Feral Cooks

Good food shouldn't be tame

Guest Cook: Yumi Makes Yummi Tuscan Ribollita

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Tuscan Ribollita

I’m not that much of a soup maker, but Yumi from time to time, will take to the kitchen to make soup. While she cooked this batch, she wasn’t around for writing up the post, so I’ll be doing it—with all credit going to her for making a delicious meal.

I just noticed that if you lose the bacon and use vegetable broth and you’ve got a perfect vegan soup!

That said, I do not know where she got the recipe, so apologies if the original author happens to stumble across this. Leave a comment and I will be sure to give you full credit in the post.

What you’ll need:

  • 3 cloves garlic, smooshed, smashed, or crushed.
  • 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • 1 celery stalk, chopped (feel free to leave it out: celery is to flavor, as beige is to color)
  • 4 oz (or a LOT more) bacon, chopped
  • 0.5 cups olive oil, divided
  • 15-can of whole, peeled tomatoes (keep the liquid in the can)
  • 3 15-oz cans of cannellini beans, drained
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 1 sprig fresh rosemary
  • 1 bunch of kale, chopped
  • Panko for topping (toasted or not)
  • Grated Parmesan for topping (or fake, vegan cheese)

What to do:

Add 2T olive oil to a medium-large pot, and sauté the garlic, onion, carrot, celery and bacon over medium heat until the onions soften a bit (5 minutes or so).

Next, add the tomatoes and their juices, the beans, broth and the rosemary. Cover and simmer until the beans begin to break up (about 1 hour).

Add the kale, stir it in well, and cook about 5-10 minutes more at medium heat. At this point, you can stir in the panko, if you like disgusting, soggy bread.

Or ladle the soup into serving bowls, drizzle with remaining olive oil, and top with the panko and Parmesan.

Serve piping hot.

Tuscan Ribollita

Chicken with Mustard, Maple Syrup and Garlic

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Chicken with mustard and garlic

Here’s super-easy chicken that’s really flavorful, but sure doesn’t photograph very well. It’s really as simple as making a sauce and dumping it on the chicken before cooking. But, the secret is in the sauce, which is a take on honey-mustard. I guess that doesn’t make it much of a recipe, per se, but you may want to give it a try, anyway.

What you’ll need:

  • Some chicken thighs, boneless or not, skinned or not (you could use chicken breasts, too, if you prefer dry, flavorless meat)
  • 4T coarse-ground mustard
  • 8T maple syrup
  • 5-6 cloves, roasted garlic

What to do:

*Heat oven 350–400 degrees, on the roast setting, if your oven has it.

Mix the mustard and maple syrup in a small bowl. Mash up the roasted garlic and add to the mixture.

Line a baking sheet with foil and give it a light coating of cooking spray. Put the chicken on the baking sheet and season with salt and pepper. Spoon the mustard/syrup mixture over the chicken pieces. Now it’s ready for the oven.

Cook in the lower rack of the oven for 20–25 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Serve hot with whatever tastes good to you.

*Now that I think of it, you could also cook this in a sous vide. Just dump the chicken and sauce into the cooking bag, seal it and cook it however you sous vide your chicken. This would eliminate the dry-chicken-breast syndrome, if you’re using them.

Pork of Death

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Deep-fried Pork belly

With the holidays here, I recently had a couple of workdays without a ton of meetings, pressure or imminent deadlines. This bit of disposable time allowed my mind to wander a little. When I am not 100% occupied, I sometimes think of some weird shit, such as pondering what is the most unhealthy food I could possibly make. It had to check all the boxes: high fat, high cholesterol, high sodium, no fiber and no vitamins or minerals. Turns out, it didn’t take long to come up with something: breaded and deep-fried pork belly. It seems you could do worse only by eating a stick of butter with a knife and fork.

I’m certainly not the first person to think of this. You’ll find similar recipes here and there online, but the Filipinos also have a cool dish called Lechon Kawali. It’s a little different from what I had in mind, as it skips the breading, and the pork belly is cooked until it is somewhat crispy.

I didn’t want the crispy part, so what I did was cooked the first stage like the Lechon Kawali, then finished with breading and lightly deep frying. (Yeah, lightly deep-frying is like lightly killing.) The key is to pre-braise the meat so you’re not actually cooking it in the deep-fryer, rather crisping the breading and re-heating the meat.

It seems a best practice to limit consumption of deep-fried pork belly to maybe three pieces at most per sitting. I guess it’s best think of it as a heavy appetizer, but not part of a meal.

What you’ll need:

  • 1 lb boneless pork belly (skin on or off)
  • 4 medium cloves garlic, smooshed
  • 1 bay leaf (optional)
  • 1t black peppercorns
  • ¼- to ½-cup soy sauce (more = stronger flavored meat)
  • Enough flour for coating the pork belly pieces
  • 1–3 eggs, beaten
  • Panko or bread crumbs (I recommend panko)
  • Kosher salt
  • Oil for frying

What to do:

Cook and prep the pork belly. The pork belly I bought was already sliced about an inch thick, but if you had a small slab you could still cook it by this method: put a pot over medium heat and add the pork belly, garlic, peppercorns, bay leaf (if using) and soy sauce. Add water to cover the pork belly and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the pork belly is cooked through.

When the meat is done, drain the cooking liquid and let the meat cool. Cool the pork, then cut into pieces about 1 x 2 inches or so. This is where my recipe diverges from that of Lechon Kawali.

Make sure the pork is dried. For each piece: salt it, coat it with flour, dip it in the egg, and coat with the breading. Set aside the pieces until you’re ready to fry.

Heat the oil to about 350 degrees in whatever vessel you use for frying. Carefully add the pieces one at a time (don’t crowd them) and cook until the breading is golden brown (maybe 5-10 minutes).

Drain on a rack or paper towels. Serve hot with whatever dip works for you. We used a traditional Japanese dip for agedashi-dofu (soy sauce, mirin, sake).

Deep-fried pork belly