Chicken Fried Gourmet

Why I love Pork Belly

Pork Belly - I know it sounds gross or weird but trust me it is not. Pork belly is basically uncured bacon. Its flavorful, very versatile and damn tasty. Its not healthy by any means but if you eat it in small portions you can convince yourself you are doing good on your diet. I have only discovered pork belly over the past year and I have used it in many different ways. I am not ordering the really good stuff online but rather have found it very accessible at my local Chinese grocery - like $ 4 accessible. So seriously go out and find some, experiment and enjoy that porky goodness..........

you will be glad you did :)

A weekend BBQ and a minor flood in Shreveport LA

This past weekend we had several opportunities to grill outside. On Saturday we went to one of the local lakes where they have a park and camping among other things. I had never been there but Ann had. Her brother was in town so we went with her parents and our 3 kids for an afternoon of hanging out at the lake and grilling burgers. For simplicity I really did not plan on grilling so I went and bought pre-made burger patties. All I did was grill these with some of my homemade ancho bacon bbqsauce. The lake was really nice and the kids had a fun time swimming. There was one thing about the lake that I did not enjoy , especially since I was grilling- I'll give you a hint....its the last picture in the slideshow. This "rule" was heavily enforced, park rangers came by about every 5-10 minutes on 4 wheelers to check on it. Other than that we had a good time, I just need to make friends with somebody who owns a house out there :)

Saturday night we grilled with our neighbors down the street. I brought some pork ribs I had previously cooked(sans bones) and some chicken wings. Robin(our neighbor) grilled some sirloins and mushrooms. He chopped up the sirloin and mushrooms once done and made sandwiches. These were so good, I might have to steal that recipe.

Sunday night I made a recipe from Bobby Flay's new book "Grill It". It is banana and Nutella sandwiches. It is a pretty simple recipe- grill some sliced french bread, top with sliced bananas, nutella and top with powdered sugar. Since I cannot leave well enough alone I added sea salt to the nutella ( TRUST ME ) and drizzled with some orange oil I made.

In other news we have had like 20 ft of rain over the past 24 hours, well really not that much but a lot. The whole city has experienced some kind of flooding and of course people are freaking out. They closed the schools today at noon. Of course by 1pm it was sunny and most of the water had gone down(typical Shreveport). We are supposed to get more tonight so we will see what happens.

Here are some pictures I took of the duck pond across the street from our house.

This is Sunday afternoon....

This is Wednesday afternoon, the water has already started to down from what it was...

Comfort food - shell pasta with fennel, pork and beef ragu

Some nights I want nothing more than to just make spaghetti and meat sauce. Usually if I am thinking about it I will make enough meatballs on a Sunday to feed us throughout the week. Now I am not talking about eating meatballs everyday, well I guess I am. What we usually do is have the traditional spaghetti and meatballs dish a few times and on other nights maybe a meatball sub or meatball sliders. They keep fairly well in the sauce and are easily reheated in whatever form we would like to use them in. Being in full spring mode now I find it difficult to sit down and cook like this at an early time when I could be outside enjoying the weather before it gets to the typical summer in Louisiana where it is 100 degrees and H U M I D.

An easy fix is meat sauce, not as labor intensive as meatballs and as close as you can get to a one pot meal. What I normally like to do is combine equal parts ground meat and ground pork, throw in some crushed fennell seeds, garlic, red pepper and saute away. Once browned I throw in some crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and chicken stock and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Throw in some pasta and you have dinner. It is easily reheated for lunch as the pictures below attest.

In other news my tomato garden is coming along pretty well.