

STUFFED ONIONS
I found this recipe in a French cookbook from the library. My husband loves it and it has been a regular on our dinner table ever since. I usually use ground pork or a mix of ground pork and beef.

4 large white onions
1 cup cooked ground meat
2 tbsp. chopped chives
2 tbsp. chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary – whatever you have on hand. If using dried, cut the amount in half.)
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese (or other robust hard cheese)
1 hard boiled egg

Cut a slice off the top of each onion about 1/2 inch thick. Peel the onions and boil them whole in water about 30 minutes, until cooked through. Drain the onions and set aside to cool enough to handle. Using your fingers, gently remove the inner layers of onion, leaving a stable exterior wall about 1/2 inch thick.

Mix the meat, herbs and half the cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Separate the whites and yolk of the hard-boiled egg. Mash both separately. Add the whites to the meat mixture. Spoon the meat mixture into the four hollow onions. Top each one with egg yolk and the remaining cheese, dividing evenly among each onion. Bake in a greased pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Week 41 - TONKATSU

Menu of the Week - 25 January 2006

Breakfast -- Yogurt and cherry sauce.
Lunch -- Chicken soup.
Dinner -- Tonkatsu. Cabbage salad.

When I was in Japan I could not afford to eat in restaurants. It’s not that I was so broke, but the restaurants were really expensive. I met a young woman who wanted to practice her English so she took me out for dinner. We went to a tonkatsu restaurant – a place that served a breaded pork cutlet with tonkatsu sauce. It’s a western-style dish, as far as Japanese food goes, and it’s quite easy to make at home. Recently, my bookclub read Memoires of a Geisha and the theme for dinner was, of course, Japanese. So, I looked up a recipe for tonkatsu. It is one the few Japanese dishes I’ve found that can be made with mostly Saskatchewan ingredients.

TONKATSU
4 pork loin cutlets, trimmed of bone and fat
(I bought cutlets that had been tenderized – ie: pounded – by the butcher. Each cutlet was then large enough to be cut in two.)
salt and pepper
2 T flour
1 egg, whisked
1 cup good white bread crumbs (by this I mean, no factory bread)
canola oil for deep frying
tonkatsu sauce (see below)
finely shredded cabbage for garnish

Place the breadcrumbs on a cookie sheet and toast under the broiler until they are crispy and brown, turning once or twice. Pound the meat to tenderize it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Dust it in flour. Dip into whisked egg. Coat with dried breadcrumbs, pressing with your finger so the breadcrumbs firmly adhere to the meat. Let rest about 15 minutes. In the meantime, heat enough oil in a frying pan that it will just cover the pork. Fry the cutlets in the hot oil, about 5 minutes per side, until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. To serve, cut the cutlet into several bite-sized slices. Place some cabbage beside it, and spoon on the tonkatsu sauce.

TONKATSU SAUCE
You can buy the sauce, but it’s also easy to make by mixing 4T ketchup, 2T Worcester sauce and 2T soy sauce.