Today's Cooking

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today I'm making pork chops and a chop salad.

Pork chop marinade includes roughly:
1 tablespoon full-flavor olive oil
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
dash of Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon Grovestone Little Italy Pizza Seasoning

For the chop salad I have lots of little tomatoes from the garden, plus two tiny cucumbers, so this will be more tomato than cucumber. Consequently I want to use basil as the green leaf this time.

Comments

Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

Are these the "shove it all through a grid cutter" homogenous salads made with an assortment of veggies which usually take a long time to prepare?

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

I don't have a grid cutter, whatever that is. I also can't be arsed to set up, use, and clean a food processor. So I just dice vegetables by hand with a knife, and it does take me a while. (I'm sure someone with better knife skills could do it in less than a minute.) But it is much tastier than most leaf salads.

This time I had more cherry tomatoes than cucumbers. It's just a handful of those diced, plus a few basil leaves minced with kitchen scissors. Some people add seasonings. I might do that if I tried to make this in winter.

I've also got another chop salad that is cooked sweet corn kernels, diced tomatoes, diced mozzarella (you could probably use shredded), and minced basil with a little oil, vinegar, and honey.

The corn and tomatillo skillet dish is hot. Sweet corn kernels, diced onion (or freeze-dried green onion), diced tomatillos, and seasonings.

Some of those recipes are already posted here. Hit the Recipe tag.

Re: Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

The goal seems to be to have fairly uniform pieces, rather than leaf of lettuce, or big shred of it, a wedge of tomato, a slice of radish, et cetera. Chop it all to look like large confetti and let it meld with a light dressing before serving.

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yes! I don't obsess over perfectly uniform pieces, but confetti is a good description. Most of the time, it's just too hard to find leaves that taste really good and come in an appropriate sized carton. But finding things like corn kernels is easy, and things that can be diced like cucumber or tomato. Sometimes I add dressing but often it's just herb or a sprinkle of mixed dried herbs.

Re: Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

Considering how SMALL the suggested daily maximum of oil/fat really is, sprinkling veg with herbs and a few drops of lemon juice is a much better option than dressing, BUT it works best ON small pieces, while dressing is the opposite, mean to coat LARGER pieces of food.

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

Some of mine rely mostly on minced fresh herbs like flat parsley, cilantro, basil, etc. I've got several blends that I also like.

I am using much smaller amounts of full-flavor olive oil and vinegar (or lime juice, lemon juice, etc.) than many recipes would call for because I don't want to drown the vegetables. I find a dab of honey very useful as an emulsifier and flavor balancer. But the concept is basically along the lines of a vinaigrette.

In slightly larger quantities -- a couple tablespoons -- I use a similar approach to marinades. We have found that makes for a tastier and juicier meat than just sprinkling on dry spices, but it requires remembering to set up the bag in advance.

Re: Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

Going for as long as I have with minimal additional sugar in my diet, my taste buds have retrained to the point that most dressings are FAR too sweet for me. So, a bit of lemon juice and some herbs without an emulsifier are much better than bottled dressings.

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

Sensible.

If you like mustard, that is another emulsifier. I don't use it because I dislike it and my partner Doug has a contact allergy to it. Others include garlic paste, tomato paste, egg yolk, tahini, and avocado. Hmm, I should experiment with the tomato and tahini.

Re: Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

Tahini tends to separate badly, but here's the good news: The thinner oil at the top STILL has sesame seed in it, making it wonderful for making dressing. *G*

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

Interesing. My experience with skimming oil, though, is it makes the bottom layer turn to concrete. Even stirring, you wind up with less oil on the bottom layer because it's hard to dig down that far. Hence why most commercial nut butters use emulsifiers.

Re: Chop salad

[dialecticdreamer]

Frankly, I reach a point where I cannot stir up the concrete any longer. That's when chipping it out, as literal chunks the size of raisins or smaller, led to putting the bits in a dry skillet to toast them as a topping.

Re: Chop salad

[ysabetwordsmith]

Huh, I've seen it start to fray when scraped, but never so much that actual chips broke off. Interesting.

[warriorsavant]

Nom likes to marinate pork chops wish soy sauce, sesame oil, and nuoc mam, plus a few other secret ingredients.

New word!

[dialecticdreamer]

Fish sauce is one of my favorite flavors. I can't make it at home, so I just focus on trying a different brand each time to find THE one that I like best.

Ooo ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Sesame oil! We have that, and mostly use it for stir-fries. I could try it in marinade.

[tedwords]

Sounds great!