During our most rece
nt trip to the Lake Ella farmers market, a trip that Logan dragged me on, we came across an old man with youthful spirits hoping to sell us multi colored potatoes. Cut them open and they could be purple, pink or even...WHITE! The action of buying the potatoes lead to an inexplicable chain of events, one of which was logan suggesting we make potato salad. You can imagi
ne my disapointment. Rikki and I say "if it don't have lettuce in it don't call it a salad". Honestly I don't want some nasty mayoed up potato cube that for some reason is yellow! I instead fantasized about making purple and pink french fries. However Logs had a different potato salad in mind and insisted mustardy mayo sauce (I was just informed the yellow in potato salad is mustard) will not be a part of it, instead it shall be a
French potato salad.
Ok. I have accepted the idea of a potato salad. It has evolved from a fear of mine to a perfectly suitable
side dish. I want to emphasis the side dish because no matter what happens, potato salad will always and forever be a side dish. So what next, what would go well with this side dish-0-potato? Well she did say its french... what's a french main course? To be honest I'm still a little lost on what french food is. My lack of understanding how to define this type of food reminds me of the time logan was trying to teach me what savory was. "It just means salty right?" i insisted. I just didn't get it. Anyways, I understand french cuisine is good food, expensive and looks pretty, but what is it? Italian food is easy for me to imagine but not french. My mind turned to a nice little french lunch place in Naples where I had a lovely baguette sandwich with nice roast beast.
Logan comes back from the store with a pasty white baguette and 3 lbs. of smoked Boston pork butt. The butt was pink and reminded me of ham and we were unsure if it was fully cooked so we decided to call the expert. Mom. Unfortunately I called the wrong expert, i should have called my father the resident Hamxpert (Ham expert), because my mom didn't know if a pink smoked ham-looking boston pork butt was fully cooked.
In the end the potato salad was a smash hit. The salad of course had the three varieties of heirloom potatoes, dill, garlic, basil, onions, chardonnay, mustard and shallots. The sandwich was toasted with a sharp aged gouda and some capital T tender pork butt that was cooked with the said chardonnay to ensure the cookedness of the butt.
French? i dunno maybe... A satisfying dinner for two? Duh.
Since my girlfriends recent conversion from vegetarianism to eating whateverism, our cooking has expanded to realms never before thought possible...meat. One of our favorite meat items has been sliders. In Tallahassee we would always get pork sliders from our favorite Cuban eatery. Perfectly spiced and wonderfully porky. What would I do without pork. Thank goodness I am allowed to eat hooved animals!!! Then in NYC the sliders didn't fail to amaze. We ate at the malaysian restaurant 'Fatty Crab', ironically the crab dish was rather lousy (too fishy) but the sliders were wonderful. A blend of pork and beef with a spicy sauce, a thick chunk of cucumber and a sweet pillowy bun. This fatty slider was the basis for the meal I am currently digesting and the one I am about to share with you all about.
For my first week here in Ithaca (living in a farm house with chickens that live in trees) I am free of a job (a job that starts tommorrow morning, actually), so I have some time to cook for the gal. We agree that sliders are a porktastic dinner option and so we go meat shopping at the farmers market. While Logan is at work I bike to three different grocery stores to find some darn chipotle, or as I pronounce them Shipotle peppers. After facing gorges and honking angry hipster drivers, I make it home hours later with a $1.89 jar of chipotle peppers. I start dinner with a nap, then I get the buns going from scratch. Unfortunately I used the rest of Logan's flour in the process (a move that will end in logan scowling at me as she attempts to make a peach cobbler). Whislst the buns are in the oven (no not babies, literally buns to put the sliders in) I make the chipotle sauce. I combined finely chopped Chipotle peppers with yogurt, garlic, cilantro and lemons. For the main event I mixed beef and Chorizo, with onions garlic and spices and rolled them into balls and put them on the grill with more onions and the baked buns. Holy ham! I ate four! Our attempt to recreate the 'Fatty crab' sliders was a success. Slabs of spicy-lemony sauce with grilled oily onions and thick cucumber on top of a naughty greasy pork/beef love affair that is sinful and illegal depending on your religious beliefs or which state your from. Put that shiz on top of more of the said sauce, all enveloped in a homemade bun. And some people just go to McDonald's for a burger.
