salted pork cutlet with avocado mung bean puree

This one should have been up a while ago, but you know, this led to that. Back when I was talking about yin-yanging food together, I mentioned the idea of putting two separate flavors together on the same plate so that they could be joined harmoniously together in the mouth.

This time, I decided to go with an interesting complementary pair - salty and soothing. The pork is slightly over-salted in this recipe, and to compensate for that there is barely any sodium in the rest of the meal. The salt drives you to taste the avocado and mung bean, which is soothing and refreshing to the palate. Mung bean sprouts are naturally filled with a large concentration of water, and blending them up with a tiny bit of oil leads to a smooth paste.

The pork is seasoned and left to marinate in sea salt with no additional flavors, so if you get a good cut of meat it will make a big impact on the end result here. We are showcasing the meat by keeping it simple. After-flavors from the soy sauteed Napa cabbage and the avocado bean sprout puree will then add complexity in the mouth. This is the basic idea behind the yin-yang approach.

I added little piles of Mothia - a favorite Sicilian sea salt of mine - in front of each cutlet so that diners could choose to give it an extra salty punch if they wished. I prefer it with the extra salt but this way I don't have to force it on anyone, and it makes the meal more interactive. If you're worried about sodium, compare this to any soup you may have made with one cube of bullion from the store and I think you'll be quite surprised at what you find. Also note to balance the overall salt concentration of the meal the avocado dip has only the slightest pinch for seasoning.

Tell me what yin-yang flavor ideas you can come up with!

bacon explosion – mini coupe version

And afterwards, you might consider eating a salad

First of all, credit where credit is due. The original Bacon Explosion recipe comes from two barbecue geniuses: Jason Day and Aaron Chronister, writers of BBQ MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER - the title is literally in all-caps even on the book - and creators of the site BBQ Addicts. Apparently, you can even order ready-to-eat versions of the Bacon Explosion at their site now. The only problem I have is that the recipe is massive, about the size of a football, and I wanted to come up with an individual portion scale-down. Thus the birth of the mini coupe version. The ingredients, as well as the process, are largely the same as in the official version.

thick-cut slices of bacon (short, you can cut normal slices in half)
sausage meat (preferably Italian)
bbq sauce
bbq rub*

*If you are making a rub, there’s lots of ways but basically these ingredients:

5 paprika

4 brown sugar

3 sea salt

2 black pepper

1 cayenne pepper

1/2 dry mustard

The numbers indicate ratios that I recommend, but everyone’s tastes are different. I like this one because it’s sort of a descending scale – if using teaspoons, use 5 teaspoons of paprika and so on; if using tablespoons, likewise.

1. Reserve a couple slices of bacon, and weave the rest into a square lattice (think apple pie). So you need equal amounts of bacon for the X and Y axis of the lattice. If you don't have at least 4x4 it's a no go.

2. Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Fry the bacon you saved in a frying pan and cook until crisp. Sprinkle latticed bacon with bbq rub. Remove sausage meat from its casings (if you couldn’t buy it as just meat). Evenly spread the sausage meat on top of the bacon lattice. You want enough to cover to the outer edges.

3. Crumble fried bacon into pieces and sprinkle on top of the sausage meat. Drizzle some bbq sauce on that and sprinkle with some more bbq rub.

4. Separate the front edge of the sausage layer from the bacon weave and roll the sausage away from you. The bacon weave should stay where it is. Press sausage roll to remove any air pockets and pinch together.

5. Roll toward you, this time with the bacon as well, until it is completely wrapped. Turn it so that the seam faces down. Sprinkle with a bit more bbq rub.

6. Place the roll on a baking sheet into the oven. Cook until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F, about 1 hour for each inch of thickness. When done, glaze the roll with more sauce. Like the original recipe, I recommend serving in slices.

 
This is a taste-splosion of flavor, so keep your dose low. I did notice, however, that it's much lighter feeling in this mini version, probably because the juices don't have all the time and space to move around in the center of the roll.